If one is already a successful playwright, experienced travel organizer and jewelry designer, what else is there to do? For Cecilia Gaerlan, the next step was to become a novelist—which she has just did—with her debut novel, In Her Mother’s Image.
In Her Mother’s Image is a searing portrayal about a mother and daughter, Consuelo and Chiquita, entangled in a web of longing and antipathy set in the Philippines amidst the chaos of World War II and 30 years later in 1971. As Chiquita begins her long-awaited journey back to the land of her birth, little does she know that the floodgates from the past are about to be unleashed—back to her ancestral home, back to the bosom of her three sisters. Back to the painful memories of her childhood—back to her mother.
“When I was growing up I used to hear stories about the war from my parents and my aunt (the novel was dedicated to them). My dad was in his early 20’s when World War II broke out. He was in the Bataan death march and was incarcerated at Camp O’Donnell (in Tarlac),” Gaerlan said when asked who or what inspired her to write her debut novel.
“He is a macho kind of guy (still is despite being 91 years old) with a great sense of humor. So when he used to tell his war stories, it was kind of comedic (like the movie Life is Beautiful). We used to laugh at his stories especially the ones when he outsmarted his Japanese captors,” she said.
For Gaerlan’s mom and aunt, the experience was harder on them. “My mom was in her teens when the war broke out. Her experience though was more terrifying like the few time that she was interrogated by the Japanese after saluting to them,” she said. Her aunt, who was eight years old that time, was somewhat the inspiration for Chiquita’s character in the book. But Gaerlan explained that the similarity ends there, as the story is fictional.
Born in the Philippines, Gaerlan came to the United States after she turned 21. She grew up in Imus, Cavite and claims to still have her Caviteno accent. She is now based in Berkeley has written a number of plays such as The Hand of God (about St. Francis of Asisi) where she received an Honorable Mention in the Stage Play Scrip Category of the Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2005, and in 2010 for her play Magnus Laurent (Lorenzo de Medici).
She is also a recipient of a Theatre Bay Area CASH Award for 2002 for her play Brilliance within the Darkness, and an author of several plays on a wide variety of topics such as the United Nations (commissioned by the City College of San Francisco for the UN’s 50th anniversary), child prostitution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Gaerlan’s career as a writer however, was by accident. “My first husband died in 1989. It was a May-December, East-West relationship and we were only together for about a year and a half. So when people learned about my situation, they would remark, ‘What an unusual story. Why don’t you write about it.’ So I enrolled at City College of San Francisco to take a course on novel writing.”
But the first half of the semester was about playwriting, which Gaerlan knew nothing about. And when she started to write, her teacher said that it was too melodramatic. “I could not tell him that it was all true! So I vowed to write a scene week after week. At the end of the semester, I finished a full-length play. I forgot about the novel writing part and concentrated on the playwriting,” she said.
In Her Mother’s Image was initially a screenplay when she wrote it in 2000. However, Gaerlan could not get a studio to buy the script. One reader from an unnamed studio commented however that it would make a good book. “So I immediately adapted the screenplay into a novel which took a bit of adjustment, like driving from a stick shift to an automatic,” she said. Although she wrote the book in 2003, she decided to have it published when her aunt was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “And as my parents are quite infirmed, I though that it was high time to do it while they are still alive.”
Gaerlan thanks her husband, Jeff Shuttleworth (who she married in 1999), for his undying support in all her endeavors to get her first novel out there. “But he is the real writer in the family as he makes his living being a news reporter for Bay City News Service,” she explained.
Her advice to aspiring writers? “Continue writing no matter what. The old adage is only 10 percent and 90 percent is hard work (or perspiration) is certainly true. Never give up.”
Gaerlan also shared that writing In Her Mother’s Image has been an eye opener for her. “Not only did I learn about the resilience of the Filipino people during World War II under the Japanese which continues even now when thousands and thousands of Filipinos make the ultimate sacrifice of working abroad away from their families in order to give a better future for their loved ones,” she said.
“There are many Filipino stories out there waiting to be told. As a people, we should be proud of our rich heritage for we have a unique and complex history. I only hope that I am able to capture a small part of that history and resilience of the Filipino people In Her Mother’s Image.”
Cecilia Gaerlan will be at Eastwinds Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704 on Saturday, April 9 at 3pm to read and discuss her novel, In Her Mother’s Image in commemoration of the Fall of Bataan.
On Mother’s Day, May 5 at 6pm, there will be several dramatic readings from the novel planned at the Mechanics’ Institute at 57 Post St., San Francisco. This will be reprised on August 7 at the San Francisco Theatre Festival at Fort Mason and again in October at the first Filipino-American Literary Festival at the San Francisco Library.
In Her Mother’s Image is available through Amazon.com, Eastwinds Books of Berkeley and in selected bookstores.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(Northern California April 8-14, 2011 SomethingFilipino pg.2)
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