The women of La India or Island of the Disappeared in the house of the mothers

• Main Author: Ramos, Maria Alexandra A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2015
• Subjects: Comparative Literature
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2682
• Institution: De La Salle University

This is the study of a women characters in Rosario Cruz Lucero's third collection of short story titled La India or Island of the Disappeared (Quezon City: UP Press, 2012). The nine stories 1) Conundrums, 2) San Roque's Miracle, 3) The Razing of Guinhalaran, 4) The White Lady in the Forest, 5) The Courtship of Estrella, 6) Inventing of Datu Calantiao and His Code, 7) Papa's Field, 8) Living Will and 9) The Stain of Blackberries feature women characters who are Peling, Susana, Maya, Sina, Tala, Uhay Baha, Estrella, Lunay, Blanca, Zeny, Nurse Garcia, Choleng, Socorro, Zenaida and Dolores. They were clustered and analyzed based on the categories of female characters/archetypes identified by foremost scholars of women studies in the country, Lilia Quindoza Santiago (In the Name of the Mother (Quezon City: UP Press, 2002) and Soledad Reyes (The Romance Mode in Philippine Popular Literature and Other Essays (Quezon City: UP Press, 1991). Framing the women characters of Rosario Cruz Lucero (b. 1949) in the categories produced by Santiago (b. 1949) and (b. 1946), the study concludes that most of the women characters do fall under the categories establised by Reyes and Quindoza but other characters have regressed and progressed from these types of women. Cruz Lucero complicates the different struggles and issues women face in life, revealing women characters that go beyond archetypal and steriotypical characterizations. She tells the stories of women that have been greatly affected by colonialism, fear and tragedy, which change them as people. To further develop this study, one can analyze the significant male characters in the text or read the collection through a Postcolonial or Postcolonial Feminist lens.