Filipina American Womanhood and Motherhood Through the Eyes of the Aswang Público

Abstract

The transformations of the Philippine aswang are manifold. In her traditional mythology, the aswang lives as a beautiful woman by day and morphs into a malicious monster by night. Her most famous monstrous form discards her lower body, sprouts batlike wings, and targets expectant mothers and young children. In the context of colonial Philippines, Spanish friars deemed powerful Filipina shamans as aswang to destabilize the pre-existing social order, displacing the aswang’s true identity through this false conflation. Now, as we look to the work of contemporary Filipina American poets, writers, and artists, we witness the aswang in her newest, most transformed iteration. Building on scholars’ previous reflections on the aswang, this thesis engages with Filipina American writers such as Barbara Jane Reyes, Lynda Barry, Melissa R. Sipin, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil and examines the ways in which they invoke, reclaim, and reinvent this important mythological creature through the medium of literature. I examine these writers’ work to explore how they utilize the figure of the aswang to portray Filipina American womanhood and the Filipina American mother, and I argue that the reclamation of the aswang as an empowering figure mirrors these writers’ reclamation of womanhood and their complex relationships with their mothers.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………….…………..................….1

Chapter One: To Love As Aswang and the Aswang’s Poetic Transformation…………....……...….9

Chapter Two: The Filipina American Mother as Aswang………………………………..........……….21

Chapter Three: Filipina American Mother-Daughter Poetry and the Shadow of the Aswang…..32

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………....................……….40 

Epilogue…………………………………………………………………………….....................…………….44

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………....................………………...47

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	English
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Asian Literature, American Asian American Studies
Palabra Clave	Filipina American literature, Filipino American literature, poetry, women writers, mother-daughter relationships, womanhood
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dr. Catherine Nickerson, Emory University
Committee Members	Dr. Sarah Higinbotham, Emory University Dr. Matthew Moyle, Emory University

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