‘La Tercera’
(PHOTO COURTESY)
TACLOBAN CITY– Well-known writers, scholars, and educators gathered for the “Hulagway han Tacloban ha ‘La Tercera’: Book Talk with Gina Apostol” at the Leyte Samar Heritage Center Main Gallery of the UP Tacloban College on June 26.
The gathering was part of the city’s 135th fiesta celebration.
“La Tercera,” the fifth novel by Gina Apostol, “recreates Tacloban City through the traces of memory its diasporic narrator, Rosario Delgado, pieces together as she procrastinates on her trip back home for her mother’s funeral.”
Featuring the city in the ’70s and ’80s, Taclobanon readers will nostalgically reencounter old establishments like Kyrex, Bonanza, Gomez Street, and Tacloban Electric Ice Plant Company (TIEPCO), now called Leyeco (Leyte II Electric Cooperative).
The acclaimed novelist, who grew up and had her elementary and high school education at the Divine Word University now known as Liceo Del Verbo Divino was a bit emotional during her book talk, as La Tercera is a tribute to her mother, who hailed from Barugo, Leyte.
Among Apostol’s other novels are “Insurrecto,” named by Publishers Weekly as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018; “Gun Dealers’ Daughter,” which won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award; “Bibliolepsy,” and “The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata,” both of which won the Philippine National Book Award.
Additionally, she has been awarded the 2022 Rome Prize in Literature and the 2023 Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas.
Apostol is acclaimed for her successful integration of Philippine history into her well-researched fiction, making her non-Waray speaking readers understand the culture and language of her home province.
An accomplished US-based Filipino/Waray fiction writer, she remains one of the strongest inspirations for writers from Eastern Visayas.
(rpa cablao /CIO)
