Angelica’s Daughters

We, the authors of Angelica’s Daughters, are proud to present our collaborative work of fiction to the public at last. The five of us—Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Erma Cuizon, Susan Evangelista, Veronica Montes, and Nadine Sarreal— have worked on this novel, off and on, since 2003. Angelica’s Daughters is a story about a diverse group of modern Filipinas—among them a young FilAm whose marriage has disintegrated, an even younger Cebuana involved in a forbidden love affair, and a ballroom-dancing Lola—who share a common ancestor, the beautiful Angelica Nazario de los Santos. As these women investigate the history of their illustrious foremother, they also learn to understand and deal with their own lack of wisdom in love. Our history of writing together began in 2002, when we were all members of the PALH’s Master Writing Workshop, an online endeavor dreamed up by Cecilia. PALH stands for Cecilia’s Philippine American Literary House, a web site that publishes and sells books and Philippine antiques. Cecilia gathered her writing friends, and each agreed to take turns leading the group. Every Wednesday, the group leader emailed a writing prompt, and the members would post their responses online by the weekend. We would then read and critique one another’s work. After a month or so, someone else would take over the responsibility of leading the group and posting the prompts. We were from Manila and Cebu and Singapore and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Palawan, but we could all meet at ease in cyberspace. People joined, and people dropped out—Noelle de Jesus, Libay Linsangan Cantor, Marianne Villanueva and others were all with us for awhile—but the smaller group responsible for this novel endured. We all had bad weeks and good weeks, and we all ended up with some favorites among our short writings. Some were even published as short stories. Eventually we felt we had exhausted our writing prompt exercises, and we were ready for a new challenge. Cecilia had read about a style of writing popular in the Philippines during the 1920s-1930s called the dugtungan or connecting novel—a collaborative effort in which one writer would work on one portion of the novel, then pass this on to the next writer, and so on, until the novel was completed. We decided to try this process with a short story. The result was a funny piece called “New Tricks,” which we wrote under the pen name “Celinosan Montreal” (a bizarre combination of our first and last names). Much to our delight, the story was accepted for publication in SAWI: Funny Essays, Stories and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreaks (Milflores, 2007). Not too long after this initial success, we decided to attempt a dugtungan novel. We agreed to focus on a relatively light romance featuring some elements of Philippine history and a modern-day Filipina American. Again utilizing the indispensable Internet, we shared vintage photographs that appealed to our writer’s imaginations and some writing prompts to get us started. We wrote in an order established by Nadine by a magical formula, with Veronica starting us off. Marianne Villanueva was with us at the beginning of the project, and she contributed one very valuable character in the person of Teban, the disheveled revolutionary painter with whom Angelica falls in love. Other work crowded in on Marianne, and she reluctantly dropped this project. Some of us have a rather proprietary interest in one or more characters. Veronica gave us a brilliant beginning, creating both Tess and Angelica, and the legends surrounding the latter. Susan created Jesusa, and fleshed out Lola Josefina with Veronica. Erma, our “voice from Cebu,” created Dina, while Cebuana expat Cecilia, who is a fervent admirer of her home city, filled in history, places, and local color for Angelica’s travels there. Cecilia and Nadine developed Angelica, her history, and her love story together. Says Veronica about this character, the soul of the novel, “while Cecilia and Nadine gave Angelica the flesh and blood that transformed her into a real person (in a way, I might add, that I never could have imagined! I’ll never forget seeing Angelica’s report card for the first time . . . ), I did, indeed, dream her up. I even remember combing through my dad’s La Salle yearbook to put together her name!” Watching other people run with our characters was a heady experience for us all. Two years after those first exciting chapters, Cecilia and Nadine submitted the first draft, which was critiqued as needing more work. After a brief period of doubting ourselves and the novel, we began the work of rewriting Angelica’s Daughters. Veronica did much of this rewriting, since she was intent on tying the episodes and chapters together around Tess, the protagonist whom she had created. The group acknowledges and thanks Veronica for her perseverance and dedication. Here then is the novel, Angelica’s Daughters, which we hope will entertain the reader, and which will focus attention on the dugtungan or connecting novel, a unique Filipino literary tradition that draws on the spirit of teamwork and collaboration. October 20, 2009 Cecilia Manguerra Brainard Erma Cuizon Susan Evangelista Veronica Montes Nadine Sarreal