Relocating the Ilokano Women Writers of Nueva Vizcaya

Abstract

The study attempts to empower ordinary women writers from the region who are considered to be in the peripheries. The bibliographic building of the foremost Ilokano women writers of Nueva Vizcaya who remain unaccounted and missing in Philippine literature will promote the woman presence in the nation and their place in Philippine literature, while the criticism of their retrieved and collected published short stories written in the vernacular, Iluko, will intensify the relevance of Iluko as a regional literature and as a language. Consequently, the study will contribute to the growing body of feminist studies and literary criticism in the Philippines today. Results of the study showed that these four Ilokano women writers who are unknown and neglected in the region and in Philippine literature have significant sociocultural impact and contributed to the refinement, enrichment, and general development of their language and literature; literature being the grandeur of language and language the carrier of culture. The short stories of the Ilokano women writers present the unique Ilokano ways, traditions and cultures and the concepts of Ilokano woman and womanhood imbedded with their traditional images and representations but also claim the idea of equality between man and woman. It might be construed that Ilokano women and the women writers were not fully contaminated at all with the patriarchal ideology and don’t adhere and have bent and even dismantled patriarchy, or even the attempt to overcome and change this ideology. The Ilokano women writers showed through their short stories, that they have sustained their unique cultural identity despite the impact of colonization. The general awareness and recognition of these regional women writers and their literary pieces would bring a ripple effect to the younger women of the region who would continue to change and overcome the tainted image of the third world regional women writer and women in general, and bringing them no longer to the peripheries but to the center.