Philippine Studies 51:4 (2003) pp. 644-647
Book Review of A Voice from Many Rivers: Central Subanen Oral and Written Literature. Written and recounted by 30 Subanen. Translated and annotated by Felicia Brichoux. LSP Special Monograph Issue, No. 42. Manila: LSP, 2002. ISBN: 971-780-011-1
by Rosario Cruz Lucero (Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas, University of the Philippines Diliman)
The book is a bilingual anthology of central Subanen collective and personal histories, speeches, tales and legends, poetry and song, incanta-tions, explication, codes of conduct in various guises… Foremost of the thirty raconteurs and writers who contributed to the book is Timu'ay (Chief) Ansulat Promon (photo on p. 163), "resting on his crooked stick, mischief twinkling in his eyes, reciting again in the words of his ancestors the tales of life along many rivers" (p. xxi)…
The book is in Subanen and in English translation, and is replete with content footnotes explaining historical, semantic, cultural, and other such references…
The book is divided into fourteen sections. The first, "Subanen Life Along the Rivers" consists of two long poems presenting in line after line of pithy imagery the inextricable connection between geography, history, and culture … The other sections are: (2) etiological tales, or explanations of nature and natural phenomena, (3) myths and legends, (4) explications of good manners and right conduct, (5) marriage customs, (6) ancient and contemporary customs and practices, (7) arbitration practices, (8) invisible beings and the shaman [belian], (9) "two heirloom stories" recounted by Timu'ay Ansulat Promon, (10) narratives of recent history (11) recreation pieces which include riddles and nonsense tales, (12) poetry, song, and music, (13) trickster tales, and (14) the origins of river names...
The reader will marvel at the cleverness of the trickster, sometimes nameless but more often named Pusung and/or Pilandok, whose power derives from his inventive use of the syllogism and his mastery of the polysemic nature of the word...
In her Introduction, Brichoux states that the book will please a wide range of readers: the general scholar, the linguist, the anthropologist, the student of literature. In his Foreword, Isagani R. Cruz adds that it is also for both the curious-who will find in it "amusing accounts, pe-culiar attitudes, entertaining anecdotes, semi-factual vignettes, credible etymologies, effective incantations" (p. xvii)-and the reflective, who will find "insights into humanity and nature" (p. xvii). Undoubtedly, it is a treasure trove for creative writers as well, for it is the literary tradition in which they can be rooted, so that-instead of floundering in "a habit of shore"-lessness-they may at last find themselves one with this voice of many rivers in the archipelagic nation called the Philippines.
