You may not always be able to understand Kaisa Aquino’s Isabela in a literal sense, but its impact will unmistakably be felt. Both sweeping and intimate, the 43rd National Book Award winner for Best Novel in English is a tribute to both the characters named Isabela and Isabela itself — the province where 31-year-old Aquino grew up.

All throughout, the voices that narrate Isabela are at once familiar yet distinct. You never return to the same perspective, but they remain interconnected through names, places, and struggles. The confusion this may arouse in the reader is purposeful. 

Isabela is experimental, weaving in non-realist elements to capture the realities and surrealities that color the mountains, cities, villages, and people of and around the province. It moves through revolutionary movements — their entry and exit points, their joys and failures — with a restless gaze, uncovering the unseen ways women have always shaped and been shaped by these stories.

To write is to turn inward — and outward

Unlike most writers, Aquino hadn’t always known she was going to be one. Pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman had once just been a reprieve: “I started my MA because I was burnt out from my job,” she explained.

At UP Diliman, Aquino sat in workshop classes where accomplished Filipino writers such as Butch Dalisay and Rosario Cruz Lucero helped her hone her craft. True to the adage of “write what you know,” Aquino, who was working a corporate job at the time, had first been inspired to write stories set in the office. 

“Pero ayaw ni [Lucero]. Sabi niya, hindi ‘to interesting. Then she asked, ‘Taga saan ka ba?’“

(But Lucero didn’t like it. She said it wasn’t interesting. Then she asked, “Where are you from?”)

That simple question sparked it all, transporting Aquino back to her province — a land worn down by illegal logging, mining, and natural disasters, and a home to sprawling political dynasties and enduring insurgent movements. 

Moved by both her upbringing and these issues, Aquino began writing short stories set in and about Isabela. She’d already written a handful of the chapters before she decided to bring them together as a novel and submit it as her master’s thesis. 

It was this background that dared Aquino to be bolder with the themes of her novel. “Akala ko thesis lang siya na pagpapasa-pasahan sa mga department (I thought it was just thesis work that would be passed around in the department). So, I really wrote what I wanted to write. I think if I knew it was going to be a book, I would have been more restrained.”

Embedded in the chapters of Isabela is an exploration of the mundane, the mobilizing, and the mystical. Each new narrative flips a new mood or genre, all an ode to everyday life in Isabela. 

“I think it’s something that only I can write about because it’s something only I know,” Aquino mused. “It’s a place where, if you know where to look, there is conflict.”

Finding one’s direction

Reflecting on her career as a writer, Aquino acknowledged that her journey is shaped by “entangled privileges.” Much of these privileges are tied to her place in the academe, which she could not have pursued in the first place had her former employer not sponsored her tuition at the start of her master’s program. 

Many mainstream texts of Filipino literature are often written by someone from a university, published by a university press. Cognizant of this reality, Aquino urged young writers to have a sharp vision of what and why they want to write, how they want to write it, and who they are writing for. 

Writers who are grounded in this will flourish, Aquino believes, as long as they seek a “community that will enrich you as a writer, as an artist, artistically, intellectually, and emotionally.” Even without an MFA in Creative Writing, communities of fellow writers and artists are what help “keep [you] inspired, create spaces where you can produce things, put your work out there on your own terms,” sustaining one’s practice.

More than individual or community-level efforts, Aquino hopes to see more government investment in not just the arts but art from the hands and minds of queer people, regional voices, and women. 

Because for Aquino, the community she writes for is, ultimately, women. From her own mother on the cover, to the first chapter’s brilliant Prof. Isang — the main male character’s confidant — to the last chapter’s Ka Julia, who chooses the revolutionary movement over motherhood, Isabela intertwines the stories of women, young and old, bringing together mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, comrades, and best friends.

On her decision to give her female characters the same name, Aquino explained: “These women, although they each have their own danas of being a woman, they are all the same in a sense. At ang danas ko, danas din ng ibang babae. They each feel like their own self, but at the same time, they echo each other’s lives, their sufferings, their joys.”

(These women, though each has her own lived experience of being a woman, are in a sense the same. And my experiences are also the experiences of other women.) – Rappler.com

Raine Romero is a Rappler intern studying AB Political Science with a Minor in Creative Writing at De La Salle University.