Gina Apostol (CRF 2009)’s new novel, Insurrecto, is about two women on a trip to make a film in the Philippines.
Apostol uses an array of literary and cinematic techniques — memoirs, jump-cuts, close-ups and reveries — to set a story in the present-day Philippines of Rodrigo Duterte.
‘I’m very interested in that concept of multiple ways of looking at things,” she says in an interview. “You know, this notion that in all of us there are multiple identities, you know, and we don’t recognize the simultaneity of them. I’m a mom, I’m a daughter, I’m a teacher, I’m a writer, I’m a Filipino, I’m a American. And I really like this kind of seeing things from various points of view.’ ” – Apostol
Gina won the PEN Open Book Award for her last novel, Gun Dealer’s Daughter, and has won the Philippine National Book Award. Her newest book shows us that although victors often write the histories, survivors and artists can revise them.