And that is how she comes to remember me – in bits and pieces, out of order and in many languages.” “And for a long time we stand in that dark entrance studying each other’s faces – the eyes and the mouth, the ear lobes and the body, too. Translation is complex but so much emotion and meaning is conveyed in the descriptions of the lolas’ body language too.
I could also relate to the author’s own personal reflections and complex experiences as diaspora. As someone who was born into the Filipino diaspora, my understanding of Tagalog is occasionally fragmented but through Tagalog, Visayan, Kapampangan and Ilocano languages, I could truly hear their voices and the voices of my own lolas. The stories are translated into English but each of the lolas’ first languages are present in their own words on the page as well. I appreciate the approach the author took to respect the lolas’ rights to speak if they could and the space that was given to them. I have so much respect for the lolas and all the women who share these stories in an effort to prevent war crimes of rape, abuse and murder. I would recommend it to anyone interested in accounts about survival, history and human rights. This book is a much needed record of their personal experiences. The lolas are among the thousands of women across Asia whom were forced to become ‘comfort women’ during World War II. Published: September 15th 2017 by Curbstone Books 2Ī searing account from sixteen Filipina survivors of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army against them. Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living with Warby M.
Intensely personal and globally political, it is the legacy of Lolas’ House to the world.” Lolas’ House is a book of testimony, but it is also a book of witness, of survival, and of the female body. Each woman gives her testimony, and even though the women relive their horror at each telling, they offer their stories so that no woman anywhere should suffer wartime rape and torture. She accompanies them to the sites of their abduction and protests with them at the gates of the Japanese embassy. Evelina Galang enters into the lives of the women at Lolas’ House, a community center in metro Manila. Lolas’ House tells the stories of sixteen surviving Filipino “comfort women.” “During World War II more than one thousand Filipinas were kidnapped by the Imperial Japanese Army.
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