Typewriter altar
By: Luna Sicat Cleto ; translated from the Filipino edition by Marne L. Kilates
Contributors: Kilates, Marne, translator
Publisher: University of the Philippines Press
Published: 2016
Place of publication: Diliman, Quezon City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 135
ISBN-13: 9789715427975
Subjects: Women; Fiction; Authors; Memory
Work titles: Makinilyang altar
Description: "Typewriter Altar is a story of the power of recollection, re-membrance, and redemption. It begins with the narrator's recurring dream. Books with wordless pages are strewn everywhere in an empty, old house wherein a mood of abandonment reigns. In the dream, Laya thinks she can hear her parents' voices, but silence would follow as soon as she attempts to trace these sounds. Always, she would wake up, and the emptiness of that house and those pages seem accusatory. We find out that Laya has abandoned her pen, and her dream of writing, because she opted to pursue domestic bliss. Ironically that dream is also unrealized -- Laya, like many Filipinas of her age and class, does not have her own home, has a humdrum job, and secretly wishes her soul could wander somewhere else. This insight leads Laya into remembering her childhood home and her parents' early years in marriage. In the work, memory bleeds into the then and the now, ushering the reader into a ringside glimpse of an artist's life."--Page 4 of cover.