I was told of this short story and got the book. I lost the book to someone and a year later found the book again. Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s “A Wilderness of Sweet” will probably go down my list of favourite short stories written by Filipino authors. To be included in the list that already has Alejandro Roces‘ My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken and Nick Joaquin’s Mass of St Sylvestre. And a host of others I cannot remember or have not read and which I will re-discover or read.
A Wilderness of Sweets is both poignant and tragic. Its the story of a family living and surviving during Word War II in a Japanese occupied Manila. The main protagonist ot chronicler of this family story is the youngest member of the family an adolescent girl named Joy. The reader gets a glimpse into the family household and immediate neighborhood where life goes on despite the all things happenings: Japanese soldiers, Guerrillas, love, life, birth, comedy, and tragedy.
Gilda Cordero-Fernando weaves a detailed tapestry of life in occupied Manila. And like a tapestry it depicts both good and bad: funny and tragic.
We often look at the past in black and white which it is not. More often we view life past as something simple its not. It is complex. As complex as any two human beings can make it. As life often is and when a piece of art captures such a thing it is a thing of beauty and fascination. And one truly looks into the eyes of this young girl - seeing the Japanese as the enemy and friend: the soldier who patrols the streets of Manila and the Japanese soldier who stayed with Joy in their house who she played tricks on - but who patiently endured her pranks. Or the informer who looked liked the American actor Robert Taylor.
This is a remarkable read. A poignant story and a tragic one. Another thing the story does is it brings us back to time and tells us that despite war conditions people lived but again it also reminds us how terrifying and tragic war is.
Distance gives us a bit of emotional immunity and only through reading a story like this can we fathom and even empathize the horror our aunts and grand aunts went through. The horrors of war - something one hears in whispers during family reunions. The family member who was taken away by the Japanese to the bamboo grove.
I like this story because you get a feeling of what it was like. But of course I have other reasons. I was first introduced to the story when a friend mentioned it to me and this was because the characters of the story and I had the same surname. And probably more uncanny was that the characters of the stories had the same names as my uncles, aunt and grand parents had.
And I later learned that some bits of the story was taken from the experiences of my family during World War II. Most of the characters, my family, had vanished or moved to land far-away. My Grandparents - disappeared into the past … my grandfather lived up to 101 years old and still drank a bottle of beer each day until he passed away in his sleep … my grandmother died a year after I was born. One of my uncles moved away from the Philippines and settled elsewhere and the other we visit every year at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. And Joy, the girl: my aunt died of cancer a few months after my Grandfather passed on. Only my father remains of the Sonido household still in the Philippines.
And maybe … perhaps this is why I like the story. Do not get me wrong it still is good story even if the characters of the story bore the same surname I have. Please read it and you will not regret it. But aside from the fact that it is a really good story. I like it because, whether half of it or the whole of it was true, it gave me a glimpse of members of my family most of whom are gone or I have not met. And every time I look at the old photographs it gives me an idea , a snapshot , a possible glimpse of what they were like. And the old photographs are not just photographs anymore but something different.