THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050384
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Ninotchka Rosca is about to be adopted. At her age.
Can you imagine?
The Philippine-born Rosca rolled back in her chair at Anthony's restaurant, a forkful of salmon poised in midair. Once an exiled journalist, once jailed by the Marcos regime, still an outspoken - to put it mildly - spokeswoman against the practice of mail-order marriages and other abuses against women, she's about to be adopted by the Ibaloy tribe of her native land.
``But this is the funny thing,'' Rosca exclaimed. ``The gentlest tribe of the whole region is the one that's adopting me. They're surrounded by warrior tribes. So they will adopt Ninotchka and they will have one warrior.''
The bite resumed, and the forkful of salmon stilled her voice, but for mere seconds. The Marcos government fared no better, when it tried to silence her with six months in jail where, she says, she saw friends killed, raped and tortured. On release, she wrote the experiences into her first novel, ``State of War.''
Then she helped found the Gabriela Network, a Filipino-American organization that speaks out about abuses against women. And now Rosca has come to Norfolk to speak on ``Silencing of Women: Direct and Indirect Censorship'' as part of Old Dominion University's 18th Annual Literary Festival.
Rosca speaking on silence. Can you imagine?
Between 2,000 and 5,000 mail-order brides are sent from the Philippines to the United States every year and many others are shipped to other wealthy countries, Rosca said, skewering a piece of pasta. ``In Germany, some agencies have inserted a trial period, and if you're not happy with the woman, you return the merchandise. Can you imagine?''
Rosca has never known the intense poverty experienced by many rural Filipinos, the poverty that pushes families into turning their young women over to government-sanctioned ``recruiters'' to become housemaids in foreign lands, or to agencies that market mail-order brides. Rosca's first cousin married into the Marcos family, and Rosca left home at 15 because of political differences with her family.
``Last year, (the Philippines) exported 340,000 women,'' Rosca said. ``That bloody government.''
Now married to a playwright and living in New York, Rosca indulges a passion for science fiction with a large collection of books, doses of TV's ``Babylon 5'' and ``Space: Above and Beyond.''
She speaks worldwide on women's issues, from the recent conference on women in Beijing to the University of Virginia where, last year, she happened to spot a mail-order bride.
Suspicious, Rosca asked the husband where he had met his wife. On vacation, in the Philippines, he replied.
``And I was thinking, `Like hell.' Somebody from the United States would go to the Philippines for vacation. Like hell,'' Rosca scoffed. So she asked the wife, and the wife named a large mail-order bride agency.
Wednesday night, Rosca was to tell an ODU audience the story of the Kalinga tribe, and how their women blocked the World Bank from building a dam that would have flooded their ancestral lands. When she told the story in Beijing, it impressed the Filipino tribal delegates, and led to the Ibaloy tribe's decision to adopt her.
Which leads back to the whole age thing. Rosca's fork stopped in midair again, and she narrowed her eyes to slits. I don't, she said firmly, tell my age.
``If you start telling people your age,'' she said, ``all these stereotypes about what you're supposed to be at these ages come into play.
``I'm young enough to enjoy it and old enough to be careful.''
Rosca's writing has stalled in recent weeks as she has coped with a flurry of political activity on behalf of a 16-year-old Filipino housemaid who killed her employer in the United Arab Emirates after he raped her. The housemaid has been sentenced to death. But Rosca is finishing her sixth book and plans to write three more. Can you imagine?
MEMO: Ninotchka Rosca will speak on ``Silencing of Women: Direct and Indirect
Censorship'' at 3 p.m. today in the River Rooms at Webb Center, Old
Dominion University. There is no admission charge. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Ninotchka Rosca: For speaking out, she was punished. Now she
continues to write, and helped found a group that fights abuse of
women. Today she speaks at ODU's literary festival.
by CNB