TALK
In 1972, when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, award-winning feminist dissident and writer Ninotchka Rosca was a young radical journalist and chair of the Women’s Bureau. She was soon swept up and imprisoned for disseminating news that didn’t adhere to the government’s propaganda machine. She served a six-month sentence and escaped to the United States, where she would remain in exile until 1988.
Finally, in the last days of the Marcos regime, she returned to her native Philippines to report on the end of a nightmarish era. The US-backed dictator had looted the country and fled with his wife to Hawaii, where he later died. The very next year, his family returned—ostensibly to face corruption charges. Instead, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, ran for office. He was elected president this past May, defeating Leni Robredo, a Filipina lawyer who had bested him in the 2015 race for vice president.
“The degree of cheating and of disinformation was unprecedented,” Ninotchka wrote to LIBER a few days after this sad déjà vu. “But one must add a third factor: the persistent belittling of the female kind in that deliberately cultivated macho culture. Social engineers must have realized that Filipinos turn to women to clean up the mess that men create, politically or otherwise.”
One month earlier, on a beautiful, still-hopeful spring day before Bongbong’s win, Ninotchka stopped by the LIBER office. She’d just attended an anti-Marcos protest in Queens, and the brutal reality of growing up under the regime was front of mind. We asked her about her arrest, how the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program enabled her to escape Manila in 1977, and the roots of her love affair with books.
—Jennifer Baumgardner and Noelle McManus
Jennifer
You were born and raised in Manila. How would you describe your family?
Ninotchka
Just normal. I shouldn’t say that—we were a little bit well-off. The strangest thing about my family was we had a great library, which nobody read except for me. In the living room, there were these bookshelves. Books and books, you know? Those leatherbound books. I think they were kind of to show off.
My half-sister, who was about twenty years older, was studying English Education, and she would cut short stories from magazines and put them in a filing cabinet. She would say, “Do not touch my filing cabinet, and do not touch the books.”
I remember climbing up. I was like six, seven years old, climbing up and taking the fattest book from the top shelf. It was in English, so I had to learn English.
Jennifer
You grew up speaking Tagalog?
Ninotchka
And Spanish—all kinds of languages because we had an army of servants, and they all came from different regions in the Philippines. I knew a little bit of English, but I really had to learn in order to read Don Quixote at seven, which was really not good for me.
Jennifer
Not good for you how?
Ninotchka
I ended up tilting at windmills for the rest of my life!
Jennifer
What did your parents do?
Ninotchka
My father owned a casino. My mother was also involved in the business, but she was also among the few women who went to the University of the Philippines. She took botany. This was all against the wishes of her mother. Meanwhile, her grandmother was the concubine of a priest.
Noelle
Of a Catholic priest?
Ninotchka
Yes. Spanish Catholic. Nobody talked about these things, of course. She was rumored to have been a Babaylan, a priestess. So, the old priestesses—we didn’t have priests, we had priestesses—were either killed by the Spaniards, or the priests took them as concubines. That was my great-grandmother, and then she had seven sons. Six went to Europe; one remained in the Philippines. That was my grandfather, my mother’s father.
So! Women were just supposed to get married, but my mother went to school.
Jennifer
And was that where she met her first husband?
Ninotchka
No. She had a childhood sweetheart, and their agreement was he would go into medicine and she would be a pharmacist. But then my grandmother said, “That guy is poor, he has no money,” and she took my mother and gave her to a doctor.
Jennifer
Gave her in marriage?
Ninotchka
Not even marriage. Just gave her. They got married eventually. My mother later told me that until she got pregnant with my sister, “I was still thinking I would run away.” Then he died shortly thereafter.
She had a good time. Being a widow is fun. You’re free. You already got married, so you have your property and your power and you’re independent. Many years later, she met my father and had more children.
Noelle
How many siblings in total?
Ninotchka
In the second family, there were four of us: two girls and two boys. It was a female-dominated family. And this is the other side of all this patriarchy and feudalism in the Philippines: the family is run by women.
So, when my sister said, “Do not touch my books,” I read all the books. I barely understood them. What the hell! I was just a kid.
Jennifer
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Ninotchka
Seven, maybe. I grew up in a milieu where children were seen but not heard. I was always told not to speak, so I started writing. When the employees at our house, who couldn’t read or write, discovered that I could read, they would buy comics or weekly serialized novels in Tagalog for me to read to them. Each day at one o’clock, all the neighborhood domestic workers have siesta, so they would gather in the garden and I’d read to the crowd. If I was reading comics, they’d sit behind me so they could see the illustrations. If I was reading the serial magazines, they’d sit in front of me.
Oh my god, I was so happy! That was one of the happiest times of my life! You know, the sunshine, the green—we had a huge garden full of roses. And they paid me five cents an hour each!
Jennifer
In 1977, you had the opportunity to go to Iowa [for the International Writing Program] and essentially escape Marcos’s regime. You’d been arrested before.
Ninotchka
Yes, I was a journalist, and I had been president of the most radical student organization at the university, so I was marked. I was in military detention for six months in 1972.
Jennifer
What was that like?
Ninotchka
It was torturous. You know, do not think that only women were raped in those camps. You know, my friend who died—he couldn’t even tell his family to the last day. He couldn’t tell them about being sexually abused.
My mother was trying to win my release, but—and this is the irony—a branch of my family was connected to Marcos’s. Imelda’s sister was married to my cousin.
Jennifer
Did that give your mother any leverage? You were there for six months, which sounds very long.
Ninotchka
It wasn’t too long, really. Could’ve been longer. One of my friends stayed for ten years.
Jennifer
And these detention centers—what did they look like?
Ninotchka
We were kept in a bare room with steel beds. All the windows were covered with burlap and barbed wires. We were inside all the time. Boring. But one day, somebody brought in books! They donated a whole slew of books. I reread War and Peace.
Still, it was stressful because sometimes they’d take somebody out, and—you know. When she came back, you’d see bruises and blood and whatnot.
Jennifer
When you were interrogated, what sort of things did they want from you?
Ninotchka
They were looking for people.
Jennifer
They wanted you to name names?
Ninotchka
Yeah. But it was so funny. The general was interrogating me, and he started saying, “Do you know so-and-so?” These were all my staff members at the magazine. And, dead-faced, I was like, “No, I don’t. I’ve never heard of them.”
Jennifer
What predicated your release?
Ninotchka
One of my cousins was a lieutenant colonel for the Philippine Air Force—he later became a general—and he wrote to the military. There was instant shock because I’d never talked about this connection, and my cousin never talked about it either. I’m sure we were embarrassed by the whole thing on both sides, like, “We don’t know each other.”
And then the timing was fortunate, perhaps, because the previous night was the first kill in our detention camp. They raped a woman, and then they poured acid down her throat and killed her because she threatened to report them. This was in quarters right across from ours. I think they released me to make up for it—or, you know, cover it up.
Jennifer
How did you make contact with the Iowa writing program?
Ninotchka
I had heard that they were filing a case against me before the military tribunal and were planning a second arrest. This was underground information. The cultural attaché of the US Embassy said, “I heard you were trying to flee the country,” and I was like, “Yes!” He said, “We have a fellowship in Iowa.” “Oh, I know about Iowa!” “Would you like to go to Iowa?” “Sure. It’s only for one year.” Because that’s all I wanted, just to cool off a little bit, you know? One year.
It took three months to get my passport. Foreign Affairs said, “We are sorry, but your passport is with the palace.” I said, “Who in the palace?” They said, “It’s General Fabian Ver.” I went to one person I knew was very, very high up in the government. And he picked up the phone and said, “Is General Fabian there? It’s about Ninotchka Rosca’s passport. Tell Fabian I’m vouching for her!” Then he said to me, “You go, and just make sure you are a credit to your country.” To my country, I thought, not my government.
Jennifer
It seems so arbitrary, who gets killed and who gets their passport.
Ninotchka
It was pretty arbitrary. In law-and-order governments, there’s no law and there’s no order. It’s just who you know, right? I was lucky because I was a journalist, so I knew just about everybody, and I could tell them they owed me something.
So I came to the US. First, I went to Hawaii because my older sister was a TA in the East-West Center and had opened a program for Philippine literature at the university. One day, she volunteered me to speak at this gathering, very mild. But I got called by the Philippine consulate. They said, “You know, we can cancel your passport.”
Noelle
How long had you been in Hawaii at that point?
Ninotchka
Just three weeks.
Jennifer
So they had eyes on you.
Ninotchka
Yes. I said, “Consul, there were maybe about a hundred and fifty people at my lecture. You cancel my passport, and you have a scandal.” I was bluffing! [laughs]
Jennifer
And they backed off?
Ninotchka
Yeah. I said I had connections with international media. Also bluffing! I didn’t know anybody—I was just a kid! Good Lord!
Jennifer
What did you think about Iowa after Hawaii—this small, land-locked, Midwestern town?
Ninotchka
It was so quintessentially the US, it was fascinating. They took us to the football game—go Hawks!—and picnics. I learned there were a lot of millionaires in Iowa. We were hosted by rich people left and right.
Jennifer
Looking through the International Writing Program archives, I think that’s because Paul [Engle, IWP’s founder] had to do so much fundraising for the program. He had to show off his coterie of literary figures to his donors.
Ninotchka
Well, he was kind of like, “These are my plantation workers.”
Jennifer
Meaning the literary figures who gave readings or the participants—or everyone?
Ninotchka
Us. The Fellows. “You are required to be here, required to be there, required to act in a certain manner.” I was probably one of the most scandalous Fellows ever.
Jennifer
How so?
Ninotchka
We had a travel allowance, so I went to New York for the weekend and tangoed down Fifth Avenue while the rest of the Fellows were touring the John Deere factory in Waterloo.
There were twenty-six of us in total—from Poland, Botswana, India, New Guinea—and it was the most amazing thing. It was years before Gabriel García Márquez was known, but we had all read him and agreed that he was the greatest living writer ever. That was way before everyone else. It was very nice to be talking about literature instead of politics, to not be looking over your shoulder when you’re walking around to see who was following you.
It was ironic, though, because the Philippines was being controlled by a dictatorship supported by the United States, and then you had all of these other participants who were fighting the Soviet Union. There was a guy from Palestine and a guy from Israel at the program. They had big fights.
Jennifer
Last question: I was intrigued to find out that you were using the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” way before Hillary Clinton said it at the Beijing conference in 1995.
Ninotchka
It’s the slogan of Gabriela, the Filipino women’s network. I used it in a speech at Amnesty International in 1988, and Charlotte Bunch [founder of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, among other organizations] came up to me afterward and said, “Ninotchka, when I heard that phrase, ‘women’s rights are human rights,’ I thought, ‘That’s it! That’s the equation!’” So Charlotte took that slogan and brought it all over the world.
It’s so ironic because I was at the Beijing conference when Hillary was speaking. When she said, “Women’s rights are human rights,” I was like, “You don’t even know who you’re quoting.”
Noelle
She should pay you royalties.
