Description

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tigbaliw is the Hiligaynon word for shapeshifter. More than a reference to a story in this book with the same title, tigbaliw refers to the shift in the treatment of the short stories in this collection and the process of self-translation itself where Gonzales reshapes her Hiligaynon short stories using English, another language that possesses its own inherent signs and symbols.

This book of self-translation features her later works that foray into the means and techniques of modern and postmodern writing, veering away from traditional Hiligaynon writing of her earlier works. The faithful translation of the short stories, without much resort to the principle of equivalent effect, is a bid to bring the reader close to the culture of the original, a way of asserting the West Visayan cultural identity.

Gonzales’s short stories in this book are drawn from the culture, history, and material reality of Western Visayas and rooted in their setting, so much so that a number of them can only be set where they are in the story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Bacolod but residing in Iloilo since 1982, Alice Tan Gonzales thinks of herself as an out-and-out Ilongga, with Hiligaynon as her mother tongue, despite having a Chinese father. After writing her first short story in Hiligaynon in 1988, she continued to write in that language, even while teaching English communication and literature at UP Visayas, until her retirement.

Gonzales has written award-winning poetry, plays, and short stories in Hiligaynon. In 2014, she was inducted to the Palanca Hall of Fame for her short stories. Among her books is In the Womb of the Earth and Other Stories: Self-Translation from Hiligaynon into English published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2020.