The endless revolution of the Philippines in Gina Apostol’s novels

This essay analyzes how two of Gina Apostol’s novels, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata and Insurrecto, reshape Western narrations of Philippine history from a disparate series of Spanish and U.S. wars to a long and not yet concluded Filipino revolution seeking emancipation from the colonial and neocolonial yoke. By giving an intertextual reading of the novels’ Filipino and U.S. cultural references and literary traditions, including John Barth, José Rizal, and Hollywood directors who have filmed in the Philippines, the present paper argues that the interplay of these elements reproduces a linguistic variety that determines different chronological perceptions, and thus allows for different narrations of the Filipino people’s revolution.