I’ve always considered myself lucky to have been in the State U in the late 90s to the 2000s, across an undergraduate degree and my MA, because it gave me the opportunity to have the best teachers in the humanities.

LQS was one of those teachers, and she didn’t just welcome me as a sophomore into a basic Filipino classroom, she also would have me in her MA classes the years before she left for the States. I don’t remember much about what those classes were exactly, as much as I have a keen sense of what it was that I learned in them, beyond readings and syllabi, given the kind of teaching she practiced.

It was in that sophomore Filipino classroom, for example, where I had the best lessons in diversity and unity, history and empathy. It was there that I became friends with Anifa, who was the lone Muslim girl in class, and who LQS grouped me with for final projects. This meant being forced into discussions about Muslim Mindanao and the struggle of the Bangsamoro, with the goal of building upon similarities, toward working on truths borne of the multiplicity of voices. I was in over my head. I realized very quickly that there was no cramming all this information about Mindanao into my head, and that I had to settle for admitting that I knew very little, and what I had instead were questions. It was also the first time I had a sense of risk and privilege. Where I realized that a conversation such as this one meant so much to Anifa, whose life, history, heritage were on the line, while it did not, in any way, affect the way in which mine would unfold.

At some point before that final project’s presentation, I told LQS that I felt it was important that Anifa be the one to lead the discussions, and she nodded. Like I had learned the lesson she meant for me to discover for myself. Read the room. Let others speak. Admit your limitations. Be an ally. Know your place.

It was also in that class that LQS talked about feminism as a real, living concept, one that she practices every day without thinking, one that is in all that she does, because one cannot extricate oneself from one’s beliefs. At some point in the term, a classmate asked: Ma’am may asawa po ba kayo? And LQS laughed. “Oo naman,” she said. “Bakit, parang hindi ba makakapag-asawa ang peminista?”

Years later, I would transfer to the Filipino Department from the English Department to do my MA, and would have LQS as teacher a couple more times. It was during one of those semesters that I first got published in the Opinion section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where I wrote about ABS-CBN’s accountability in allowing its media personalities to run for public office. I received plenty of criticism for that piece, but probably the strangest outcome was a phone call from ABS-CBN bosses asking for a meeting with me, so they could explain their side. The answer was of course no.

I told LQS about this story in class, after she congratulated me for the piece. She couldn’t believe the insistence on meeting with me, but wasn’t surprised by it either: this is how the powerful work, she said. These are one of many ways in which you will be silenced.

Of course we know now, more than a decade since, not so much about the many ways in which one might be silenced, but even more so about the fact that you will constantly and consistently be pushed into silence by the powerful, whether it be networks or media personalities, the literary establishment or government.

One realizes now that it isn’t even just about what I learned in those classrooms with LQS, but about what those classrooms molded me into becoming, what I carried away from it, what it contributed to who I would become. While in the States, we would get in touch, sometimes on issues cultural and national, often when she sees that I have (yet again) fallen victim to kuyog of whatever kind, from the literary establishment to elsewhere. Once or twice she dropped me a line to wish me well after hearing of personal crises, a couple of other times to tell me to keep going with my writing. Either way, it didn’t seem like a response was expected. As if she knew I’d pull through, that I’d keep going.

Siguro hindi na rin kasi kailangan ng mahabang paliwanag o chikahan, dahil ang nangingibabaw ay ang tiwala niya sa aking sariling paglalakbay, bilang manunulat, bilang babae. Na nanggaling ito kay LQS, sa panahong mabilis at marahas ang paninira at pagsasaisantabi sa aking boses, o di kaya’y napakahirap tawirin ng pinagdaraanan, ay lagi’t-laging mahalaga, at lagi’t-laging babalikan.

Sa ngalan ng ina, ng anak, ng diwata’t paraluman. ***

Written for Sa Ngalan ng Ina, ng Anak, ng Diwata’t Paraluman, Pagpupugay at Pagkilala kay LQS (1949-2021), March 8 2021.