Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

Writing Lesbian: pushing against boundaries through nonfiction in the Philippines

by Jhoanna Lynn CRUZ

This dissertation examines how being a lesbian writer in the Philippines is a constant struggle to assert one's presence when faced with the various levels of invisibility and oppression ingrained into our language and culture. I challenge this invisibility through my creative and critical work by discussing the concept of `passing' as it relates to gender and sexual orientation and showing how it can be transformed into a strategy that can lead to greater visibility as a lesbian writer. By reflecting on my past writing and my community of practice, I provide context for examining my present creative practice, specifically in the writing of a memoir, Abi Nako. Or So I Thought, a newspaper opinion column, Lugar Lang, and an origami zine, Doors. Through this practice-led research I have found that a Philippine lesbian writer can use gaps in the way Filipinos language the world, for instance in the notion of `pagka-', as a potential space for becoming in a lesbian text. In order to explore this space for becoming, I employ the theoretical ideas of Marilyn Farwell and Nicole Brossard, specifically on the disruptive and radical lesbian space in writing, which provide linguistic and non-linguistic tools that can be used by lesbian writers as in(ter)ventions in writing nonfiction specifically as markers of lesbian subjectivity and textuality.