A REVIEW: LABOUR FOR LOVE
Mia Corazon Aureus’ Labour for Love is a touching creative nonfiction piece published in Cha, an Asian literary journal, following the adoption story of filipino Titang, who was cast out of home by two
different families before she found a home, and finally had to move away from her own son to work.
The value of family is the tissue that holds the story together, and makes for an intriguing and heartwarming read.
Titang says at one point while referencing her movement through foster homes that her culture is
“not kind to kids like me”, a statement that is specific to her Filipino heritage, but is also a sentiment felt globally.
Adoption is a universal experience, which ties us to the piece empathetically,
but it also adds to that with cultural distinctions that make it raw and authentic.
A moment that piqued our interest in the story was when Titang reached for the narrator's nephew,
taking him into her arms and being the reassuring influence not only for him and the other characters,
but also for us as readers, showing her own learned and instinctive maternal influence.
The writer grapples in the text with an unspoken ambiguity regarding the character's undernourished soul,
due to her being unwanted in the early part of her life,
and finally realising and actualising her potential to find redeeming qualities in herself as the mother she lacked.
There's a sense in the text of Titang learning of self love and self respect to fill the missing piece in her life -
that awareness of self that is so longed for in all of us as humans.
This deepens our sympathy and empathy for the character,
and draws a link between us all as children of the world.
We all agreed that the symbolism laid bare in the stylised nuances of Titang’s characterization were extremely effective.
We pinpointed beats in tone through which the author portrays the characters, and creates a sense of personal imagery and personality.
Their personalities are infused into their actions, like the use of the motif of the colour blue for Titang’s character,
which allows us to experience her character on a different level because of her obsession with the colour, along with other
specific images that Aureus peppers throughout the piece.
One aspect of the piece that took away from its impact was the plain nature of some of the sentences.
Occasionally, the specificity lapsed because of the lack of interesting language, meaning that we
were taken out of the character’s story. The pace and story also lagged slightly in the middle.
While the overall story was still captivating,
it felt that during the section where she begins discussing her partner that the personalisation of the story
that was so touching fell away.
While those elements of the story still provided interest, it didn’t feel connected to the rest of the story.
This touching story showed us how creative nonfiction work should make us feel,
simultaneously heartbroken by someone's specific story, but the heartwarming sense of comradery
between us all universally.
Written collaboratively by Georgia Couchman, Rhys Westbury, and Callie Beuermann.
No comments:
Post a Comment