This piece is part of “Osipon” featuring art by Rustom Pujado.

Introduction

Angela Caridad Legaspi Manalang, born on August 2, 1907, in Guagua, Pampanga, was a pioneering voice in Filipino literature. She moved with her family to Bicol in 1914, where she developed a passion for books, despite it impairing her eyesight. She was educated under Benedictine nuns, starting at St. Agnes Academy in Legazpi City, Albay, followed by high school at St. Scholastica’s College Manila, where she excelled and graduated as salutatorian in 1925. While she initially pursued music and law at the University of the Philippines (UP), her creative talents led her to shift to liberal arts, earning a degree in philosophy, summa cum laude in 1929.

At UP, she became the literary editor of the Philippine Collegian and married businessman Celedonio P. Gloria. Her 1940 collection, Poems, was notable for her brave explorations of love, loss, and defiance. Her poem “Revolt from Hymen” challenged social norms and incurred the ire of the Philippine Commonwealth Literary Awards in 1940 for its critique of forced marriage and the objectification of women. As part of Osipon, The Margins shares an early draft of the poem from the archives of the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (ALiWW), as well as a reprint of the poem. Angela Manalang-Gloria’s poetry cemented her as a trailblazer, inspiring future generations with her fearless expression of the Filipino woman’s voice. After World War II and the loss of her husband, her writing diminished as she focused on running the family business. However, her work remains crucial to Philippine literature. She died on August 19, 1995, in Tabaco City, Albay.

The Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (ALiWW) houses Manalang-Gloria’s papers and archives, which counts an early handwritten draft of “Revolt from Hymen” as one of its featured holdings.

—Kristine Michelle L. Santos, Executive Director, ALiWW

Revolt from Hymen

O to be free at last, to sleep at last
As infants sleep within the womb of rest!

To stir and stirring find no blackness vast
With passion weighted down upon the breast,

To turn the face this way and that and feel
No kisses festering on it like sores,

To be alone at last, broken the seal
That marks the flesh no better than a whore’s!

First printed in Poems (Manila: Self-published, 1940).