Macario tiu literary works
DAVAO CITY -- &#;The art of storytelling lies within the storyteller, &#; Ruth Sawyer writes, &#;to be searched for, drawn out, made to grow.&#; The secret of this gift, she says in her book &#;The Way of the Storyteller&#;, really lies in the storyteller&#;s creative imagination; her power to evoke emotion; and her sense of conviction.
It is in this narrative spirit and tradition that we celebrate the work of another gifted storyteller, Dr.
Macario D. Tiu, whose prose and imagination and whose diverse writings &#; from literature to history &#; never fail to enthrall, captivate, even titillate, a generation of Mindanao readers.
Once again, with his latest work entitled &#;Davao: Reconstructing History from Text and Memory&#;, Tiu presents us another historical narrative of Davao which is so far the most comprehensive and scholarly work on Davao.
Written in fluid language and adhering to rigorous scholarship, Davao history is pushed back further than when it was conquered by the Basque adventurer Jose Oyanguren.
The book also features many new information: the most substantive discussion of each Davao tribe in any single volume, including a theory of their migration; the most in-depth discussion of Datu Bago as well as other Davao heroes; sample studies of the different settlers at different period of Davao history; and the widest collection of myths and legends representing almost all the tribes of Davao.
The book is published by the Ateneo de Davao University Research and Publication Office for the Mindanao Coalition of Development NGOs.
Perhaps the reason why Tiu&#;s narratives resonate with us deeply is because he tells it in ways that we easily feel and understand. &#;Qualify, simplify,&#; he told a young scholar recently, who seemed lost in the maze of theoretical paradigms that complicate in what would have been otherwise clear and simple realities.
&#;The community poet&#;, he writes, &#;clarifies, simplifies, and makes things understood.&#; He likens the poet&#;s origins to a baylan.
&#;The baylan is the bridge between humans and the spirit world. She interprets what the deities say. She clarifies what is strange or mysterious.
Macario d tiu biography She interprets what the deities say. Bulagan dayon nako! Ang bata mikanaog usab. Sa mga misunod nga adlaw, dugay makatulog si Tinang.She is the simplifier. She is the clarifier. She familiarizes,[xvii] and communitizes things. That is the role of the poet.&#;
Seeing the kinship between a poet and a balyan is very much like Tiu - - the home-grown Mindanawon scholar who asserts to make the strange familiar by &#;indigenizing and vernacularizing the foreign&#; as he puts it.
One is therefore tempted to think that the &#;balyan&#; in his short story of the same title which won first prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial awards this year (Cebuano) can perhaps be a &#;self-representation&#; of sorts.
Last year, Dr. Tiu, a Palanca awardee in for short story in Cebuano and Philippine Graphic Fiction awardee in , was also chosen one of four finalists for the history category of the National Book Award for "Davao Conquest and Resistance in the Garden of the Gods."
Dr.
Tiu is currently the editor of Tambara, the official journal of the Ateneo de Davao University and writes a column for Mindanews entitled &#;Bisag Unsa&#;.
In the book&#;s foreword, Patricio N. Abinales, author of &#;Making Mindanao&#;, has this succinct tribute to Tiu: &#;Mindanawons have something to be proud of in this work by Davao &#;s leading scholar and multi- awarded poet and short-story writer.
For it is a major contribution to a Mindanao-wide effort of recovering our story as a people of an island that has, since its incorporation to the Philippine body politic, consistently shaped the directions and shifts of its national narrative.&#;
Macario D. Tiu is indeed an inspiration to a generation of Mindanao scholars and shows the way to an engaged scholarship, one that is imbued with a sense of purpose and conviction, pursued not for its own sake but to reshape realities and to advocate for changes, and to rewrite a marginal past from the vantage point of the silenced and the inarticulate.
(The book had its "soft launching" on December It will be formally launched on January 14, during the inauguration of the new Davao Museum.
Copies of the book are available at the AdDU Bookstore, AdDU Research and Publication Office, Mindanawon, Mindanews, and other outlets. For details, call local and look for Ryan Digan.)