A tribute to Aurea Carballo Gonzalez

MANILA, Philippines - In 1928, a shy young 15-year-old girl wrote her first short story and “self-published” it. It was handwritten on ruled pad, stitched together into a booklet two-and-a-half inch square. That writer went on to college, became a teacher, married and raised a family, and wrote over 70 short stories and a number of essays.

Aurea Carballo Gonzalez, who passed away in 2007, would have been 100 years old this July. The Gonzalez family, headed by her husband Delfin de Leon Gonzalez, is celebrating her life and literary accomplishments with the release of a second collection of short stories and essays entitled On Wings of Love.

When asked about his wife’s works, Mr. Gonzalez, who is looking forward to turning 100 next year, said: “My wife was a reader. When the children were growing up, she did not have time to devote to writing, but she always had this gift for words. As a student at St. Theresa’s, she was editor of the Orion, the school paper. The college dean drafted her to write the lyrics of the college hymn, which Theresians still sing today.”

Mrs. Gonzalez submitted her first published story to Women’s Magazine in 1975. That same year, she wrote two more stories, followed by six the following year, and seven the year after. From that time on until 2003, she continued to write and had at least one story published every year. She had a total of 67 short stories published in Manila magazines, most of them in Mr. & Ms. magazine.

In 1998, Bookmark published her first collection of short stories, Catch Me a Firefly. It was a collection of her signature romantic stories, set in familiar Filipino family traditions.  Following this, an Indian businessman, Krishna Kotak, recognized the universality of her stories and published the collection in Mumbai in 2003.

Why a second collection? Dickie Gonzalez, the eldest of the Gonzalez children says, “It was our mother’s wish. She had talked about publishing a second collection but we never got around to organizing it before she passed away. It’s a belated birthday gift to her. We — our father, my brothers Jimmie, Jorge and Chito, and our sister Jenny — all committed to make this happen by her 100th birthday which we are celebrating this July.”

Mrs. Gonzalez’s second collection includes 10 short stories written between 1975 and 2003. They contain stories about family, love and relationships that have been signature themes in her work. When asked about how the stories were selected, Jenny Gonzalez, the youngest of the Gonzalez children, says, “This was my most difficult job as editor.  After spending almost three years reading them over and over again, I got attached to all of them. In the end, it was important to showcase the range of our mother’s writing — there is a story set during EDSA, very contemporary, and another during the Japanese occupation. In one of her lighter plots, she focuses on her dog, Lucaya. But there are also more nuanced stories about spurned love, loneliness and love when romance fades away.”

The book also contains eight essays, some of them published in Manila newspapers. They range in topic from childhood memories, to articles about Manila in the 1930s, and Santa Ana where the Gonzalezes resided for more than 50 years. “In a way, these essays represent the memoir she was not able to write. Although she was appreciated mostly as a short story writer, you can get the clearest sense of her as a writer and person through her essays. There is one essay, discovered only recently, about her father. Without it, we would never have known our grandfather as we do now,” says Jenny.

On Wings of Love, a collection of stories and essays by Aurea Carballo Gonzalez, is a love letter to a wonderful wife and mother, a fitting tribute to a writer with an unusual literary path.

The book will be launched at a private event at the Ayala Museum on July 19. Proceeds from the books will be donated to the Aurea C. Gonzalez Memorial Fund in the Tuloy Foundation, a charity that the Gonzalez family has supported since 2007. Copies of the book will be available after July 19 at a number of outlets including Fully Booked.