Citation

Nubla G. Rocky Mt. Rev. 2009; 63(2): 233-240.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Examination of the trope of childhood "innocence" in Maria Rosa Henson's memoir, Comfort Woman (1999), and Han Ong's novel, The Disinherited (2004), reveals and interrogates the simultaneous infantilization and sexualization of Filipinas/os that enable the sex tourism industry in the Philippines. Henson and Ong, as representatives of Filipina/o human rights and diasporic literary movements, respectively, deploy the trope of childhood innocence in largely dissimilar ways: the rhetorical power of Henson's text revolves around stolen sexual innocence and sexual violation, whereas Ong's text features the tension between pre-modern (sexual) innocence and precocious worldly knowledge. A non-postcolonial perspective comes in the form of the blog posts of a retired white American man living in the Philippines with his much younger Filipina girlfriend. Ironically, his depictions of an ideal childlike innocence and some Filipinas' betrayal of his ideal resemble those depictions found in Henson and Ong's texts.