BOOK REPORT

Abstract

In this book written by National Artist Resil B. Mojares he narrates the different
perspective of cultural and historical in different timelines. He reflects on how the Philippine was
started to Pigafetta’s journey to modern times. The book involves on how the Philippines faced
the different challenges that faced during its birth until now. Waiting for Mariang Makiling told
us that waiting is constants changes to us. We need to remember that in whatever we do, there will
always be an effect afterwards. The effect will depend on how bad or good our actions and
decisions. The “Legend of Mariang Makiling” taught us that we must know how to accept
rejection and wait for the right opportunity to us.

Resil B. Mojares critically resists the impulse to take the nation for granted as a unit of
analysis or as a set of prescriptions dictating the writing of history. In the open-endedness of the
text, in the ability of the text to lend itself to being interpreted in more than one way, Mojares
reads something of the chimerical nature of Philippine culture. It is the conscious and
unconscious evasion of absolutes and prescriptions that ultimately accounts for cultural
persistence, permutation, and transformation. The power of the text to index history re-sides
precisely in its openness to diverse readings. Moreover, the writing of history can be and has
often been conscripted in the service for against powerful social blocs through its selective
inclusion and exclusion of materials. The story of Mariang Makiling, the eponymous goddess
incarnated in Tagalog and numerous folk-tales across the Philippines, lends itself to being told
and retold by people with different, some-times competing, agenda, across time.

Introduction

The book revolves in the cultural and historical aspects through the birth of The
Philippines. The author explores a wide range of legends, culture, history and legend; Essay on
Pigafetta, Rizal Reading Pigafetta, The Filipino writer and, strangely enough, the process for
making saints all proved to be engaging. Discussions, particular those towards the end of the
collection on the relationship between radio and political discourse and the writing of Filipino
history fail to extend their arguments into nuanced territory. The book says everything that our
nation come through in the time of challenges and in the time of our success and progress.
 The essays come with an open eye variety and consistency. It will leave it to the readers
to recognize the consistency of this. The book studies can be taken simply as essay in
understanding of Philippine culture. Writing and reading Philippine culture is a wonder through a
forest like a man waiting for Mariang Makiling, waiting for discoveries that can be self-absorbed
and to realize the enchantment of it.

The power of the text to index history re-sides precisely in its openness to diverse
readings. Moreover, the writing of history can be and has often been conscripted in the service of
or against powerful social blocs through its selective inclusion and exclusion of materials. The
story of Mariang Makiling, the eponymous goddess incarnated in Tagalog and numerous
folktales across the Philippines, lends itself to being told and retold by people with different,
some-times competing, agenda, across time. It can be used for didactic purposes to orient its
audience in the social virtues of cleanliness, gratitude, temperance, and decorum. But it can also
be a tale of paradise lost, the book can take such tales as Maira Makiling and find inscribed onto
something changing to our collective experience. The folklore, Maria Makiling, is our
understanding to the past and to attend in the Waiting of our own times. This is the book wants to
the readers and to the listener that in time context of history can be change.

Discussion

All in all, the style used by Resil Mojares in investigating the history and culture of the
Philippines is unique. He is one of those who help elevate academic studies in many small,
scattered, sidelined and forgotten parts of Philippine history. But aside from the wonderful style
of exploring Philippine history, his choice of topics to make history more interesting, meaningful
and controversial is also wonderful.

But why do we need to realize our personality as Filipinos? In my opinion, this is where
Filipinos begin to see themselves well. When we understand our personality as Filipinos, we will
develop not only our belief in ourselves but also our belief in fellow Filipinos. In today's age
where greed, corruption and fighting are prevalent in almost all parts of society, it seems as if
Filipinos do not trust each other. People with strong influence in the people such as those in
government, wealthy businessmen and those in the media have no motive to do good for the
welfare of Filipinos. The situation the country is in today is sad. I hope that writings like
Mojares's can motivate academics to find ways for Filipinos to better understand their field and
culture so that we can enrich and appreciate our country. My commentary on other parts of the
book is Mojares focused on Spanish policies and influence. Because the Philippines was under
the rule of the King of Spain for the longest time. Many in our society are crying out for the
influence of other countries that conquered the Philippines, such as the Japanese and the United
States. There was nothing mentioned about the Japanese. Mojares was not overly critical of
American influences. It can be seen in the book where he pays attention to political programs on
the radio. Here, Mojares said that rather than clarifying political and social issues, these
programs further obscure that the people in society are really interested. This is because the
issues are announced based on the wishes of the announcers. There is no dialogue between
listening and serving his, the flow of ideas and beliefs is only in one direction, that is why the
consciousness of the Filipinos is completely darkened. Mojares's critical analysis of the
oppressive and abusive Spanish makes readers, like me, hope that he can also provide an
appropriate critique of the harmful effects of American colonialism. But it was not done in the
book. The book "Waiting for Mariang Makiling" by Resil Mojares shed light on my study about
the history of the Philippines in an unexpected way.

The essays in this meticulously researched and beautifully written book by one of the
Philippines’ preeminent scholars demonstrate, even as they reflect on, the challenges faced by
nationalist efforts at recovery of the past. The author’s original training as a literary critic is very
much evident in his exemplary readings of texts, covering such topics as folklore, travel
narratives, Orientalist scholarship, biographies, procedures for the canonization of saints, stories
of religious images lost and recovered, colonial books of conduct, newspaper accounts and
menus of dinner parties, poetry, radio commentaries, and indigenous notions of the “soul.” In
these texts’ material soften over looked or dismissed as irrelevant or at best supplementary by
historians Mojares discerns and delineates a wider field of socio-cultural meanings and practices
with which both long-ago and recent inhabitants of what is now “the Philippines” mad essence
of, and acted in, their world.
 To understand Philippine culture is to understand Philippine politics, for it is precisely in
what is taken for granted, in the realm of what is felt and left unsaid and unthought, in the habits
and minutiae of everyday life, that the workings of power, accommodation, and resistance are
most visible. Texts do not simply point to an “out there,” and should not therefore be treated as
mere repositories of “facts.” In another essay, Mojares shows how current political commentaries
broadcast over the radio work to delimit the field of political thought and action through their
definition of what political choices are available, and what constitutes ap-propriate and
inappropriate political behavior. The irony of the Philippines’ highly touted claim to having one
of the freest mass media systems in Asia is that the apparently democratic character of the media
masks the media’s capacity to subtly discourage real dialogue and discussion.

Conclusion

In our understanding, Mariang Makiling is a concept of the idea of how the Philippines
stand for. It is a symbol of our own identity as a Filipino. The book evolves in mythology of
Mariang Makiling to embody the thought of the myth. Mariang Makiling possess the strong and
power to change everything and this is the reason why it was written. It is the spark of the
readers thought about something good. It is a reflection of their lives. The myth, Mariang
Makiling, was like a people who go to a process of challenge in their life that values the strength
that the people go through. The book give the reader an eye opener thought about their world or
their lives it is a lesson of their past and how to avoid the same mistakes that we made.

Mariang Makiling was the victim of society and history, but she was timeless and
symbol. The author Resil B. Mojares wrote the Waiting for Mariang Makiling to symbolize that
Filipino was like Mariang Makiling as patiently waiting for their turn, but the word waiting
seems doesn’t reflect the modern Filipino, the time goes by our passion on waiting comes to the
finish line. We are not waiting for our own opportunity yet we still wait for our destiny.

In our times, Mariang Makiling is a symbol of progress. A progress that we embracing in