NAME: _________________________________________ SUBJECT:

______________
GRADE&SECTION: _____________ DATE: _______________
21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
(MODULE 2 WEEK 2&3 QUARTER 2)
What I Need to Know
The use of this module requires every learner to explore the world literature and its importance.
Learning Competency: EN12Lit-IIa-22: Identify representative texts and authors from Asia, North America, Europe, Latin
America, and Africa.
LESSON 2: SHORT STORY: THE EARNEST PARABLE
OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:
 Identify representative texts and authors from Asia, North America, Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
 Articulate more nuanced understanding of a multicultural, globalized world.
 Respond critically to the short story and consequently articulate this response through answering the guide
questions.
 (Week 2)
What I know
PRE-ASSESSMENT
The following are the markers of the lesson. Rearrange the following letters to form a word/words.

1. EBLAARP - it is an allegorical or representative tale where characters are meant to

represent something else, such as group of people or a principle.
2. IOTNPNGRTUIN -it indicates the resolution of the conflict.
3. IWEVLDROW -is a way of comprehending reality.
4. TLOP -the manner in which the story is arranged.
5. O N N C A N S T E R W E -is a list of literary texts deemed by scholars and writers as “classical”
because of their theme, contribution to literary tradition, or both.

What’s New
ACTIVITY 1: FOOD AND FUNCTION
This lesson will look at taste and food as cultural objects and markers for identity. To prepare our critical
lenses for this kind of analysis, we will do the following activity. List at least five uniquely Filipino or Asian dishes and their
social functions, i.e., what personal or social circumstances are in place when they are served. Be guided by the example
below:

SOCIAL/CULTURAL FUNCTION

Lechon Baboy This is a permanent fixture in many Filipino parties. A celebration of a

milestone—a birthday, wedding, or graduation—is rarely without lechon.
Lechon is not consumed alone and is always shared with family and friends.
This tells us how much Filipinos value the companionship and camaraderie of
family and friends.

1|21st CENTURY LITERATURE

 What is it
LOCATE: Read the short story.
AN EARNEST PARABLE
Merlinda Bobis
Albay/Australia
As it was his turn that day to lose his tongue, he had for breakfast, the creamiest latik, a dish of sticky rice in coconut milk,
served with a large, ripe mango. Then he sang two serandes about love and volcanoes in the Philippines. He was making the most of
his chance for taste and speech, because, an hour later, his Sri Lanka neighbor would be at the door, awaiting her turn. Already, she
would be dreaming of pappadums and hot curries, not quite as spicy as her dialect, which would melt on the much-awaited tongue.
Their communal tongue.
Bessel Street’s most prestigious possession. Last week, it lodged with the Italian butcher who earlier had picked it up from
the Australian couple. The butcher was not one to waste time. Immediately, he laid this soft, pink flesh with the previous owner’s
steak and peppercorns, inside his mouth. Then he ran to the mirror with his wife and three daughters and began savouring his first
words after weeks of silence: “bellisima, bellisima!” The whole family marveled at how, like a pink animal, the tongue rolled its tip to
the roof of the mouth in an intimate curl –“belllllll-isima…” Then they passed the tongue around, taking turns to relish old, native
sounds, after they dined on home-made pasta in a piquant marinara sauce.
The residents of Bessel Street were kin in tongue. The pink flesh toured up and down that streets went into homes, into
mouths of different origins. There was the baker from Turkey, the Filipino cook, the Australian couple with the fish shop, the Italian
butcher, and the Sri Lanka tailor.
One tongue for the five homes. Not really an inconvenient arrangement, mind you. Of course, when the tongue was
accommodated elsewhere, one could not eat with the usual joys of the palate. But the pleasure of the ear was enough compensation.
Every tongue-owner’s surroundings, especially those that were heard as foreign noises, seemed to orchestrate in everyone else’s
middle ear into something intimate and comforting. This was inevitable for, muted at different times, they learned how to listen
intently to whoever had the chance for speech or song—and how they spoke and sang and even told stories, usually with brief words
of beauty and kindness. The moment of speech was too dear to be wasted loose, heart-less talk. It was a shame not to do justice to the
little, pink animal in the mouth.
Thus everyone spoke, ate, listened with care and passion, and shared various languages and delicacies. Last week, for
instance, the word “bella” found its way into a Turkish ditty whose refrain would later inspire the new name of the Australian fish
shop, which supplied the mussels for the butcher’s marinara that sneaked into the Filipino chef’s kitchen, where it was blessed— Dios
mabolos!—as an afterthought, with a dollop of coconut cream and some red chilies, well, to give it teeth, the Sri Lanka reckoned
before the dish was resurrected among the pides of the Turkish baker.
Indeed, on the respective days of owning the tongue, each of the neighbors could not help but echo the mouth of the previous
owner. The Italian family eventually developed a taste for the occasional cardamom tea, the Filipino adventurously spread some
Vegemite on his pan de sal and, at one time, the Australian couple stirred fish heads into their sour soup. Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka
began hosting summer feats by the Barbie, and the Turkish baker even serenaded his wife with songs about love and volcanoes as he
prepared a tray of almond biscotti for the oven.
You see, the tongue had an excellent memory. Even when it had moved to a new mouth, it still evoked the breath of spices,
sweets and syllables of the former host. It was never known to forget anything, at least of all the act that it was once the soft ink flesh
of a South Coast mollusc; yielded itself to a higher good one winter night when the ocean was formidably wild. The six household
understood this origin in their mouths. The tongue was the gift of the landscape. The pides and gulab jamuns, the daily bojournos and
even the highly spiced takable tang of Australian surf and grit—and truly, like surf, after this home truth was dramatized on Tv’s latest
culinary show, the heart of one viewing nation swelled and swelled with pride.

What’s more
The Filipina Down Under
Merlinda Bobis is a Filipina writer now based in Australia. She writes bilingually and across literary genres. She has two
poetry collections, Rituals; Selected Poems, 1985-1990 and Summer Was a Fast Train without Terminals 1998; two short story
collections, White Turtle 1999 and the Kissing 2001; three novels, Banana Heart Summer 2005, The Solemn Lantern Maker 2008, and
Fish-air Woman 2011. Most of her works deal with the immigrant experience, most notably from a woman’s perspective. Food taste
are her devices of choice in many of these stories. The novel Banana Heart Summer, for instance, is flavorful mix of human aspiration
with gastronomical metaphors. Her short story “Fruit Stall” is a hard tale of a fruit stall owner, once “sold” to an Australian man and is
now making a living as a middle-aged divorced woman in one Australia’s prominent red light districts. “An Earnest Parable” is
another account of immigrant life, this time with a hint of optimism.
A DIET MULTICULTURALISM
 Taste is a prominent device in most immigrant stories because food is part and parcel of the everyday experience of exile.
 If you have experienced living abroad for a prolonged period of time, you might at some point have developed a craving for
food back home.
 Food in many ways functions as a marker of identification and difference. Aside from language, food is what brings people
from similar cultures together.
 Here in the Philippines, you can find Chinese or Japanese restaurants frequented by expats from those countries, searching
for the flavor of other native dishes.
 Food and taste as recurring tropes and devices for immigrant experiences can be seen in various stories, poems, and novels.

2|21st CENTURY LITERATURE

 EXAMPLE:
At the center of Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café is the Wong family, reenacting the problems and issues faced by Chinese
immigrants as they attempt to integrate themselves into Canadian culture. Another interesting Chinese immigrant’s story is Timothy
Mo’s Sour Sweet, where we find a new family negotiating modernity and traditionalism as they alive alongside the growing Chinses
mafia in London.

(Week 3)
What I can do
ACTIVITY 2: NAVIGATE
Respond critically to the following questions and worksheets to process the selection.

1. What is the story all about?

2. The tongue is said to be the most “prized possession” of Bessel Street. List down three characters mentioned in the story
and how they value the tongue.
CHARACTER HOW HESHE VALUES THE TONGUE

3. Why is the tongue referred to as piece of “pink flesh” or an “animal? What is being implied by describing the tongue that
way?
4. List down three things the tongue has done to the country as a whole.
5. In what sense was the tongue “a gift of the landscape?” Why characterize the tongue that way?
6. What made the television viewers “(swell) with pride” when they learned about the people on Bessel Street?

Assessment
ACTIVITY 3: SYNTHESIZE
TEST I. Complete the following sentence.

1. World literature is often associated with or equated to ___________________________________.

2. Taste is not only biological but also ______________________________________________________.
3. Taste is a marker of similarities and _____________________________________.
4. A _________________________is a short story usually in prose that is often didactic or allegorical.
5. Merlinda Bobis is a Bicolano writer now based in _________________________________.
6. As a writer, she often writes about ______________________________ experience.

TEST II. Complete the following sentences as honestly as you can.

1. In this lesson, I learned that form and content__________________________________________
2. I learned that modern life is ___________________________________________________________
3. To live in this time period means ______________________________________________________

What I can show

Which category in 21st Century skills do you think the core of our topic falls in? (Communication, collaboration,
creativity, critical thinking, productivity, leadership and technology literacy). Explain why.

Prepared by:

__________________________________
Ms. Rochelle May S. Gayacan, LPT ANSWER SHEET
SUBJECT TEACHER
**THIS PORTION OF THE MODULE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BACK TO MA’AM ROCHELLE FOR CHECKING**

Name of Student: ________________________________________________ Grade/Strand: _________________

Present Address: _________________________________________________ Contact no.____________________
Subject Matter: 21ST Century Literature from the Philippines and the World
Topic: LESSON 2: SHORT STORY: THE EARNEST PARABLE

PRE-TEST (WHAT I KNOW) TESTING THE WATER

3|21st CENTURY LITERATURE

 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

WHAT’S NEW

SOCIAL/CULTURAL FUNCTION

Lechon Baboy This is a permanent fixture in many Filipino parties. A celebration of a

milestone—a birthday, wedding, or graduation—is rarely without lechon.
Lechon is not consumed alone and is always shared with family and friends.
This tells us how much Filipinos value the companionship and camaraderie of
family and friends.

WHAT I CAN DO

1.

CHARACTER HOW HESHE VALUES THE TONGUE

2.

3.

4.

5.

4|21st CENTURY LITERATURE

 6.

ASSESSMENT- DROPPING THE ANCHOR

TEST I. Complete the following sentence.

1. World literature is often associated with or equated to ___________________________________.
2. Taste is not only biological but also ______________________________________________________.
3. Taste is a marker of similarities and _____________________________________.
4. A _________________________is a short story usually in prose that is often didactic or allegorical.
5. Merlinda Bobis is a Bicolano writer now based in _________________________________.
6. As a writer, she often writes about ______________________________ experience.

TEST II. Complete the following sentences as honestly as you can.

In this lesson, I learned that form and content__________________________________________
I learned that modern life is ___________________________________________________________
To live in this time period means ______________________________________________________

WHAT I CAN SHOW

Which category in 21st Century skills do you think the core of our topic falls in? (Communication, collaboration, creativity, critical
thinking, productivity, leadership and technology literacy). Explain why.

Prepared by:
________________________________
Ms. Rochelle May S. Gayacan, LPT
SUBJECT TEACHER

5|21st CENTURY LITERATURE