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FOR ZAMBOANGA CITY DIVISION USE ONLY

NOT FOR SALE

11/12
21st Century Literature from the
Philippines and the World

QUARTER 2
WEEK 4

Capsulized Self-Learning Empowerment Toolkit

Schools Division Office of Zamboanga City

Region IX – Zamboanga Peninsula
Zamboanga City

“Unido, Junto avanza con el EduKalidad Cree, junto junto puede!”

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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CapSLET
Capsulized Self-Learning Empowerment Toolkit

21st Century
Literature
from the
SUBJECT & Philippines
QUARTER 2 WEEK 4 DAY
GRADE/LEVEL and the -----------------------
dd/mm/yyyy
World

Grade 11/12
TOPIC
Readings from the Third World: War or Conflict
Compare and contrast the various 21st century literary genres
and their elements, structures, and traditions from across the
globe.
Code: Objectives:
LEARNING
EN12Lit-IId- ∗ Define war or conflict both as a traditional and 21st
COMPETENCY
25 Century literary theme;
∗ analyse the parts of a metaphor; and
∗ commit to the cause of peace.

IMPORTANT: Do not write anything on this material.

\

UNDERSTAND
Literature of War or Conflict

The literature of war has existed since the first literary texts were written. Homer’s The Iliad and
The Odyssey reflect a culture of war as does Virgil’s The Aeneid, the Hebrew Bible, and the Sumerian
epic Gilgamesh. These literary works and many others that span the centuries since the classical era
remind us that war is a constant in society and a topic that will continue to be written about even in
the 21st Century. The literature of war takes a wide variety of approaches in its efforts to comprehend
the war experience and encompasses a number of genres, including poetry, drama, short stories,
novels, journals, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and letters.

Literary meaning is not only achieved in depicted events but also, and more importantly, in the
interpretation of depicted events: in the author’s treatment of the depicted events; the reader’s
response to both the depicted events and the author’s treatment; and the author’s anticipation
of the reader’s responses.
Ali Ahmad Said Esber (1930- ) also known by the pen name
Adonis is a France-based Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He
is the world-renowned author of numerous collections of poetry,
including Adonis: Selected Poems (2010, translated by Khaled
Mattawa), Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs (2008), If Only the
Sea Could Sleep (2002), and The Blood of Adonis (1971), which
won the International Poetry Forum’s Syria-Lebanon Award, and
the influential An Introduction to Arab Poetics (2003). Adonis
won the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the
Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression’s
Bjørnson Prize, the Highest Award of the International Poem
Biennial in Brussels, Belgium and the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet
Award.

SAQ-1: Why has war or conflict persisted as a theme or subject of 21st Century literature?
SAQ-2: How can literature promote peace and understanding in the 21st Century?
Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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Let’s Practice! (Write your answers on a separate sheet.)

The poem Desert is one of featured works by Adonis in Selected Poems (2010) as translated by
Khaled Mattawa. In this poem, Adonis presents the pain of war without naming and anchoring the
context.

Directions: Read the following excerpt of Desert and then do the tasks that follow.

The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust
Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space.

No road to this house, a siege,

and his house is graveyard.
From a distance, above his house
a perplexed moon dangles
from threads of dust.

I said: this is the way home, he said: No

you can’t pass, and aimed his bullet at me.
Very well then, friends and their homes
in all of Beirut’s are my companions.

Road for blood now—

Blood about which a boy talked
whispered to his friends:
nothing remains in the sky now
except holes called “stars.”

The city’s voice was too tender, even the winds

would not tune its strings—
The city’s face beamed
like a child arranging his dreams for nightfall
bidding the morning to sit beside him on his chair.

They found people in bags:

a person without a head
a person without hands, or tongue
a person choked to death
and the rest had no shapes and no names.
—Are you mad? Please
don’t write about these things.
A page in a book
bombs mirror themselves inside of it
prophecies and dust-proverbs mirror themselves inside of it
cloisters mirror themselves inside of it, a carpet made of the alphabet
disentangles thread by thread
falls on the face of the city, slipping out of the needles of memory.
A murderer in the city’s air, swimming through its wound—
its wound is a fall
that trembled to its name—to the hemorrhage of its name
and all that surrounds us—
houses left their walls behind
and I am no longer I.

A. A metaphor is a direct comparison; a word or phrase is substituted with a word or phrase from
another. There are three elements to a comparison: First, the item you are interested in at the
moment. Second, the item you are comparing the first item to. Third is the element of similarity,
the common ground, between the first item and the second item. Following the example given below,
copy the table on a separate sheet and fill it out with the correct answers.

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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Metaphor First Item Second Item Similarity Meaning

Example: This beef steak beef stake rubber slipper tasteless, The beef is not
is a rubber slipper served elastic delicious and is
on a plate. difficult to chew or eat.
1. …the earth is a cart
loaded with dust…
2. … his house is
graveyard.
3. Road for blood now—
4. … except holes called
“stars.”
5. … slipping out of the
needles of memory.

B. The poem uses metaphors to describe the horrors of war. On a separate sheet, compose a poetic
line or a stanza where you describe what you can do for peace. Use metaphors in your work.

REMEMBER
Key Points

• War literature involves fierce protest as well as intense sympathy. Most writers of war
literature want to document their experience to help themselves deal with horrific experiences
and to tell others what they went through.
• When reading a literary piece about war or conflict, one must be guided by the following
questions:
o What is the role of the writer in responding to conflict?
o Who do we trust to write about war?
o What do we accept as war literature today and how is this influenced by its context
and changing global situations?
o How do we capture the human experience of war?
• A metaphor as a figure of speech is a direct comparison. There has to be at least one common
characteristic between the two parts for the metaphor to work (common ground). No particle
(‘like’ or ‘as’) of comparison is used. When interpreting a metaphor, the focus of attention is
at first the common ground between the two items, because this provides additional
information about the item the writer is interested in at the moment.

TRY
Let’s see how much have you learned today!

Directions: Identify whether the following is a subject for a literature of war or conflict. Write W if
yes, N if no. (Answer on a separate sheet.)

____ 1. Refugees or people living in evacuation centers.

____ 2. Tribes fighting for land ownership.
____ 3. Travelers getting stranded because of typhoons.
____ 4. Students who do not have internet connection at home.
____ 5. Indigenous groups staging a protest against mining companies.
____ 6. Civil War in Syria.
____ 7. Consumers complaining about increase in prices of basic commodities.
____ 8. Survivors of the Bataan Death March.
____ 9. Debate on the influence of KPop in Filipino music.
____ 10. The Battle at Mactan.

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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TOPIC
Readings from the Third World: Postcolonialism
Compare and contrast the various 21st century literary genres
and their elements, structures, and traditions from across the
globe.
Code:
LEARNING Objectives:
EN12Lit-IId-
COMPETENCY ∗ Define Postcolonialism as a historical marker and as an
25
approach to literary reading; and
∗ infer postcolonial details from a literary text.

UNDERSTAND
Postcolonial Literature

In many works of literature, specifically those coming out of the Middle East, the Indian
subcontinent, Nigeria, South Africa, and numerous parts of the Caribbean, we meet characters who
are struggling with their identities in the wake of colonization, or the establishment of colonies in
another nation. In many cases, the literature stemming from these events is both emotional and
political.

Terms in Postcolonialism

• Colonialism – The subjugation/subjection of one culture by another. It may involve military

conquest but extends to the imposition of the colonizer’s values and customs on those of the
colonized peoples.

• Third World – Developing nations, many of which were dominated by the British Empire
through colonialism. They have an indigenous population once ruled by white European
oppressors and white colonial settlers and their descendants.

• First World – Countries characterized by industrialization, democracy, wealth and similar

cultural assumptions and beliefs, such as the US and Europe.

• Cultural Colonization – The imposition of beliefs and social practices of the dominant power
on the subjugated one, resulting in loss or change of the native culture.

• Eurocentrism – The assumption that European ideals and experiences are the standard by
which all other cultures are to be measured and judged inferior.
• Mimicry – Imitation of the dress, manners, and language of the colonizer (dominant) culture
by the colonized (oppressed one).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977- ) Born in Nigeria, her work has

been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various
publications. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which
won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright
Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize
and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New
York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National
Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York
Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Her most recent creation is the
book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions,
was published in March 2017.

SAQ-1: Is Philippine literature in 21st Century considered postcolonial? Why or why not?
SAQ-2: How do postcolonial literary pieces help us have a sense of nationalism?

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
 5

Let’s Practice! (Write your answers on a separate sheet.)

The 2006 novel Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie re-creates Biafra’s
struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the lives of three characters
swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a
university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has
abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new
lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure
who refuses to belong to anyone.

Directions: Read the following excerpt from Half of a Yellow Sun and then do the task that follow.

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to
himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu's aunty said this
in a low voice as they walked on the path. “But he is a good man,” she added. “And as long as you
work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day.” She stopped to spit; the saliva left
her mouth with a sucking sound and landed on the grass.

Ugwu did not believe that anybody, not even this master he was going to live with, ate meat
every day. He did not disagree with his aunty, though, because he was too choked with expectation,
too busy imagining his new life away from the village. They had been walking for a while now,
since they got off the lorry at the motor park, and the afternoon sun burned the back of his neck.
But he did not mind. He was prepared to walk hours more in even hotter sun. He had never seen
anything like the streets that appeared after they went past the university gates, streets so smooth
and tarred that he itched to lay his cheek down on them. He would never be able to describe to his
sister Anulika how the bungalows here were painted the color of the sky and sat side by side like
polite well-dressed men, how the hedges separating them were trimmed so flat on top that they
looked like tables wrapped with leaves.

His aunty walked faster, her slippers making slap-slap sounds that echoed in the silent
street. Ugwu wondered if she, too, could feel the coal tar getting hotter underneath, through her thin
soles. They went past a sign, ODIM STREET, and Ugwu mouthed street, as he did whenever he
saw an English word that was not too long. He smelled something sweet, heady, as they walked
into a compound, and was sure it came from the white flowers clustered on the bushes at the
entrance. The bushes were shaped like slender hills. The lawn glistened. Butterflies hovered above.

“I told Master you will learn everything fast, osiso-osiso,” his aunty said. Ugwu nodded
attentively although she had already told him this many times, as often as she told him the story of
how his good fortune came about: While she was sweeping the corridor in the mathematics
department a week ago, she heard Master say that he needed a houseboy to do his cleaning, and she
immediately said she could help, speaking before his typist or office messenger could offer to bring
someone.

“I will learn fast, Aunty,” Ugwu said. He was staring at the car in the garage; a strip of
metal ran around its blue body like a necklace.

“Remember, what you will answer whenever he calls you is Yes, sah!”

“Yes, sah!” Ugwu repeated.

They were standing before the glass door. Ugwu held back from reaching out to touch the
cement wall, to see how different it would feel from the mud walls of his mother's hut that still bore
the faint patterns of molding fingers. For a brief moment, he wished he were back there now, in his
mother’s hut, under the dim coolness of the thatch roof; or in his aunty’s hut, the only one in the
village with a corrugated iron roof.

His aunty tapped on the glass. Ugwu could see the white curtains behind the door. A voice
said, in English, “Yes? Come in.”

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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They took off their slippers before walking in. Ugwu had never seen a room so wide.
Despite the brown sofas arranged in a semicircle, the side tables between them, the shelves
crammed with books, and the center table with a vase of red and white plastic flowers, the room
still seemed to have too much space. Master sat in an armchair, wearing a singlet and a pair of
shorts. He was not sitting upright but slanted, a book covering his face, as though oblivious that he
had just asked people in.

“Good afternoon, sah! This is the child,” Ugwu's aunty said.

Master looked up. His complexion was very dark, like old bark, and the hair that covered
his chest and legs was a lustrous, darker shade. He pulled off his glasses. “The child?”

“The houseboy, sah.”

“Oh, yes, you have brought the houseboy. I kpotago ya.” Master's Igbo felt feathery in
Ugwu’s ears. It was Igbo colored by the sliding sounds of English, the Igbo of one who spoke
English often.

“He will work hard,” his aunty said. “He is a very good boy. Just tell him what he should
do. Thank, sah!”

Master grunted in response, watching Ugwu and his aunty with a faintly distracted
expression, as if their presence made it difficult for him to remember something important. Ugwu’s
aunty patted Ugwu’s shoulder, whispered that he should do well, and turned to the door. After she
left, Master put his glasses back on and faced his book, relaxing further into a slanting position,
legs stretched out. Even when he turned the pages he did so with his eyes on the book.

Ugwu stood by the door, waiting. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, and from time
to time a gentle breeze lifted the curtains. The room was silent except for the rustle of Master's
page-turning. Ugwu stood for a while before he began to edge closer and closer to the bookshelf, as
though to hide in it, and then, after a while, he sank down to the floor, cradling his raffia bag
between his knees. He looked up at the ceiling, so high up, so piercingly white. He closed his eyes
and tried to reimagine this spacious room with the alien furniture, but he couldn’t. He opened his
eyes, overcome by a new wonder, and looked around to make sure it was all real. To think that he
would sit on these sofas, polish this slippery-smooth floor, wash these gauzy curtains.

“Kedu afa gi? What's your name?” Master asked, startling him.

Ugwu stood up.

“What's your name?” Master asked again and sat up straight. He filled the armchair, his
thick hair that stood high on his head, his muscled arms, his broad shoulders; Ugwu had imagined
an older man, somebody frail, and now he felt a sudden fear that he might not please this master
who looked so youthfully capable, who looked as if he needed nothing.

“Ugwu, sah.”

“Ugwu. And you've come from Obukpa?”

“From Opi, sah.”

“You could be anything from twelve to thirty.” Master narrowed his eyes. “Probably
thirteen.” He said thirteen in English.

“Yes, sah.”

Master turned back to his book. Ugwu stood there. Master flipped past some pages and
looked up. “Ngwa, go to the kitchen; there should be something you can eat in the fridge.”

“Yes, sah.”
Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
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Ugwu entered the kitchen cautiously, placing one foot slowly after the other. When he saw
the white thing, almost as tall as he was, he knew it was the fridge. His aunty had told him about it.
A cold barn, she had said, that kept food from going bad. He opened it and gasped as the cool air
rushed into his face. Oranges, bread, beer, soft drinks: many things in packets and cans were
arranged on different levels and, and on the topmost, a roasted shimmering chicken, whole but for a
leg. Ugwu reached out and touched the chicken. The fridge breathed heavily in his ears. He
touched the chicken again and licked his finger before he yanked the other leg off, eating it until he
had only the cracked, sucked pieces of bones left in his hand. Next, he broke off some bread, a
chunk that he would have been excited to share with his siblings if a relative had visited and
brought it as a gift. He ate quickly, before Master could come in and change his mind. He had
finished eating and was standing by the sink, trying to remember what his aunty had told him about
opening it to have water gush out like a spring, when Master walked in. He had put on a print shirt
and a pair of trousers. His toes, which peeked through leather slippers, seemed feminine, perhaps
because they were so clean; they belonged to feet that always wore shoes.

“What is it?” Master asked.

“Sah?” Ugwu gestured to the sink.

Master came over and turned the metal tap. “You should look around the house and put
your bag in the first room on the corridor. I'm going for a walk, to clear my head, i nugo?”

“Yes, sah.” Ugwu watched him leave through the back door. He was not tall. His walk was
brisk, energetic, and he looked like Ezeagu, the man who held the wrestling record in Ugwu’s
village.

Ugwu turned off the tap, turned it on again, then off. On and off and on and off until he was
laughing at the magic of the running water and the chicken and bread that lay balmy in his
stomach. He went past the living room and into the corridor. There were books piled on the shelves
and tables in the three bedrooms, on the sink and cabinets in the bathroom, stacked from floor to
ceiling in the study, and in the store, old journals were stacked next to crates of Coke and cartons of
Premier beer. Some of the books were placed face down, open, as though Master had not yet
finished reading them but had hastily gone on to another. Ugwu tried to read the titles, but most
were too long, too difficult. Non-Parametric Methods. An African Survey. The Great Chain of
Being. The Norman Impact Upon England. He walked on tiptoe from room to room, because his
feet felt dirty, and as he did so he grew increasingly determined to please Master, to stay in this
house of meat and cool floors.

The novel Half of a Yellow Sun is set in southern Nigeria. This country was a British colony
from 1901 to 1960, when a movement succeeded in gaining independence. As mentioned earlier,
cultural colonization is when the beliefs and social practices of the colonizer dominate the colonized,
resulting in loss or change of the native culture.

Directions: Based on the excerpt of Half of a Yellow Sun above, identify five (5) lines or proofs that
show cultural colonization. Write your answers on a separate sheet.

1. ___________________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________________
4. ___________________________________________________________________________
5. ___________________________________________________________________________

Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
 8

REMEMBER
Key Points

• Colonialism is the domination of one culture by another, and this may involve military
conquest but also extends to the imposition of the colonizer’s values and customs on those of
the colonized peoples.
• Cultural colonization is when the beliefs and social practices of the colonizer dominate the
colonized, resulting in loss or change of the native culture. Eurocentrism is the idea that
European ideals and experiences are the standard to judge all other cultures. Mimicry is
copying the dress, manners, and language of the colonizer (dominant) culture by the colonized
(oppressed one).
• Postcolonialism analyzes and critiques the literary works of writers from countries that were
governed by or that were colonies of other nations.
• Postcolonialism deals mainly with the literatures of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean by
analyzing the interactions between the culture, customs, and history of indigenous peoples and
of the colonial power that governs. To understand the importance of postcolonial literature, a
reader should understand the scope of European involvement in the lives of people around the
world.
• To understand a postcolonial literary piece, one must be guided by the following questions:
o How does the literary text represent various aspects of colonial oppression?
o What person(s) or groups does the work identify as “other” or stranger? How are
such persons/groups described and treated?
o Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial
populations?
• Half of a Yellow Sun is a 2006 novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about
moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and
race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all.

TRY
Let’s see how much have you learned today!

Directions: Write T if the statement is true and F if the statement is false. (Answer on a separate
sheet.)

____ 1. Postcolonialist literature also engages with nationalism and independence.

____ 2. Cultural colonization is the domination of the colonizer’s culture over that of the colonized.
____ 3. Former colonies belong to the First World.
____ 4. Philippine literature is also postcolonial literature.
____ 5. Great Britain is an example of a Third World country.
____ 6. Mimicry is the imitation of the manners of the colonizer by the colonized.
____ 7. The use of English is a form of mimicry.
____ 8. Eurocentrism is the idea that African ideals and experiences are the standard to judge all
other cultures.
____ 9. In postcolonialism, the dominant culture belongs to the colonized.
____ 10. Half of a Yellow Sun is set in a real event in the history of Nigeria.

For further readings:

WEBSITES
Source: “Adonis,” Poetry Foundation, 2020, accessed July 27, 2020,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/adonis
REFERENCE/S
Source: “Analysing a Metaphor,” University of Freiburg, n.d., accessed July 27, 2020,
https://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/intranet/englishbasics/Style02.htm

Source: “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,” GoodReads, n.d., accessed July 27, 2020,
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11291.Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie
Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School
 9

Source: “Contemporary Writing on War and Conflict,” British Council, 2020, accessed
July 27, 2020, https://literature.britishcouncil.org/contemporary-writing-on-war-and-
conflict

Source: “Desert,” Adonis, trans. Khaled Mattawa, Poetry Foundation, 2020, accessed July
27, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55320/desert-56d236c9c16e2

Source: “Excerpt: ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, September 17,
2006, accessed July 27, 2020, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story

Source: “Literature of War and Conflict,” Rida Hamid, September 13, 2019, accessed July
27, 2020, https://www.scribd.com/document/425635030/Literature-of-War-and-Conflict

Source: “Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present),” Purdue University, n.d., accessed July

27, 2020, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/post_colonial_criticism.html

Source: “Postcolonial Criticism Summary,” Enotes, n.d., accessed July 27, 2020,
https://www.enotes.com/topics/postcolonial-criticism

Source: “Post-Colonialism in Literature: Definition, Theory & Examples,” Antoinette

Regulus and Ginna Wilkerson, n.d., accessed July 27, 2020,
https://study.com/academy/lesson/post-colonialism-in-literature-definition-theory-

PHOTOGRAPHS
Source: Mamadi Doumbouya, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, photograph, July 9, 2018,
accessed July 27, 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-in-

Source: Pieter van der Meer and Tineke de Lange, Adonis, photograph, n.d., accessed July
27, 2020, https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/22899/Adonis/en/tile

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Written by: MARION B. GUERRERO (SST-II) DPLMHS Stand-Alone Senior High School