Book Review: The Balikbayan Artist By Eileen R. Tabios
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I recommended The Balikbayan Artist to the Boston Filipino American Book Club (BFAB), and we discussed it with author Eileen Tabios in March 2025. The meeting began with each participant sharing what they liked about the book. The author read “The Rebel’s Son,” a poem from the book, followed by a Q&A session.
Eileen Tabios introduced the concept of a kapwa novel. Kapwa translates to “kindred,” “neighbor,” and “fellow humans.” Embodying the spirit of kapwa means identifying with others and building a connection based on shared experiences. I see kapwa as no different from the biblical exhortation to “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
As a kapwa novel, The Balikbayan Artist operates in a non-linear timeline. Past and present connect in a life where myth is as true as reality. The story begins with Vance Igorta, dubbed the Foremost Artist of the Manong Generation.
Vance toiled as a farmworker in the fields of California before moving to New York. He sketched on a piece of wood, and someone who noticed his talent convinced him to apply to art school. He became a master of color, mixing his palette to portray the vibrance absent in his dreary life.
Years later, he reversed his diasporic journey and returned to Surat, his hometown in Ilocos in the Northern Philippines. He lives in a compound funded by his Manong wages and has become an artist in residence. Budding artists visit him for lessons and camaraderie over a drink and sumptuous dishes. In this setting, he witnesses the changes in the Philippines and compares them with the neighboring Maharlika, a country riddled with the effects of dictatorship by Tao Maliit (Small Person).
Vance reflects on the political climate of the Philippines, led by President Caasi, Jr. Unlike his father, this new president leans towards totalitarianism and dictatorship. Vance uses the easel to express the country’s growing anxiety about the growing tensions, creating a series of diptychs contrasting an idyllic life with its dictatorship version.
These developments made me create a new diptych. Its left panel was entitled Barangay. ‘Barangay’ is a term for the small territorial and administrative district that forms the most local level of government in the Philippines. The painting featured a typical scene in a town square with children playing in a small park, people greeting each other during their strolls, an ice cream vendor, a small crowd in front of a street musician, and so on. The right panel was entitle Barangay (Dictatorship Version) presents the same scene. But the right painting also features uniformed men with guns interspersed among the people as well as a part of an armoured vehicle on its bottom right corner.
Chapter 23, The Balibayan Artist by Eileen Tabios
In the ensuing events, Vance weighs his next move. His painter’s brush is his weapon of choice.
The Balikbayan Artist
Eileen R. Tabios
Penguin Random House SEA, 2024
268 pages
Summary:
Publisher’s Information:
Farm-laborer-turned-artist Vance Igorta returns to the Philippines as a balikbayan after nearly fifty years in the United States. He is a member of the Manong Generation, the large diaspora of Filipinos who worked physically demanding jobs, mostly in California’s agricultural fields.
Coming home to a country on the brink of becoming a dictatorship, Igorta’s paintings shift from abstractions to didactic, political art to better reflect the rebellion that he eventually joins. Didacticism also facilitates his meditations on the impact of leaving his birthland to become a powerless Manong and then an impoverished artist of color in New York.
The Balikbayan Artist takes readers from the early twentieth century to the present day when Vance Igorta’s art is being discovered anew. His legacy is validated for allowing his art to address the tensions of his time instead of keeping it solely entrenched in aesthetic concerns. The artist’s choice reflects what Vance Igorta learned as a voraciously self-educated person: that in circumstances where power corrupts, what makes anyone and everyone dangerous is love.
What I love about this book:
I am usually a fast reader, but I took time with The Balikbayan Artist. Its didactic method lent each chapter a lesson about color. Inspired by real-life artist Venancio Igarta, the protagonist Vance Igorta drew diptychs, one painting showing what he saw and the other what he predicted if the country were under a dictatorship.
I loved the cleverness in using language. For example, the leader of the neighboring country, Maharlika, has Napoleonic tendencies and is named Tao Maliit (Small Person). Surat’s main politician was Mayor Titty (sounds like a man’s genitals) and the Philippine president was named Caasi (translates to mercy). This play on words weaves the irreverent threads of resistance.
The novel takes place in the fictional town of Surat, which means letter in Ilokano. The real-life artist was born in Sinait, the northernmost town in Ilocos Sur. Many Ilokanos jokingly call the town Sinal-it, an affectionate transformation of the curse word sal-it. In the novel, Vance Igorta returned to his hometown, a dusty place with magnificent sunsets. His artwork becomes a love letter to his motherland.
Cover
The front cover features a painting by Venancio Igarta. The artist used gouache and pencil on paperboard for Freedom! This cover inspired me to learn more about the artist who inspired this novel.
As I read The Balikbayan Artist, my mind tried to distinguish between the novel and the inspiration. Between reading about Venancio Igarta and Vance Igorta, I gave up trying. Kapwa had done a number on me, and I took this as a sign that the didacticism running its course in the novel had taken effect like a pill I needed.
Leny Strobel articulated this in her review:
The novel breaks out of the confines of the modern/colonial frame and returns us to the wondrous world of myth-making. This is how Story becomes Medicine.
Back Cover
I love that the back cover summarizes the book. This is a refreshing throwback, as one-line reviews grab the coveted real estate these days. Leny Strobel, Sandy McIntosh, and poet Aileen Cassinetto grace the first pages with their stamp of approval.
The Balikbayan Artist has garnered many reviews, and I have provided the links below. I highly recommend this book. Take your time with it, and absorb it as you would watch someone transform a blank canvas into a work of art.
“Be a good literary citizen. Stalk your authors. Buy their books. Go to their events. Write a book review. Tell your friends about their books. Ask your library to stock their books on the shelves.”
I can’t remember who said this. Was it Luis Alberto Urrea who wrote The Beautiful North, Zohreh Gharemani whose memoir Sky of Red Poppies evoked her childhood in Iran, or Alan Brennert who described the quarantined leprosy settlement in Molokai? I met the three authors for the 2012 One Book, One San Diego launch. The city selects a book yearly to read as a community.
Since then, I’ve been a serious fan girl, an author-stalker in the best sense of the word. With social media, this is easier to do now. The writers I follow vary in style and topic, but they share one trait—generosity. They engage and respond, and every comment from them thrills me. They encourage, inspire, and even share writing tips.
As a young girl, I never had the opportunity to interact with authors, who seemed so distant. This series is a reflection on the ways that books and writers have enriched my life.
Recommended Reading:
About Eileen Tabios, The Balikbayan Artist, and Kapwa:
Colors of Influence Book Talks: Eileen Tabios, Author of "The Balikbayan Artist"
EXCHANGE WITH EILEEN R. TABIOS ON THE BALIKBAYAN ARTIST
Making Choices: Art Under Dictatorship, Hybrid Publishing
How I Became a Writer -- Eileen R. Tabios - Filipino FilAm Series #6
Leny Strobel, A Love Note: The Balikbayan Artist
Boston Filipino American Book Club (BFAB)
Kapwa: The Self in the Other Art Exhibit
The Balikbayan Artist, Eileen Tabios on Dictatorship, Didacticism, Kendrick Lamar, Venancio Igarta
About Venancio C. Igarta:
ArtAsiaAmerica: Venancio Igarta
Philstar, Painter VC Igarta dies at 89
Sison Paez, Marites, Filipinas Magazine - Venancio C. Igarta, Colorist Par Excellence
Tabios, Eileen, Venancio Igarta, and Clyfford Still, The Halo-halo Review
Thanks for the wonderful review! I’ll put it on my TBR. I don’t know if Eileen would remember me, but she edited an anthology called Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American authors in which I have two poems (not my best lol). We met a zillion years ago with a group of Fil-Am writers. You’re so lucky to be part of a Fil-Am book club. Jealous lol