Eating Fire and Drinking Water

Arlene Chai begins Eating Fire and Drinking Water by giving her readers a hint on who Clara Perez is:

 "I was someone hungry for stories; more specifically, I was someone who craved after facts. It is easy now to see where this hunger came from and how it determined my choice of profession. I was, you see, at the start of this tale, a person with no history. I had no story of my own."

By just reading the protagonist's thoughts, we get the idea that Clara’s past is unclear. She is an orphan-turned-journalist who reports on the "usual" fire and police stories. Her character is very much similar to the primetime drama series on television: A girl who’s at lost in her world, searching for identity, trying to connect the dots of her past.

In this book, Chai weaves the threads of Philippine (with a mix of Chinese) culture, politics, religion, familial ties, and supernatural stories into one tapestry. 

Arlene Chai is a Filipino-Chinese writer who migrated to Australia during the Marcos administration. Abroad, she wrote more oriental stories that became bestsellers like The Last Time I Saw Mother. It is understandable that Chai is writing from a point of her own historical reference and that her displacement has not decreased her Philippine flavour in writing. 

Eating Fire is full of "Chinese Talk" or tales of interest ranging from the ordinary rumors to the most bizarre stories seen in the red stone of power passed through generations.

The personal stories of Clara’s kin were put against political events like the First Quarter Storm. By doing this, Chai was able to translate into words the traumatic experiences of our people in those times. She was also able to highlight the significance of student activism in the persons of Luis Bayani and Laslo Jimenez. 

Likewise, the book portrayed the brutal treatments executed by the deadly hands of some eccentric powerful men like Colonel Santiago Aure who believes that killing is an art. Aure can be compared to Colonel Amor in Rosca’s State of War who prefers "to fuck the soul." Eating Fire was set in such a milieu where there was an extreme clash between good and evil.

Meanwhile, Clara’s search for her personal history is rightly connected with the national history of the Philippines. It is obvious how Chai is trying to equate the quest of her characters with the national identity of the nation seeking freedom and genuine democracy.

I'd like to share Stuart Hall’s take on identity:

"Identities are made within the discourses of history and culture and are therefore not an essence but a positioning. Identity is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being'— It belongs to the future as much as to the past."

Just like Clara, our people who went into a state of oppression are in need of connection and recognition. That being part of a society who struggles to better itself is far better than being associated with nothing at all. Clara, who earlier writes stories of other people, became her own story. We could only say that there really is a tapestry where every person's story is interwoven. 

Truth: There is a plan behind everything that happens.