Resilience and healing in the slums of Manila: Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker
Resilience and healing in the slums of Manila: Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker

Summary/Abstract: This article examines Merlinda Bobis’s novel The Solemn Lantern Maker (2008) with recourseto affect theories on terror and vulnerability. The narrative addresses harsh realities like chil-dren’s prostitution, extreme poverty, and brutal corruption, and puts these apparently Philip-pine “domestic” matters in direct relation to globalization and to the so-called war on terror.The analysis of the narrative pays attention to the strategies of resilience and healing developedby vulnerable civilians, taking into account the increasing degrees of risk at the intersectionof race, ethnic, class, age and gender differences. It examines how such differences are negotiatedin the text via reciprocal care among the main characters in a context of extreme violence.

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