The Manananggal: Monstrous Femininity, Colonialism, and Filipino Identity in Cinema

Within Filipino folklore, no creature captivates and horrifies like the viscera-sucker, or manananggal. In Ramos’s taxonomy of aswangs, they are typically portrayed as beautiful women with long hair who, by night, split at the waist and detach from their lower body, hiding it in a safe place, such as under a banana tree. The top half sprouts wings and takes to the night to hunt for prey, intestines flying behind her. 

The viscera-sucker’s preferred diet includes internal organs, phlegm, infants and human fetuses straight from expectant mothers. She extracts from her victim’s bodies by poking her long, tubular tongue through crevices in the roof or between bamboo slats in the floor and sucking through the appropriate body openings. There are several ways to kill a manananggal, including covering the wound on the lower body with salt, vinegar, spices, or holy water so she cannot reconnect with her body before dawn (Ramos 125). 

While viscera-suckers are referred to with different names among the various Filipino regions/languages, for the purpose of this essay we will refer to the figure by the Tagalog name, manananggal, which etymologically means “one who separates itself.” 

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By Gian Bernal - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16069107.

Stories of the manananggal have enchanted me since childhood, there is no figure that encapsulates the Filipino identity like her. Within the manananggal are the tensions of Filipino life; pre- vs. postcolonial culture, feminism vs. patriarchy, animism vs. Catholicism. The manananggal in herself attacks these dichotomies and then seamlessly pulls them back together at daybreak. Manananggal stories are stories of the Philippines, in her body is the country’s history and in her mad midnight flights are the future. This essay will examine the mananaggal’s forays in film which span from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. 

The Aswang Complex

In his essay on viscera-suckers and female sociality, Pertierra puts forth the idea of an aswang complex. Aswangs are malevolent shape-shifting creatures in Filipino folklore which include vampires, ghouls, witches, and the aforementioned manananggal. Pertierra theorizes that the Filipino aswang are symbols that allow “the Filipino to communicate and express states of fear, anxiety, and apprehension during times of personal or communal stress,” with death, disease, and pregnancy being common themes within the aswang complex (Pertierra 5). 

Notably, miscarriages and child death are attributed to the manananggal, positing her as a symbol of anti-motherhood or a perversion of traditional Filipino gender roles where women are expected to be familial caretakers. 

A few methods for killing or preventing manananggal attacks have a notably phallic energy to them, such as ramming the manananggal with a sharpened bamboo stick (Ramos 134). A ritual documented by a Spanish friar in 1803 described how during birth the husband, naked and exposing his genitals, stands under the house and furiously waves a sword to prevent aswangs from interfering with the wife’s delivery (Zuñiga 113). This seems to suggest that the reassertion of masculinity or patriarchy is the solution to the troublesome female manananggal. 

The Monstrous Feminine 

“At times the horrific nature of the monstrous-feminine results from the merging of all aspects of the maternal figure into one – the horrifying image of woman as archaic mother, phallic woman, castrated body and castrating parent represented as a single figure” (Creed 115).

While Creed’s theory on the monstrous-feminine is based on film horror, we can use her framework to analyze the manananggal as it exists in the folkloric context. From a character design perspective, the figure is a fascinating case regarding the monstrous-feminine. 

The manananggal most obviously relates to Creed’s cannibalistic Archaic Mother, “a force that threatens to reincorporate what it once gave birth to” (118). The manananggal is a woman divided in half, the lower reproductive organs left behind and hidden to feed the devouring mouth, exposed digestive system included. 

Her long, penetrative tongue also poses as a threatening phallic object, but instead of conceiving, it aborts, a perversion of heterosexual sex and procreation. Creed theorized that the fanged female mouth in vampire films is related to the vagina dentata (a folklore motif of a toothed vagina) and castration anxiety. The mouth of the manananggal is a similar threatening hole but with a tongue instead of teeth.    

Creed’s chapter on the “Monstrous Womb” describes how the womb is leveraged in horror, calling on Kristeva’s theory of abjection where Christian ideology introduced the idea that abjection is internal and the dichotomy of pure/impure and outside/inside is made. This makes bodily fluids such as excrement, bile, and blood abject. 

Creed notes how the womb is inherently abject because the pure outside and the gory inside fold inseparably into each other, with birth tearing at the mother’s skin and “transforming her body into an open wound” (530).  

The manananggal actively turns herself into an open wound through segmentation, creating a perverted womb complete with loose intestines that look similar to an umbilical cord. And much like a regular womb, the manananggal’s wound heals and can separate once again, a facet of the motherly body that can be considered miraculous or monstrous depending on the context. 

A Figure in Film

In Galt’s Alluring Monsters she posits the Malaysian Pontianak as a vehicle for interrogating facets of Malaysian society. The Pontianak is a vengeful female spirit that usually died as a result of male violence or childbirth and is known for attacking men and women giving birth. She appears to be a beautiful woman with long black hair, but her true face is decomposed and distorted. She can be subdued by driving a nail through the back of her neck, which turns her into a normal woman who can have children. If the nail is removed, she reverts to her original form (Galt 21). Pontianak and manananggal have a lot of similarities as Southeast Asian cultural icons linked to reproductive horror.  

Galt argues the pontianak in film is a powerful decolonial tool that can be used to analyze themes such as gender, colonialism, and religion in a Malaysian context. The manananggal, holding a similar role within Filipino film and culture, can be examined using the same framework. 

The manananggal is a folklore figure whose presence in the Philippines predates colonization. A manananggal’s presence in a modern-day setting blurs and bounds over the lines between a pre- and postcolonial Philippines, opening up the conversation of decolonization regarding religion, environmentalism, and Indigenous rights. The monstrous-feminine aspects and her relation to pregnancy and childbirth also make her abundant for feminist and queer interpretation. This essay will look at three Filipino films that hold the manananggal in this light.

Ang Manananggal 

The manananggal was the subject of the supposed first Filipino horror film, Ang Manananggal (1927) directed by José Nepomuceno, known as the founding father of Filipino cinema, and starring a young Mary Walter (Tofighian 86). This film, like the rest of Nepomuceno’s films, is now lost to time, but significantly, the manananggal makes an appearance so early in the history of Filipino cinema. 

Nepomuceno was a silent filmmaker from 1919 to 1933. During this time, the question of Filipino independence was being posed after the Spanish-American War, which ended the Spanish occupation of the Philippines, and the Philippine-American War, which established the United States occupation of the islands.  

Through exporting cinema to the Philippines, the Spanish and English regimes had an incredibly effective colonial tool for influencing Filipino culture and attitudes. During this time, the Philippines was becoming heavily financially dependent on the United States as a colony, with 63% of Philippines imports being from America from 1913–1921. Colonial mentality was growing in the country; Tofighian describes a 1920 editorial cartoon in The Independent that depicted an American and Filipino holding hands across continents titled “Friends Forever.” The editorial writes:

Our lot as a free and independent people is intimately linked to the power and glory of the greatest Republic on the globe. … we especially greet this most loyal and generous ally which any people could have in the history of the human race, this ally and friend which transplanted to our country its political, social, and cultural institutions for our good and as sure pledge of its friendship and protection, converting into a liberating and humanitarian action foreign intervention in weak countries, and teaching that the customary colonial policy of European powers ought to be cooperation, production and emancipation. (82)  

This was a mindset common among Filipinos who received education during the U.S. occupation. The former governor-general, Francis B. Harrison, was quoted in a letter to the Philippine Commissioner to the United States, Isauro Gabaldon, saying, “Of course the public school system was designed to Americanize your young people, and in doing so utterly destroy your culture, but one might have hoped that in the University there would survive the real cultural traditions of your people” (83).

The English language being established as the language of education was the first step to the process of Americanization and created a divide between generations. For this, I can pull an example from my own family tree to show how effective it was. My maternal grandmother from Ilocos Norte is fluent in Tagalog, Ilocano, and English. My mother and her siblings are fluent in Tagalog and English. My sister and I are fluent in only English. Thus, the multigenerational process of Americanization.

In contrast, Nepomuceno’s homegrown films were rooted in Tagalog culture and language, his first films being adapted from popular Tagalog theatre genres, the moro-moro and the Spanish-imported zarzuela. They focused on issues relevant to Filipino society like poverty, Americanization, corrupt government officials, etc. 

Tofighian credits Nepomuceno with influencing the push to make Tagalog the Philippines’ national language when English and Spanish were being pushed by colonial sympathizers in the 1920s. Tagalog is the Indigenous Filipino language spoken in Manila. In a country with low literacy levels, Nepomuceno's Tagalog films being shown across the country were shaping a new Filipino national consciousness. His films, which were accessible to the masses, projected an imagined unified Philippines spoken in a native language. Tagalog became the basis for Filipino, which, along with English, became the national language of the country. 

It makes sense that the manananggal was present during this groundbreaking cinematic period because she herself is a cross-cultural figure. Ramos notes reports of the viscera-sucker in Zambales, Palawan, Camarines Sur, Albay, Surigao, Negros, and Eastern Visayas. There are over 175 native languages spoken in the Philippines, and the manananggal goes by several names: Abat or Awok (Waray), Boroka (Iloko), Mansaluan (Cebuano), Mangalok (Cuyanon, Hiligaynon), Silagan (Catanduanes), and Wakwak (Surigao). 

Just as Nepomuceno used Filipino genre constructions and issues to build on a new national consciousness, he also utilized shared folklore, like the manananggal, as universal Filipino iconography that transcends region and language. Some of his other films that pull from Filipino folklore include Ang Lihim Bathala (The Secret Pagan God, 1931), which is based on the divine being, Bathala, from Tagalog mythology and Mang Tano: Nuno mg mga Aswang (Old Man Tano: Vampire’s Forbear, 1932), based on a Visayan vampiric aswang (86).  

“Nationalist intellectuals seek to rediscover and authenticate pre-existing colonial myths, symbols, values, and memories and traditions of ‘the people’ and to locate the ‘old-new’ nation they seek to recreate within its evolutionary ethnic framework. The artist and writer alike have been at the heart of this project of popular national representation and renewal, clothing the ideal of the nation and its historical myths, memories, and symbols, in palpable dynamic forms which are easily accessible to the mass of ‘national’ membership.” (Smith 48)

We can consider how all manananggal films exist within this nationalist dialogue. 

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

The next earliest appearance of the manananggal I could find was in the horror anthology Shake, Rattle, and Roll (1984). The short titled “Manananggal” also stars Mary Walter, now a beloved character actress and horror icon, 57 years after starring in Nepomuceno’s Ang Manananggal. 

In this short, a manananggal, Anita (Irma Alegre), hunts down a teenage boy, Douglas (Herbert Bautista), and his family after he attempts to woo her through harana, a Filipino courtship tradition blending Spanish music with Indigenous poetry. It involves the serenading of a woman from outside her house, usually accompanied by guitar. If she opens her window, as Anita does, it means she’s interested in the suitor (Yu 59). 

Interestingly, the film opens with a harana, a tradition that is inherently Filipino by blending Indigenous literature with mariachi music from Spanish colonization. It also marks clear gender roles with the man being the active serenader and the woman being serenaded. Harana, in the long tradition of love poetry, places the subject on a pedestal, oftentimes describing them as angelic beings or likening them to the moon and stars. The harana from the film does so as well: 

O, light, in the dark night
You shine like a star in the sky
O, light, in the quiet night
Just a glimpse of you, Darling
Will surely break one’s heart

Rise and shine
From your sweet slumber
From your sleep that’s truly deep
Open your window
And have a look
So you can understand my true desire

The lyrics end up becoming quite ironic once Douglas realizes Anita’s true desire is to eat him. Anita rejects her role as the blushing subject and instead reveals herself to be a predator. 

Douglas is particularly vulnerable because he lives with his grandmother (Mary Walter) and three adolescent brothers; their father is away working in Davao. There is no masculine patriarchal member of the family who can deal with this manananggal, so Douglas’s grandmother tells him he has to step up to protect their family as the eldest son.  

Manananggal in Manila 

Let’s consider “Manananggal” in conversation with Manananggal in Manila (1997). The film follows Bea (Alma Concepcion), a fashion model and manananggal who moves in next to the pregnant and love-scorned Terry (Angelika Dela Cruz) and her adolescent tomboy sister, Timmy (Ice Seguerra). This film, at the forefront, is concerned with the anxieties of the modern Filipino woman. 

Terry is abandoned by her boyfriend and has to hide her pregnancy from a violent patriarchal father, constantly having nightmares about the night of conception, while Bea is on the run from an abusive marriage; both abortion and divorce being illegal in the Philippines. Some of the most visceral moments of this film are moments of reproductive horror, confronting anxieties about birth and miscarriage. There is a noteworthy use of green fluid during Terry’s birthing scenes that calls back to the premise of the womb and bodily fluids being abject.  

Manananggal as Feminist

Yngvesson suggests a possibly feminist interpretation of these monstrous feminine figures in Southeast Asian horror film, saying they “map a path for sexually active, socially unattached women to wage their struggle with unruly patriarchs using faculties based outside the more conventional empowering grounds of marriage, home, and heteronormative femininity” (Yngvesson 172).

Bea appears to fit that mold. Her introduction to the audience involves posing seductively in front of her morbid collection of Francisco Goya prints for the camera, notably Saturn Devouring His Son. Being a successful working model allows her to live a lavish independent lifestyle and date after an abusive marriage that hasn’t been annulled. Bea’s ability to speak English denotes a level of upward mobility other Filipino characters aren’t privy to. It’s a far contrast to motherly but discarded Terry, who is relegated to staying at home and punching her runaway boyfriend’s face into a cross stitch hoop and relying on her uncle financially. 

This longstanding question on the role of Filipino women was even covered by Nepomuceno. His films were made during a period of feminist advancement in the Philippines, with women gaining the right to vote in 1933. The tension between two ideals for Filipino women was at the forefront: the traditional familial oriented Filipina vs. the modern “Americanized” working Filipina. 

Nepomuceno has been criticized for his portrayal of Filipino women as meek, patient, Maria Clara types. His film La Mujer Filipina portrays the modernized working Filipina under a bad light by contrasting her with the obedient, domestic women of the Spanish occupation (Toghian 88).

While women in the workforce were already normalized in the Philippines by 1997, it seems echoes of this mindset are still present in Manananggal in Manila with Bea and Terry. 

Gender Queerness

Manananggal in Manila is also notable for the presence of casual gender queerness. Firstly, with Terry’s tomboy sister Timmy, played by a young Ice Seguerra, who came out as a trans man in 2014 (Jiminez).

Secondly, with a feminine background character that, due to lack of context, could be read as either a trans woman or crossdressing gay man. It’s possible the ambiguity is the point. The prior scene features Bea dancing sensually with a man on a film set and transitions into a scene where a trans character, with a similar hairstyle as Bea, is running from a man in a parking lot at night. As she hides from him, she stumbles on the manananggal’s latest victim. The implication of violence is present before she discovers the body.

Galt writes that the effect of the pontianak is to create queer acts and disrupt gender relations. The pontianak creates 

“a queer ambiguity about desirability and repulsion, femininity and monstrosity. The structure of male anxiety around the figure is that an attractive woman might reveal a nonhuman horror beneath the surface of femininity. Monstrosity corporealizes the wrong kind of subject and an attraction to the wrong object, category errors in patriarchy that can only be borne from by transforming an alluring person to a human monster.” (111)

Many depictions of the manananggal play on the idea of men discovering this hidden monstrosity in women, Anita and Douglas in “Manananggal” for example.    

Terry’s love interest, Al Francisco (Mike Magat), is a classic masculine cop character that’s attempting to track down the manananggal; the perfect character for enforcing and maintaining societal rules is one paid to do so by the government. After the body is found, he’s called to a scene where an old woman (Bella Flores) is standing on a roof waving wings made of trash bags and yelling that she’s the manananggal. When Al asks why they haven’t arrested her, his colleague says they were waiting for him just in case it’s a manananggal, which Al laughs off. As he climbs up to get her, she says, “Do you know how I got here? I rode up in the balloon. I eat blood and suck liver. I’m the famous manananggal in Diliman.” 

The character is written off as harmlessly kooky, but when she’s put into police custody, she faces Francisco and speaks in a lower-pitched demonic voice à la The Exorcist. She then spits green bile in his face and laughs in his face. That same green fluid is used during Terry’s birthing scenes. The previously humorous air of Flores’s scenes goes quiet at that moment. 

In the preceding scene, Al goes to Bea’s apartment to question her and starts to squirm and rub his temples as if her presence was causing him physical pain. As the conversation goes on, she starts to laugh and taunt him, asking, “Do I look like one? Do I look like a manananggal?” before he runs away in apparent agony. 

Precolonial Philippines enjoyed relatively pluralist relations between sexes, female autonomy, and tolerance/indulgence for the erotic and sexual among the commoner majority. Among Southeast Asia was the common practice of what Peletz refers to as “transgendered ritual specialists” who, along with female ritualists, were sacred spiritual practitioners who performed rituals associated with royal regalia, births, weddings, and key phases of agricultural cycles (Peletz 310). 

The arrival of the Spaniards signalled the end of this pluralist era. Under colonial rule, the transgender shaman was linked to Satanism and labelled sodomy or “the abominable sin against nature” (Brewer 4). The privilege and social status of trans shamans and association with femininity in animist society were stripped away, as were other sexual and gender diverse characteristics of the Filipino region and bodily practices, such as tattoos, amulets, ear boring, and long hair on men (Peletz 315). 

When the old woman declares herself to be the manananggal and spits in the face of the patriarchal cop, perhaps she is rightfully declaring herself to be a woman of a different era. The Filipino woman who strays outside of postcolonial gender roles, like the manananggal, has precolonial roots. 

Syncretism and Indigeneity 

Within Shake, Rattle, and Roll and Manananggal in Manila, the manananggal characters are posed as beings of Indigenous spiritual power in a syncretist Philippines; the tension between Roman Catholicism and Indigenous animist practice is present in both. 

Animism, which was practiced in the Philippines before colonization, is the belief that all beings possess spiritual essence, including places, people, animals, plants, etc. Galt writes on animism, saying:

“The concept of animism as a precolonial…system of thought works to pose the pontianak variously as an anticolonial force that might disrupt the patriarchal, racist, and capitalist logics of postcolonial societies, or viewed from the perspective of power, as a dangerous remnant of forbidden beliefs and a threat to hegemonic order.” (197)

The manananggal’s precolonial origins mean she is intrinsically tied to animism as well as to the jungle. Galt describes the jungle in film as the home of animism, where the forest is alive and home to all living things, including the nonhuman. 

In “Manananggal,” Anita lives in the jungle. Her home is covered in leaves, and in the dark it seems to blend into the jungle landscape. When she transforms into a manananggal, she’s framed by both her painted wings and palm leaves against the night sky; Anita is the jungle. When Douglas goes to destroy her lower body by covering it in salt and holy water, her kicking legs knock over her bottle torch and start burning the flora around her. Destroying the manananggal is destroying the environment as well. 

Galt also posits the jungle in film as a political and environmental battleground; who gets to own the jungle in a postcolonial society? Questions about Indigenous land rights in the Philippines are a real issue. For example, as of March 2026, the Ati people are currently fighting the unjust cancellation of land titles given to them in 2018 for farming and livelihood. The petitions to cancel their titles were filed by individuals and corporations most likely influenced by Boracay being a popular global tourist destination (Castor). 

The story in “Manananggal” takes place during Holy Week, which creates some funny scenes with Crucifixion reenactors and an inspired (and probably unlicensed) Jesus Christ Superstar needle drop. Douglas runs into Anita at the market and she stalks him through the woods until he comes across an altar with a wooden cross that a self-flagellator is seated at. He realizes that Anita won’t come near the cross, and it fills him with a sense of bravado to mock Anita before the next scene shows him huddled beneath the altar as night hits. 

Faith is what ends up defeating the manananggal in this film. The flagellator returns to give Douglas holy water and tell him, “Don’t be afraid of anyone, as long as your faith is strong. God is dead for the day. You have nothing to hold onto but your faith.” Anita is defeated by being whipped by a sword made of woven palm leaves, used during Palm Sunday celebrations, until morning comes.  

In Manananggal in Manila Bea, while notably Americanized through her English-speaking, still holds animist roots. Firstly, by being a manananggal. Secondly, by suggesting witchcraft to Terri as a way to reclaim her power. The set dressing in this film often mixes catholicism with animism: crucifixes, incense, cherubic angels, vaguely ethnic masks, palm leaves, and garlic garlands all inhabit the same space. When Terry sees a Boar-headed man appearing in the church, animism is spilling into the Christian safe space. Desidek, Bea’s demonic paramour and ex-husband, appears to Al in the same form and says, 

“You want to kill me? You’re police, right? How many have you killed? What did I do to you?...Humans are really funny, huh? You think you’re better than us? You humans that are only made out of ash and water? You think we’re just ordinary animals. My powers cannot be understood by your mind!” (1:22:19)

This film offers three avenues for reasserting masculinity onto the manananggal; Christianity, Indigenous animism, and the law. Christianity is humorously personified by a flying, demon-fighting priest with superpowers. The law is represented by Al, and animism is represented by Al’s father, a medicine man. 

The priest is surprisingly ineffective, being quickly disarmed by Desidek. On the other hand, the garlic garlands from Al’s father do seem to physically hurt Bea. The final showdown in the film actually plays out a lot like the Indigenous birthing ceremony described previously. Al takes Terry to his father’s house for safety, and when Bea attacks, he waits outside with a bamboo stick, like the husband waving a sword to protect his wife in labor. Bea is eventually taken down by father and son by being burned alive after Al stakes her. 

Return to the lower half

“I’m not bad, Terry. I am just free. I also want you to be free. I want you to feel what I’m also feeling. No limitations. No hindrance. No bad things. No good things. No responsibilities. Only yourself.”

When Terry questions whether Bea is a good person she responds by saying it doesn’t matter if she is good or bad because she is free. The allure of the manananggal is that for a moment she can fly above the patriarchal world, but in the end she is still rooted to the ground and must return to her body.

Anita is whipped and dehumanized. Douglas yells out, “you animal!” during her attacks, and when a passerby asks Douglas what he’s burning, he says, “just a manananggal,” in a nonchalant, dismissive manner. Bea’s social and financial mobility does not save her from gendered violence, demonstrated by a scene where her boyfriend becomes hostile after she rejects his advances and her eventual staking. 

But like a true movie monster, the manananggal never truly dies. A large, ominous puff of smoke shoots out of Anita’s burning corpse and scares the family before the credits roll. The end of Manananggal in Manila shows that Bea and Desidek now inhabit Terry and her boyfriend’s bodies, joking that their baby should be the next President of the Philippines. 

Flying forward 

As of writing this essay I have noticed that manananggals are making a foray into the mainstream. In 2025, Mattel released a Monster High doll inspired by the manananggal and traditional Filipino art and fashion. Forgotten Island, a Dreamworks animated comedy film inspired by Filipino mythology, is set to release this year and follows two Filipino childhood friends. The trailer shows the main characters reenacting the manananggal myth and their adorable matching manananggal bracelet charms. 

It will be very interesting to see where the manananggal pops up next and what a new generation of Filipino artists will make of her.

• Works Cited

  Brewer, C. “Baylon, asog, transvestism, and sodomy: Gender, sexuality, and the sacred in early colonial Philippines”. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, no. 2. 1999.

  Castor, Rjay Zuriaga. “Who Owns This Boracay Land? IPS Protest over Canceled Land Titles.” Rappler, 17 Mar. 2026, www.rappler.com/philippines/visayas/boracay-indigenous-peoples-protest-canceled-land-titles/.

  Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1993. 

  Galt, Rosalind. Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization. Columbia University Press, 2021. 

  Jimenez, Joyce. “Aiza Seguerra: ‘I’m a Transgender.’” Philstar.Com, Philstar.com, 15 Aug. 2014, www.philstar.com/entertainment/2014/08/15/1357901/aiza-seguerra-im-transgender.

  Manananggal. Directed by Peque Gallaga, performances by Mary Walter, Herbert Bautista, Irma Alegre, Peewee Quijano, and Pen Medina, Regal Entertainment, 1984. 

  Manananggal in Manila. Directed by Mario O'Hara, performances by Alma Concepcion, Tonton Gutierrez, Mike Magat, Angelika Dela Cruz, Ice Seguerra, Bella Flores, Regal Entertainment, 1997. 

  Peletz, Michael G. “Transgenderism and Gender Pluralism in Southeast Asia since Early Modern Times.” Current Anthropology, vol. 47, no. 2, 2006, pp. 309–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/498947. Accessed 28 Apr. 2026.

  Pertierra, Raul. “Viscera-Suckers and Female Sociality: The Philippine Asuang.” Philippine Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 1983, pp. 319–37. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42633556. Accessed 10 Apr. 2026.

  “Philippines Languages, Literacy, & Maps (Ph) | Ethnologue.” Republic of the Philippines, www.ethnologue.com/country/PH/. Accessed 8 May 2026.

  Ramos, Maximo D. The Creatures of the Philippines Lower Mythology. Phoenix Publishing House, 1990.

  Smith, Anthony Douglas. “Images of the nation: cinema, art and national identity.” (2000). 

  Tofighian, Nadi. “José Nepomuceno and the Creation of a Filipino National Consciousness.” Film History, vol. 20, no. 1, 2008, pp. 77–94. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25165460. Accessed 22 Apr. 2026.

  Yngvesson, Dag S. “Monstrous Feminine Superheroes: The Order of the Other and Regional Screens.” Archipelagic Cinemas: Screening Southeast Asian Modernity, 1st ed., vol. 2, University of California Press, 2025, pp. 168–206. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/jj.33535046.9. Accessed 10 Apr. 2026.

  Yu, Hope Sabanpan. “Women and the Harana Practice in Cebuano Music.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, vol. 49, no. 1/2, 2021, pp. 58–70. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27254121. Accessed 6 May 2026.

  Zuñiga, Joaquin Martinez de. Historia de las Islas Philipinas [sic] (1803). In Blair and Robertson, eds. The Philippines Islands, Vol. XLII, pp. 113–27.

Article by Harri Chan

Harri (they/them) is a Filipino writer and artist based in Boston. Harri’s work has appeared in TechRadar, Polygon, ANMLY and more! You can follow them and their battle with acid reflux on Bluesky or Instagram @heyriette, or check out their website: heyriette.neocities.org.

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