BOOK REVIEW: Dried Fish To Honey, A Memoir -

by Rose Cruz Churma

“Dried Fish To Honey, A Memoir” by Nilda Laurio Boland is “…by far, one of the best memoirs of a former rebel and community leader amongst Hawaiian Filipinos,” according to Jojo Abinales, a retired professor at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i-Manoa and author of multiple books on the Communist party of the Philippines.

Nilda Boland joined the revolution when she was still a teenager and became a translator for a unit of the New People’s Army, translating Mao’s Red Book into Bicolano and Tagalog. She married her political officer, had a child with him, and then was arrested and incarcerated in different detention centers set-up by the Marcos Regime.

Life as a political detainee did not stop her from being productive and continued the struggle for justice and fairness while inside prison. Nilda and her husband, Butch, eventually left the New People’s Army and received the government’s amnesty and settled into domestic bliss.

However, her husband’s ex-comrades were unforgiving—they had him murdered.

As a young widow with three young sons, she rode through the pain and shock, got back on her feet and supported her family in a variety of jobs. Eventually she worked with women in her communities through a non-profit organization called Kalingap which gave her a sense of community and purpose.

She met her second husband, Patrick Boland, online and eventually moved to Hawai’i in 2003.

In the book’s “Afterword,” Patrick writes that when he eventually visited Nilda in Sorsogon, they retraced the journey she took through the mountains of Sorsogon and found the spot that was arranged for Nilda and her first husband, Butch, to meet, when Butch was still in custody.

Patrick wrote:

“The meeting took place where we were. We were sitting on the rock where they once sat…This was the spot where she was briefly reunited with her great love – a radical communist revolutionary, now tragically lost. Now she was sitting on the same rock with a person her Maoist ideology had conditioned her to despise with burning fervor – an ‘American imperialist’.”

In Michelle Cruz’s Skinner’s foreword she writes:

“Through Boland’s activism, the reader learns that revolution can also be the daily grind of incrementally making one’s, and other’s lives better. Revolution is destructive but also creative. The work towards building new systems–creating community electrical cooperatives in rural villages, educating preschoolers, breaking ground for community gardens–is long, arduous, and sometimes heartbreaking. This book reminds us that activism is a revolutionary act born of love.”

This memoir shows that activism is something you can’t just shake off—it follows you, but it takes different forms.

For Nilda, she translated activism in her adopted home in various ways, which she describes in the latter parts of her memoir. She and husband Patrick continue to offer scholarships to determined young people who want to better their lives. They’ve opened and supported day care centers in rural areas of Sorsogon, and encouraged their friends to build an orphanage that is now managed by Catholic nuns.

Her friends in the non-profit organizations she’s joined are the sources of used clothing, books, children’s toys and household equipment that Nilda regularly sends via balikbayan boxes to the Philippines. She even convinced the Filipino Chamber of Commerce of Hawai’i to bring their annual trade mission to Sorsogon to create markets for the province’s products.

Finally, she lovingly wrote this book “…to my sons, who will know for the first time their parents’ story.”

“Dried Fish To Honey, A Memoir” will have its first book launch on February 19, Thursday from 5 to 7pm at the Hawaii State Library (HSL) in conjunction with the exhibition and forum entitled “Memory in Art” sponsored by the Hawaii Filipinos for Justice, Truth and Democracy (HFTJD), the Filipino American Historical Society of Hawaii (FAHSOH) and the Filipino Association of University Women (FAUW).

The ribbon cutting and exhibit opening will commence at 3 pm at the HSL lobby in honor of Dr. Belinda Aquino who will lead the ribbon-cutting. The exhibit may be viewed until February 28 at the HSL lobby during library hours. The event is free and open to the public.

ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.