Beware the Aswang!

I’d like to elaborate a little bit on the subject that I brought up in class … that the family “culture” (of a Filipino-American family) that Lynda Barry digs up and then expresses in “100 Demons” allows her a unique frame of reference to look at aspects of her childhood. Granted, it’s only one part of her artistic muse in this book (hypocritical or imaginary Hippie culture being another, an omnipresent “outsider” and “Tomboy” complex, etc.).

But without this, “Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend (i.e. Ira Glass!),” “Dancing,” “Common Scents,” “The Aswang,” and “Girlness,” would either cease to exist, or be of a different form, and I think these are among the more interesting chapters of the book.

I think that a bi-cultural lens is one of the most incisive ways to dig into and gain a new perspective of “what we do” (one could argue that the travel and distance of age is another natural way toward wisdom). “Common Scents” especially seemed to capture this aspect – offering a unique “take” on Barry’s childhood neighborhood and people, the larger cultural instinct to hide the powerful smells of our lives and houses, and how this turns out to be an unnatural and wasteful exercise, for we become inured to our manufactured scent (be it bleach, tangerine air freshener, or fish), regard others’ pervasive odors with scorn, and yet mark our territory in a peculiar way that others are bound to criticize or be affected by.

The grandmother (with her Tagalog swear words) and mother (with her memories of the war) are the main voices of this culture, and are as much an omnipresent figures as Alison Bechdel’s house and literature-obsessed father, helping to push the younger artistic Barry toward childhood experimentations (into San Francisco) and toward other figures (the kindly teacher who gives her space and praise for her drawings). They’re obviously much more verbal in their affectations yet equally caustic as the elder Bechdel, and family discord and bad communication make this another sort of Fun Home without the funereal trappings.

In her own way, I think Barry is seeking a sense of peace with them yet she does find some peace with the smell – in the end of that chapter, she obviously wishes she had a spray can of “Filipino fish and wild food” scent to spray in her room to bring back a sense of comfort.