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TY-CASPER, Linda

Born 17 September 1931, Manila, Philippines

Daughter of Francisco Figueroa Ty and Catalina Velasques-Ty; married Leonard Casper, 1956; children: Gretchen, Kristina

Although Linda Ty-Casper has lived for over 35 years in the U.S. with her husband, writer and critic Leonard Casper, and their two daughters, she has maintained her Philippine citizenship and makes frequent visits there. She has published nine novels and two collections of short stories, all of which focus on life in the Philippines, with a strong concern for historical and political crosscurrents and developments, particularly the long history of colonialism and revolution and the imposition of martial law. One of her recent novels, Awaiting Trespass (1985), could not be published there for political reasons during the last years of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, which came to an end in 1986 with the Peoples Revolution. Published in Britain and the U.S., it recounts the mysterious death by torture of a prominent citizen.

Trained as a lawyer, with law degrees from both the University of the Philippines (1955) and Harvard University (1957), Ty-Casper began writing fiction almost immediately upon graduation from law school. She started her first novel in 1957, she says, "because I'd read some historical accounts which were derogatory to the Philippines and I wanted to answer them." The result was The Peninsulars (1964), in which Ty-Casper brings to life the impact of Spanish colonialism on the Philippines in the 18th century, heightened by the English invasion of Manila and early, unsuccessful attempts by various local factions at gaining independence.

With a precision of detail and observation, Ty-Casper documents in short stories and novels the personal and political lives of her characters with great subtlety. Moral choices are often at the center of the conflicts faced by her characters, but these choices evolve naturally out of the lives of the characters themselves; they are not imposed on them by the author. Ty-Casper's writing often joins the precision of a legal brief with a poetry of brilliantly ambiguous imagery. With careful and understated language, she explores the difficult decisions encountered by ordinary people confronted with violence and political treachery.

Ty-Casper's approach to writing and to her characters is that of the storyteller. Her writing takes on a cumulative trancelike quality that weaves the reader into the events that it recounts by maintaining a cool and distanced objectivity that is at the same time passionate and deeply felt. Her later work, such as Wings of Stone (1986), becomes almost surrealistic as her characters encounter the frenetic tensions of modern-day life in the Philippines and the United States. Her storyteller's voice, she says, was inherited from her grandmother, who told her stories during World War II.

The post-Marcos Philippines is the backdrop for Ty-Casper's novel DreamEden (1997). Although a number of books have been written using this venue in the years since the 1989 coup, Ty-Casper is uniquely qualified to handle the issues and weaves a story which, in her own words, "focuses on the experiences of the people." The story involves the conflicts and dreams of a jaded attorney, the politician he works for, and others who adjust daily to the changes brought about by revolution. As always, her characters are three-dimensional and pull the reader into their lives. Filipinos rejoiced at their new freedom after the overthrow of Marcos but were then faced with adjusting to a life with less structure and order. This same type of conflict is evident in the lives of the characters in DreamEden. Ty-Casper's research into newspaper archives and interviews with those who have lived the revolution make this a believable piece of fiction.

Ty-Casper is working on a yet to be released novel on the Philippine-American War of 1899, provisionally titled The Stranded Whale. She is an officer of the Boston Authors, the oldest continuing writers group in the U.S., originally founded in 1900. She has had fellowships at Harvard, Radcliffe College, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. In 1993 Ty-Casper won a UNESCO/PEN short story prize and the Southeast Asia WRITE award.