Analysis Of Lol The White Turtle

The White Turtle features a storyteller nicknamed Lola Basyon from the Filipino town of Iraya. Her story of a white turtle presented at a literary festival in Australia is a story to be experienced. However, only in opening oneself to the reality of other cultures and to possibility can one do this, when one is not stifled and blinded by one’s own reality. The three authors: the oriole, the cowboy, and the spectacled are a representation of the different reactions of society when met with what is unknown: Oriole with a reassuring smile, appreciation (10), and open palms (13). The Cowboy bored (32) and transfixed in his own world and his own writing (8). The spectacled writer polite (8) but ultimately believing Lola Basyon’s act to not belong to the literary event, dismissing the anthropologist’s attempt to translate as “painfully wooden, dead.” In the fear of apathy and dismissal,

Our realities are seen and heard but not truly understood, met with those fixated only in their own world like the Cowboy or those that do acknowledge us but dismiss us as not belonging like the spectacled author. There is the alarming alacrity of our own countrymen who have spent more time exposed to Western culture to present us as novelty to boost their own fame, as shown by the Filipina journalist. There is the unwitting exposure of our culture to the possibility of condescension as with the Australian anthropologist and Lola Basyon. We are seen only for our packaging, the delicate beauty but not what is underneath as with the pearled woman (68). The impossible dilemma of ‘even if the West is able to experience the non-Western reality’—as shown by the white turtle appearing corporeally (106)—will still have the West placing its assumptions over the true meaning of the our culture. Silencing it, just as Lola Basyon swallows her voice and the turtle stops singing to the outbreak of doubt