Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido (14 June 1912 – 7 February 1994) was a Filipina linguist, writer, and poet who wrote of the Filipino woman’s experience using the English language during and after the American colonial period in the Philippines. She wrote under many names, sometimes using her full name of Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido, Tarrosa Subido, Trinidad L. Tarrosa, T.L. Tarrosa, and even used the name Eloisa.
Biography
Tarrosa-Subido was born to Filipino parents in Shanghai, China, where her father worked as a musician. Her immediate family had moved to British Hong Kong when she was young, and lived there for a few years until her father passed away. After her father passed, Tarrosa-Subido and her mother returned to Manila in 1917. She was sent to live with her mother's family when they returned to Manila, and her aunt taught at Quiapo Primary School, where she was admitted a year earlier than typically allowed. It is believed that this is because she already spoke English, learning the language in Hong Kong.
Education
Tarrosa-Subido graduated from Manila East High School, and in 1929, she took the civil service examination in order to work in the Bureau of Education, and passed it with a grade of 97 percent, the highest then on record. She enrolled as a working student at the University of the Philippines Manila (UP) in 1932. She loved her time at UP and even became a member of the UP Writers Club and contributed her sonnets. It was here that she met her husband, Abelardo Subido, and they married in 1936. With her husband, they established the Manila Post Publishing Company and published many of their own works, along with kickstarting a daily newspaper, the Manila Post. She leaves a legacy at the university as she wrote the UP Women's Club Song, and the poem that is recited for school rituals. Tarrosa-Subido graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Philosophy in English in 1937. Being able to write literature in English at this time was unseen for many women, and Tarrosa-Subido defied expectations doubly as she had a great command of the language, along with writing about topics that were typically not meant for women. She wrote of more than just love stories, she also wrote of the woman's experience of post-colonial Philippines, and how they moved politically into the Modern Filipina.
Career and Writing
Career
Tarrosa Subido was encouraged to begin writing and publishing her stories when she worked at the Bureau of Education by one of her senior colleagues. She was published in the Graphic, and "was selected by Jose Garcia Villa as one of the best poems of 1931".
In 1933, she was published in the Philippine Magazine, and was also printed in an American publication. It was the first Filipino poem to be printed in America, and because of this, she was invited to the Malacanang to read her sonnets to government officials.
She then began to work at the Institute of National Language. In 1940, she published Tagalog Phonetics and Orthography, which she co-authored with Virginia Gamboa-Mendoza. In 1945, she and her husband published poems titled Three Voices, with an introduction by Salvador P. Lopez. After the war, the Subidos put up a daily newspaper, The Manila Post, which closed in 1947 and made her a freelance writer.
Tarrosa-Subido's journalism career was well-established, as she became a magazine editor for the Philippines Herald, a managing editor of the Philippine Journal of Home Economics, and editor of the Women and Clubs section of the Kislap-graphic magazine. It was also in the Kislap-graphic magazine that she had a weekly column titled "Homemaking is my Business." In 1950, her translation in English of "Florante at Laura" by Francisco Balagtas was recognized.
Feminism and Contributions to Women
She retired in 1971, and in 1984, she was invited by the Women in Media Now to write the introduction to Filipina I, the first anthology consisting of works made exclusively by Filipino women. She was honored in 1991 by the Unyon ng Mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).
Her contributions to women can be seen in her involvement with women's clubs in the Philippines, where she held the following roles:
President, Philippine Association of Women Writers; Director, Manila Newspaperwomen's Club; Member, Civic Assembly of Women of the Philippines; Member, National Movement for Free Elections; Member, Citizen's Committee for Moral Crusade; Member, Manila Girl Scouts Council.