Tausug English Language Fiction Writer and Journalist
Noralyn Mustafa [1940-2021] was a pioneering Tausug fictionist and journalist. She was born on 19 November 1940 in Jolo, Sulu, the daughter of a public school teacher and a tobacco farmer.
She first started to write in high school after meeting Ibrahim Jubaira, then adjudged as the best Filipino Muslim writer, and with instruction from her English teacher Patria Obsequio-Gonzaga, an education graduate from Silliman University [who was also the first Miss Silliman crowned].
For college, she would go to Manila for a series of interrupted studies, first at Philippine Women's College to study nursing, and then at the University of the Philippines to study English.
Both ended with her return to Jolo, the first time leading to a radio stint at DXLC where she became a popular on-air fixture, and the second time to raise a family and to pursue her fiction, getting regular publication at the Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic, Diliman Review, and other national and local publications.
Among her noted works of fiction are the short stories “And the Smell of Many Flowers,” “Termites,” “A Day in the Life of Dr. Karim,” and “To Pet, Who Saw Me through November.” At U.P. Diliman, she was part of the pioneering batch of the university’s creative writing program, and also studied fine arts. In 1977, she earned a fellowship at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, where she considered the mentorship of the Tiempos crucial to her development as a writer. She later wrote for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, penning the "Kris-Crossing Mindanao" column, and since 1996 has served as the paper's Sulu correspondent.
She also taught communication and creative writing at the Ateneo de Zamboanga, where she also served as coordinator of its Institute of Cultural Studies for Western Mindanao. As an authority on Mindanao history and culture, she was also consultant for the academe and local government units. in 1975, she joined the Office of the Regional Commissioner, the precursor of the Lupong Tagapagpaganap ng Pook, which would later become the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
She also served as correspondent for a number of national and international media outfits, has been featured on documentaries locally and abroad on topics such as the Muslim insurgency and the peace process, and have written and archived works on the history, sociology, and politics of Southern Philippines.
Her most recent work of fiction—an excerpt of her unpublished autobiographical novel Pages From a Journal about the Moro rebellion and burning of Jolo in the 1970s—appeared on Tenggara: Journal of Southeast Asian Literature, published in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was featured in Songs Sprung from Native Soils: More Conversations with Eight Mindanao Writers [Xavier University Press, 2019), edited by poet Ricardo M. de Ungria. Her short stories remain uncollected, however.
She died on 27 March 2021 at the age of 80.
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