Miguel Syjuco’s novel, Ilustrado won the Man Asian Literary Prize while still in manuscript. A Filipino American reviewer considers the fate of Filipino writing in the American literary world.
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If you’re only reading this review to find out whether Miguel Syjuco’s novel, Ilustrado, is worth your time, here’s the short answer: Yes. If you enjoy a good murder mystery, or a multigenerational family saga, or a love story, or a hero’s journey in search of something lost, or an inside look at how the elite of a former U.S. colony live—or even if you like texts conducive to lit-crit discussions of the metanarrative, the postmodern, the postcolonial, or the political—you will find many things to admire in Syjuco’s debut.
When was the last time you read a novel by a Filipino about any aspect of a Filipino experience? Have you ever wondered about this former colony, the stories its people might tell?
If you’ve never read a novel about the Philippines, then read Ilustrado. If you’re dismayed at how few books are written and published by Filipinos, then buy twenty copies.
Ilustrado is an exuberant, complex, and fascinating ride through 150 years of Philippine history. In the Prologue, a young writer, the fictional Miguel Syjuco, describes a body floating in the Hudson River. The body is identified as Crispin Salvador, a.k.a. “The Panther,” the protagonist’s literary idol. The story that ensues details Syjuco’s attempt to piece together what happened to Salvador and to find The Bridges Ablaze, Salvador’s final manuscript, a rumored masterpiece.
The novel is comprised of fragments of texts written by different authors, but mostly taken from Salvador’s oeuvre, which includes about a dozen novels—and including essays, novel excerpts, short stories, interviews, blogs, blog comments, jokes, and unpublished manuscripts. The reader must work to make the connections between the fragments, but I was never confused. Syjuco’s writing is playful, smart, and confident. The pacing is quick and the last third of the novel hums with energy. I felt fully immersed in this world, and though the novel’s final pages frustrated me, I admired the previous three hundred.
That’s the end of the short answer.
Here’s the long answer: Despite the ugly stereotype that Filipinos are like crabs in a barrel pulling down those who get too close to the top, my experience is that we love when one of us succeeds. If a Filipino is singing on Oprah or replacing Steve Perry in Journey, we contact every Filipino in our address book. When my father, whose music collection is rich with Kenny Rogers and Chuck Mangione, asked if I’d heard about the Filipino in the Black Eyed Peas rapping about bebots, I knew the hive’s communication system was highly efficient. When I was a little girl, a Filipina appeared on our first color TV in a shimmering mermaid dress; my parents roused us out of bed to see a sight as rare as Halley’s Comet. All night long my parents’ phone rang, Filipinos congratulating each other as if Rosario Salayan, runner-up in the 1980 Miss Universe pageant, were their own daughter. We wore yellow during the People Power movement of 1986 and framed the front page of our local newspapers when Corazon Aquino was elected President.
The converse is true, too. We shake our heads in shame when one of us makes bad news—such as Onel de Guzman, who may have created the “Love Bug” virus that caused causing an estimated $10 billion in damage, or Andrew Cunanan, who killed Gianni Versace, before killing himself. “But Cunanan was only half-Filipino!” we insist.
There are so many of us living far away from home—about 8 million overseas Filipino workers. Remittances make up 10% of the total Philippine economy, and yet we hardly see evidence of our existence. Filipinos are integral to operations in the cruise ship, hotel, hospital, and other industries—but we often work in the back, invisible, taking care of what others don’t want to do. Take for example, the U.S. Navy, which has hired Filipinos since 1898 as stewards and mess boys: By 1970, there were nearly 17,000 Filipinos in the U.S Navy, many performing cleaning and cooking duties on the ships.
So two years ago, when a Filipino’s unpublished novel won the Man Asia Literary Prize, for weeks I heard about the news from multiple sources. Now that Farrar, Straus & Giroux has published Ilustrado, I can’t get through my day without someone forwarding an article or stopping me in a parking lot to tell me about it. People in my community have been encouraging each other to buy Syjuco’s book and attend his events. His success is a success for all of us.
As an aspiring Filipino novelist myself, I have an interest in Ilustrado’s success. If one of us moves books, publishers may be more inclined to publish Filipino novels in the future. The problem with this, of course, is that if a Filipino’s book doesn’t sell well, publishers may be less inclined to take a risk.
Perhaps my theory is too cynical. Perhaps if Filipino novelists just write books that are good enough, they’ll be published by major U.S. presses. Perhaps, in the end, publishing decisions are solely about craft, story, and the writing.
Or not. Before winning the Man Asia, Syjuco could not publish in American literary journals and was rejected by many agents, despite his attempts to participate in the literary community, moving to New York to study creative writing at Columbia University, working entry-level jobs at The New Yorker and The Paris Review. After rejecting his work, one agent recommended Syjuco read E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, a detail that makes its way into the novel.
Syjuco’s struggles inspired me to research how Filipino novelists in the diaspora had fared in mainstream U.S. publishing. Everyone I know in the book world talks as though the novel in general is on its deathbed—but what I learned about the plight of Filipinos writers was even grimmer. In the past twenty years, Random House imprints have published several novels written by Filipinos that were either set in the Philippines and/or featured central Filipino characters, including Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters (1990), Arlene J. Chai’s The Last Time I Saw Mother (1996), F. Sionil Jose’s Dusk (1998) and Don Vicente (1999), Bino Realuyo’s The Umbrella Country (1999), Tess Uriza Holthe’s When the Elephants Dance (2002), and Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn Lantern Maker (2009).
The Penguin Group published two novels by Filipinos, a decade apart: Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s When the Rainbow Goddess Wept (1994) and Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle (2004). Philippine national hero and novelist Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) , first published in 1887, became the first work of Filipino literature published by Penguin Classics (2006). W.W. Norton published Ninotchka Rosca’s State of War in 1988 and Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son in 2001. HarperCollins published Sophia G. Romero’s novel Always Hidingin 1998.
At smaller presses, Noel Alumit published Letters to Montgomery Clift (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) and Talking to the Moon (Carroll & Graf, 2006). The University of Washington Press published Peter Bacho’s Cebu (1991), which won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and Linda Ty-Casper’s DreamEden (1997). Dalkey Archive republished Wilfrido D. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers, which was first published by Dutton in 1970. Temple University Press published Carlos Bulosan’s The Cry and the Dedication in 1995. Bulosan died in 1956. In his autobiography, America Is in the Heart (1946), he wrote, “Do you know what a Filipino feels in America? He is the loneliest thing on earth [surrounded by] beauty, wealth, power, grandeur. But is he a part of these luxuries?”
Farrar, Straus & Giroux published MacArthur Fellow Han Ong’s novels Fixer Chao (2001) and The Disinherited (2004), before publishing Ilustrado.
According to Bowker’s Books in Print, there were 240,000 adult fiction hardcover titles published in English in the US from 1990-2010, or roughly 12,000 every year. If we interpret the above numbers generously, every year about one novel featuring Filipino characters written by a Filipino in English is published in the US. One out of 12,000. Over time, you can see how little literary production that is. In the past twenty years, twenty novels out of a quarter million have passed through the needle’s eye to find a U.S. publisher?
This isn’t because there aren’t enough Filipinos interested in the literary arts, or because we don’t write in English. The first Filipino novel written in English, A Child of Sorrow by Zoilo M. Galang, was published in 1921. About 93% of the Philippine population over the age of ten is literate, among the highest literacy rates in the developing world. The language of instruction in schools is English. And there is a sizable population of literate, English-speaking Filipinos in the U.S.: According to the 2000 Census, there were 2.4 million Filipinos in the U.S.—18.3% of the Asian American population and the second largest Asian ethnic group after the Chinese.
We’re here, but like many people of color we don’t see ourselves reflected in books or movies or TV programs. If we are referenced in pop culture, it’s Joan Rivers making another joke about us eating dogs, or characters on Desperate Housewives disparaging Filipino medical schools. Otherwise, we’re invisible.
In 2001, when Roley published American Son, his first novel, he asked, “Given our numbers and status as formerly colonialized subjects, why are we so invisible to other Americans? Why do many Americans seem so much more interested in people from just about any other Asian country—Japan, Korea, Tibet, and now India? Could it be that after being forcibly Westernized, we no longer appear Asian enough to be viewed as exotic? Could it have something to do with America’s colonial past not fitting in with its idea of itself as a democracy?”
And it’s not just American readers who don’t want to read Filipino novels. In The Philippine Star, F. Sionil Jose, celebrated author of dozens of important works, recently commented that “many Filipino writers don’t consider themselves anointed until their work is published in the United States.
This then is one of the greatest obstructions in the building of a nation—the colonized mind… And this servility is accepted, in fact encouraged by our major bookshops. Their front windows display foreign titles and bestsellers—not our books, as is done in all other countries.
Jose criticizes Filipino readers for being more interested in John Updike and Philip Roth,
these Western writers who wallow in the arid trivia of suburbia, who do not really say anything of much importance to us. Nobility, heroism, forbearance are absent in the work of most writers in the Imperial West today… this about sums up some of the literary ejaculations of such authors who we read with so much attention.
Of course, there are other options for Filipino novelists besides “anointment.” We can create our own opportunities, as did Eileen Tabios of Meritage Press, which publishes Filipino literature under the BABAYLAN imprint, and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard of Philippine American Literary House (PALH). Or, if you can’t publish in the U.S., you can publish “back home.” New York residents Gina Apostol published Bibliolepsy with the University of the Philippines Press (1997) and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata with Anvil (2009); and Eric Gamalinda has published three novels in the Philippines, including Empire of Memory with Anvil (1992). They have published here also, most recently collaborating with fiction writer Lara Stapleton on The Thirdest World: Stories and Essays by Three Filipino Writers (2007), with Factory School, a small U.S. publisher.
Maybe the biggest reason we haven’t read more novels by writers of Filipino ancestry is the novels haven’t been written yet. Writing and publishing a novel is incredibly difficult. Many people want to write a book, but without encouragement, resources, and opportunities to develop, I imagine many aspiring novelists of Filipino descent eventually give up. If Miguel Syjuco hadn’t won the Man Asian Literary Prize, how long could he have persisted despite the constant rejection?
I don’t usually want to read a novel about writers, but the scenes in Ilustrado about literary life were funny because they were spot on. Take, for example, this description:
Rita Rajah, the Muslim poetess from Mindanao; her eyebrows are as thin and carefully drawn as her verse, her makeup applied in the generous manner of one who was nearly a great beauty and still savors wistful memories of being so darned close. Her literary fame is based on five poems she wrote in 1972, ’73, and ’79.
Syjuco introduces us to “the literati of the Philippines: the merry, mellowed, stalwartly middle-class practitioners of the luxury of literature in the language of the privileged” with a hilarious scene at the University of the Philippines’ literary center, where a young poet reads earnest poems at a podium while Rita raises her voice to make tsimis, gossip, about Salvador with the fictional Syjuco and Furio, another writer:
Rita: “Autoplagiarist’s problem was it was more about Filipinos than for Filipinos.”
Furio: “It’s the sort of book Americans love and Filipinos hate. We have to write for our countrymen.”
Rita: “Countrywomen.”
Me: “Then why couldn’t he get it published abroad?”
Furio: “The same reason the rest of us Filipinos have hard time.”
And:
Me: “Did any of you like anything Crispin wrote? What about his masterpiece—Because of–”
Furio: “Dahil Sa’Yo? Not authentic enough. It didn’t capture the essence of the Filipino.”
Rita: “The trouble with that book is that in its obsession with the new, it was really just being old.”
Furio: “I preferred his work when he was merely trying for approval.”
Syjuco, the author, pokes fun at himself, too. The fictional Syjuco struggles with writing a novel in a locked room in the apartment she shares with his girlfriend, who asks what the mysterious crying noises are. He admits he was watching pornography and lets her into his writing room.
Like a connoisseur pointing out the levers, gears, and jewels that fascinate within clockworks, I showed her the top-shelf videos on my hard drive. I introduced her to my favorite strumpets: Jenna Haze, Belladona, and the Filipina-American Charmane Star. I told her my dream of writing about them in a book that would get published by a major literary house.
Syjuco reveals that Salvador, when a young writer, also won a prestigious prize for the unpublished manuscript of his first novel, The Enlightened, which “could not live up to the fairy-tale hype.” The term ilustrado is synonymous with “enlightened,” and refers to the Filipino educated elite under Spanish colonial rule. The most famous ilustrado in Philippine history is another novelist, José Rizal, whose novel Noli Me Tangere criticized Spanish colonial rule. Before Rizal was executed by the Spanish in 1896, he left a final poem, “Mi Ultimo Adios,” my last farewell.
Reading fiction should be an emotional experience, and there were many moments in Ilustrado when I felt. For example, the scene at a funeral when a coffin is opened one last time and the protagonist watches his uncle’s wife holds her husband’s hand for the last time. And the family-meal scene in which the protagonist’s father oppresses a caged tiger stayed with me long after reading. I also felt delight in recognizing cultural references and details. Syjuco wrote about people and places that I knew. Ilustrado is a Filipino novel and presents the complexity and vibrancy of the Philippines that I know. I enjoyed, for once, being on the inside of a joke.
Aside from the extended joke that features a recurring cast of characters who appear throughout the novel, there are other pieces of texts that aren’t attributed. There are fragments in italics, like this one, which I admired:
Our nostalgic protagonist sits on the bed… where did my own life go? he thinks… So many unfinished story collections. Epic novels that reached chapter two. And those damn confusing experiments with style. The thing is to write a straight narrative. That’s the trick, no trickery. Go back to basics. Emulate A Passage to India. Write Crispin’s biography. Spin the yarn, follow it home… Maybe maturity—he thinks—is merely accepting the tally of all the finite and disappearing options of life.
There’s a danger in using so many different texts in a novel—can one writer convince us of so many different writerly voices in one work? There are even fragments within a fragments—the fictional Syjuco quotes Salvador’s sister’s girlhood diary in his biography-in-process—but these fragments add up to something meaningful and satisfying, and make Ilustrado an inventive and exciting debut.
21 responses
More of this, Grace, and more of us. Less hesitating, more writing. Less hiding, more being out there in the world, fearless. The Indians have done it, why can’t we?
I work with immigrants here in the US and the greatest irony is that even with this particular population, we are invisible. We do not participate in the passionate way that Hispanic communities have, in the determination of the immigrant’s legacy in this country. We have been here longer or at the same time as many of the immigrants that make up this country have been and we are still a “work in progress?” Once, in a publication launch in Los Angeles, I asked: why can’t we even send one Pinoy to the US Congress?
I do like Jessica Hagedorn’s admonition when Miguel Syjuco was her student: do not write like a Filipino, write like a writer. The substance of who we are, I guess, will show. Just tell a darn good story.
-R
Tufts Alum
“Do not write like a Filipino, write like a writer!” I propose the counterpoints to be: “Do not review like a Filipino, review like a reviewer.” “Do not read like a Filipino, read like a reader.” ATBP.
Great write-up, Grace, and ouch. Discussions of Filipinos bickering about authenticity, and (in)visibility are ongoing, and I always feel like these discussions become circular. Certainly, the way Filipinos are writing about ourselves versus what the American publishing industry demands/expects I believe contributes to how many Filipino authored novels get picked up by major publishing houses. It’s probably different for fictioninsts published by independent/small presses. For poets, I think it’s a little easier.
And then re: Filipino American readers in the general public (i.e. those who are not entrenched in academic, publishing, or literary communities, and who buy books at larger chain bookstores), I don’t know what it is they want to see in a book about Filipinos, whether we’re simply implacable and why.
Thank you Grace for this beautiful essay.
Hi, Grace. Thanks for this lovely and passionate piece. I really enjoyed it.
I too struggle with trying to understand why Filipinos are so invisible in American society, and I think in part, it’s because we tend to assimilate to American culture rather than carve out a space of our own.
In the early 80s, when I was in middle school, a large influx of Vietnamese immigrants came to east San Jose, where I grew up, and a few years later, their businesses and restaurants started to flourish in the area. They pooled their money, started businesses, bought homes, created their own community within the larger community. The Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Koreans have all done the same.
While I agree with you that Filipinos support big stars that rise to the top, what we’re not good at, yet, is supporting one another at the local level and creating a community, a support infrastructure of our own. I think this would give us a stronger foundation from which politicians, artists, writers could spring.
On another note, while in my MFA program at Vermont College, I received a small scholarship for two years from a fund created to support minority writers. It would be great to see a similar type of fund for Fil-Am writers specifically. I would certainly contribute to it. 🙂
Grace: Thanks for this illuminating review. Some thoughts: good novels call for strong readers, if not today then in the future. Rizal comes to mind. both the Noli and the Fili, arguably still the greatest Filipino novels, were self-published, the first in Berlin in a publishing house owned and run by women, the second in an obscure press in Ghent thanks to a loan advanced by one of his fellow ilustrados in Europe. Before the Noli was banned in the Philippine colony, it had a signficiant readership among colonial officials, including the then liberal Governor General who even invited Rizal for an interview at Malacanang. Indeed, the novel was so strong and was read so forcefully, especially by the Spanish missionaries who recognized themselves all too well in its pages, that it was banned. And its banning led to its heightened reputation even among those who could not read Spanish. With Rizal’s death, the two novels became even more popular, not as works of literature but as icons of nationalism, translated into several languages, and figuring in almost all the Rizal statues that you see in the Philippines. Think about it: how many national heros were also novelists whose books figure in almost all their iconic depictions. Perhaps it was a matter of timing: the novel was arguably truly a novel genre in the late nineteenth century; and Rizal, writing in a second language, managed to reach those on top so forcefully that those below were compelled to pay attention as well. Of course for the latter, his most dramatic literary work was his martyrdom and as historians like Rey Ileto have shown, they were drawn to read it in all sorts of ways. So here is an example of the most powerful Filipino novelist, one who has both a national and internatinal reputation, whose life and writings were to his readers nearly indistinguishable. The strength then of his novels arrive from the strength, and dizzying variety, of his readership to this day. No other Filipino novelist has been able to match this, because no other has lived in the times Rizal has nor attracted the kind of fierecely divergent readings as he has. The closest is perhaps someone like Carlos Bulosan. But in Bulosan’s case, his readership comrd primarily from an academic audience which has subsequently canonized his work in the American academy (not in the Philippines, where the notion of the literary does not and perhaps may never yield to the institution of a literary canon. As you know in the Philippines, the literary impulse in unlimited, so unlimited that it crowds out the domesticating force of canonization. Not the case in the US.)
Gotta go teach my class, but perhaps we can continue this later….
In my list of novels, I focused on larger presses, but I wanted to recognize the contributions of novelists I inadvertently left off the list: M. Evelina Galang’s One Tribe (New Issues Poetry Press 2006), winner of the AWP Series Prize in the Novel and R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s (Kaya 1997). Both Marisa de los Santos and Sabina Murray have published two novels each.
Since 2006, Barbara Jane Reyes has kept a comprehensive list of books by Filipinos (which I only discovered yesterday):
http://www.barbarajanereyes.com/flip-lit/
Thank you for taking the time to read my review and post your response. I appreciate it.
Bravo!
Pinipilit kasi nating magsulat tungkol sa mga tema at sa paraan na sa palagay natin ay magugustuhan ng mga Amerikano; at pinipilit kasi nating magsulat sa wika na hiram at hindi natural sa atin. Sa bahagi natin ng daigdig, malayo na ang nararating ng mga Indonesian, Thai, Malay at Singaporean sa pagsusulat. Bagaman hindi gaanong napapansin sa Amerika, malalim na ang pag-unawa ng mga manunulat nila tungkol sa anyo at katangian ng nobela, samantalang ang mga Filipino ay nakatali pa sa mediocre na panulat ni Rizal at Balagtas at patuloy na nagkukumahog na pantayan ang mga panulat nina Hemingway, Faulkner at Cheever. Hanggang ngayon, marami sa atin ang ibig gumaya kay J.D. Salinger, John Barth at Thomas Pynchon. Kaya di tayo magkaroon ng mga tulad nina Aravind Adiga, Anand Toer Pramoedya, Jiang Rong at Haruki Murakami na umahon buhat sa pinatatag na pundasyon ng sarili at kinamulatang kultura. Si Chuck Sijuco mismo, na nakasabay ko sa Singapore Arts Festival, nakalaban sa Palanca at ilang ulit na nakausap ay tanggap niya ang babaw ng kanyang pag-unawa sa masang Filipino at sa kaugalian ng nakararaming Filipino sa mga rehiyon. May angkin siyang kagalingan sa wikang Ingles, bunga ng estado sa buhay at sa matagal na paninirahan sa ibang bansa, at nakasuso na siya banyagang kultura at pamamaraan ng pagsulat ng nobela (na ayon sa kanya ay ginawa niyan banig-banig buhat sa linyar na anyo ng pagkuwento)kaya nakapagsulat nang ganyan. Kung susulong tayo sa pagsusulat, mahalagang nakasuso tayo sa sariling kultura, gamit ang sariling wika. At kung matatag na ang pundasyon natin, saka tayo maghanap ng mga magsasalin sa wikang Ingles, kung gusto nating malimbag sa Amerika.
Bagamat hindi ako sang-ayon sa lahat ng punto ni Mr.Balde ay sumasang-ayon ako na higit na mabuti ang kondisyon para sa mga nobelista, halimbawa sa Indonesia, dahil sa paggamit nila ng sariling pambansang wika. Tingnan na lamang ang halimbawa ng nobelang “Laskar Pelangi” (Hukbo ng Bahaghari) ni Andrea Hirata (batang ekonomistang Indones na edukado sa Sorbonne) na bumenta ng higit 1.5 milyong kopya mula 2005 (may dalawampung printing na ngayon). Makakabili sa mga bangketa doon ng mga piniratang kopya na hindi na mabilang ang dami. Apat na tomong nobela ito na napakamabenta sa Indonesia. Sa isang talakayan ng may-akda tungkol sa nobelangito ay dumalo ang mahigit 1,500 sa malaking auditorium ng Universitas Indonesia. (Sa Pilipinas ay suwerte na kung may limampung kusang dumating.) Nang ginawang pelikula ang unang tomo ay nanood ang mahigit apat na milyong Indones. Tungkol sa ano ang nobela? Tungkol sa mga problema ng sistemang pang-edukasyon ng Indonesia at kahirapan sa kanayunan. Hindi ko sinasabing labis na maganda ang pagkakasulat, ang sinasabi ko lamang ay may ipinapakita itong matinding koneksyon sa mga mambabasang Indones na hindi talaga makikita sa ngayon sa Pilipinas. Naglolokohan tayo kung sabihin nating may sapat na mambabasa sa wikang Ingles sa Pilipinas upang magkaroon ng tunay na tradisyong pampanitikan dito sa wikang Ingles. Ilusyon ang binabanggit ninyong “literacy” sa wikang Ingles ng mga Pilipino. Nag-aaral lang naman ng (iskematikong) Ingles ang mga kabataan dito para maging mga nars, call center agent at makakuha ng iba pang uring trabaho ng OFW at hindi para sa anumang “pampanitikang” layunin. Kaya tama ang opinyon ni Butch Dalisay sa na kung nais magpatuloy ng panitikang Ingles sa Pilipinas ay kailangan nang maghanap ng “export market” sa ibayong dagat. Walang koneksyon ang mga manunulat sa wikang Ingles sa masang Pilipino na hanggang ngayo’y nangangailangan ng mahusay na mga manunulat na lumilikha ng panitikang nakapagbubukas at nakapagpapalawak ng kaisipan. Kumakapit tayo sa napakatinding ilusyon at niloloko ang sarili kung isipin nating ito na ang “breyk” para sa manunulat na Pilipino.
Thank you, Grace. I am a public librarian in a California community with a large Filipin@ community and I appreciate your perspective and the bibliography in the essay. As I develop our collection I’m always keeping an eye out for Filipin@ literature that I can add. Also, thanks for the link to Barbara Jane Reyes site.
Hi! An old friend sent this link to us. To your point about Filipinos breaking into the US mainstream publishing industry – I am happy to share the good news that my wife’s novel was picked up by Random House last December with a target publishing date of US summer 2011. She is currently represented by the Levine-Greenberg Literary Agency. Wish us luck! Go Philippines!
Lovely writing. Also admire the mix of book review, personal essay, and cultural criticism.
Hi, Grace, Thanks for mentioning me and my work. I’m reprinting below my comments about your review to Rashaan who had shared your work to me:
Hi, Rashaan, I read Grace’s work and will need to read it a second time to really give a serious feedback. She says a lot. Two points come to my mind: 1) Jose’s point about anointing – I agree with him regarding a need for Filipino writers to publish abroad before they consider themselves real writers. Clearly there are many works published by Philippine presses that are fine and important.
2) Publishing is a business. Someone pointed out to me that the Japanese American booth at the LA Festival of Books is always crowded and the Japanese American community really support their writers. This is true. I also saw how the South (as in Tennessee, Georgia, etc.) support their writers, creating awards, all sorts of incentives and encouragements for young writers to flourish. My point in bringing up the supportiveness of the Japanese Americans and Southerners of their writers is that our Filipino American community does not support our writers in the same level. The kind of support it gives (if it does) is “Small Press” level. The American main stream publishing houses are not satisfied with selling a couple of thousand copies per title. This is why the big presses hesitate to publish Filipino writers; they need assurance like awards etc. before they invest in publishing a book. And woe on the author if the title does not sell copies in the level they want; they will remainder it without any hesitation because it costs them money to have the title in their inventory and in storage. Business. The publishing world got more stingy about 8 years ago when publishing houses were bought out or merged with others, so that basically there are just a handful of owners of ALL big publishing houses. The new owners were more serious about making money. That’s when my When the Rainbow Goddess Wept got remaindered by Dutton/Penguin, but fortunately was picked up by University of Michigan. The novel remains in print and is called a “treasure” by their editors and marketing people.
Well, I could go on and on but will stop now – there is too much to say.
Dear Cecilia, Jose’s point is actually the opposite. Jose was lambasting the view the perception that Filipino writers need “to publish abroad before they consider themselves real writers.” I find this so odd. Your statement that “clearly there are many works published by Philippine presses that are fine and important” (and therefore deserving of being “published” at last in the USA) is not only patronizing but ignorant. Have you ever looked beyond the Anglo-American publishing and literary world? Would the Chinese or Japanese writers in their own countries ever say anything as undignified as what you assert? Can you even read any other languages? I dare say you can’t even read Filipino. Let’s say French? Would French writers stoop so low as to say what you have just written? Without self respect no one else will respect you, and that’s precisely the problem of the writing of people like you in America. Please just forget about the Philippines, that would be your greatest service to it. Pathetic.
When I say “1) Jose’s point about anointing – I agree with him regarding a need for Filipino writers to publish abroad before they consider themselves real writers. Clearly there are many works published by Philippine presses that are fine and important.” – I mean, as Frankie Jose has reportedly said, that some Filipino writers want to be published abroad more than by Philippines Presses, when in fact Philippine Presses have published fine and important books, meaning, there is no need to be published (ie anointed) outside the Philippines.
It’s important to read carefully before hurling uncalled for insults in what should be a constructive and educational forum.
Another thing, clearly you are unaware that I have published both in the US and in the Philippines and I certainly would not be insulting to those who publish in the Philippines. Another thing, clearly you do not know that I speak Tagalog and Cebuano and have been to places in the Philippines that you have never been to.
Hey Gode, show your real name, will you?
will post a longer rezponz laterz but i’ve not read any more pendantic, ponderous and farcical commentary than the multi-awardee manoy abdon balde. maghahalat-halat ngana ako ki sarong pangtangay asin pinangat.
pedantic*, pangtagay*
I am having Deja vu. I have seen this impassioned, clashing of cymbals, beating of chest type of exchange in too many Filipino forums. Stuck in Job- like gnashing of teeth on what constitutes authenticity and who represents it best. Hay naku, might as well read ” The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
Look at the example of Swedish literature such as Stieg Larssons’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.†The Swedes only have a little over 9 million people and are able to produce such novels in their own language (considered by all a minor European tongue). Combine this with a vibrant national intellectual and scientific culture all in Swedish and you have a real for a dignified and self-sustaining literary tradition. This is the basis of what we should work on. Connect with out own people as the Swedish intellectuals have done and continue to do. This has very little to do with “culturalist” categories of “authenticity” but with a political will for moving out of this teeth gnashing and breastbeating. However, if some Filipino-American writers seriously want to make it in the US and want ti play that game, then that’s your choice, just don’t confuse that stuff written for Americans with Philippine literature.
This was an amazing essay, Grace. Thank you for sharing. I will definitely be checking these authors out. I am ashamed to say that I, as a Filipino-American, have not read any literature from my own people. This is very inspiring and I will be sure to scour the internet for some of these titles.
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