Discovering Philippine writing

New Philippine writing from 2001 onwards is often characterized as sensitive to gender, alludes to technology, shows culture as plural rather than singular, and questions conventions and supposedly absolute norms.

Writing by women continues to flourish. They have a decidedly feminist stance that questions the centrality of the patriarchy in our lives. The ground-breaking anthologies Forbidden Fruit: Women Write the Erotic edited by Tina Cuyugan (1993) and Kung Ibig Mo, love poems edited by Joi Barrios (1993) show that a woman’s map of dreams and desires is better drawn by a woman writer herself. Gone were the days when female character only came from the imagination – or even fantasy – of male writers.

Technology is also an important part of this literature, centered on the rise of the city and anchored on globalization. Writings on Filipinos abroad and the writings of Filipinos abroad also added to this more cosmopolitan attitude, if not more consumerist attitude, of the 21st-century Filipino.

Moreover, writings from the regions are serving notice that “imperial Manila” is no longer the only fountain of images and insights. Not only graduate theses but also creative writing from the regions are being written and published, thanks to local presses like the Ateneo de Naga Publishing House, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, the University of the Philippines Press, the University of San Agustin Publishing House, among others. Even the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature, long a bastion of English writing in the Philippines, and later, of Filipino writing, has opened its doors to writing from the regions.

In true subversive fashion, many writers now write not just in English or Tagalog but in both languages. This recalls for me the verbal legerdemain of the ladino poets that National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera wrote about in his dissertation at Indiana University, later published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Moreover, Marjorie Evasco has been translating her poems in English into Cebuano, J. Iremil Teodoro writes lyrical stories in Kinaray-a and translates them into English, Peter Nery slides from English to Hiligaynon in his erotic poems, Kristian Cordero and Victor Nierva write works in Bicolano and in the next breath, translate them to elegant English. Surely, the vessels that contain Philippine literature are no longer one, or two, or even three, but as many as the different languages that inhabit the archipelago. Or, as Dr. Soledad S. Reyes puts it, “writing is no longer exclusively in one language but unleashing and reveling in the imaginative power inhering in the two [or more] languages.” My latest book, Ranga: Writings on Bikol, contain literature in three languages: English, Filipino and Bikolano.

What about the kind of English being written? The poet Trinidad Tarrosa Subido coined the phrase, “language of [our] blood.” Dr. Gemino H. Abad has used it as framework and rallying point in his series of three anthologies on Philippine poetry in English. He said that we have colonized English and have made it our own, and the poems we now write are “wrought from English.”

It is no longer the very proper English that we have learned from the old textbooks. It is no longer the English full of Americanisms that we read in books copyrighted in New York, the stilted dialogues of farmers complete with tag questions. It is now a language that has been filtered by mass media – printed, seen, broadcast – as well as a language shaped by the Internet and social media, by the fragmentation of text language, the world of sound bites, the anime, graphic novels, and cosplays (costume plays).

In 1995, the Philippine Studies journal of Ateneo de Manila University published New Philippine Writing. In his “Introduction:  The Pinoy Writer and the Asia-Pacific Century,” my professor Emmanuel Torres, editor of the issue, said some statements that still hold true today. “An alternative poetics is at work these days. Form is more open-ended than closed, looser, more improvisatory; the tone conversational, informal. And no one seems to think twice about making explicit statements in the name of personal passion or liberation. Despite the rise of ‘cause-oriented’ writing, formal matters of craft in no way seem endangered, thanks to the influence of writing workshops in leading universities.”

Professor Torres continues: “The popularity of poetry readings [and now open mike readings even by non-poets, for good or for bad] on campuses and in writer-friendly coffeehouses is partly the reason for the current taste for the laid-back and discursive. Apparently being revived is the tradition of the poet as bard, one communally interactive and inclined to addressing the sound-world of a poem to a roomful of listeners rather than one crafting lines intended solely for the book page and the solitary reader. . . .”

Thus, we no longer find a precious poem about a poem; or a poem with allusions to Greek or Roman mythologies; or a story set in Manhattan. There is now a certain historicity; allusions to Philippine myth and fable, lore and legend; astringent satires of popular culture and political foibles. Anglo-American writers are still being read, but now they are hyphenated and their works are like dispatches from the  global village.

Moreover, the world of the internet is making sure that the Filipino writer is no longer insular or old-fashioned.  Bob Ong started a blog, Bobong Pinoy, and parlayed it into several best-selling books. Moreover, other blogs have become bestselling books and even box-office movies, i.e., The Diary ng Panget series. Celebrities are now supposedly writing books, but in reality done by their ghost writers. Radio anchors and TV show hosts are also producing books.

Wattpad has democratized the world of writing; pimply teenagers can now upload their stories in Wattpad, watch it viewed ten million times, and now get contracts for a TV series or a teenage romance film based on their works. Ghost stories are still selling, and children’s book publishing has been a constant stream in publishing. Young adult (YA) novels are being written, to capture the tastes of a generation on the run (or eyes glued to their gadgets), being written in English and Filipino. And now, being translated from English to Filipino, i.e., the novels of John Greene and Paulo Coelho.

The Filipino public has, mercifully, begun to read and we are all the better for it. Despite the hard work of writing deep into the night and the pittance they receive for their labors, the Filipino writers continue to thrive, stunning us with their images, their voices, their very visions.

It is time to discover our Filipino writers. Here. Now.

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