Philippine writing today

Philippine writing in the new century has taken a new turn. The works are seen as sensitive to gender, alludes to technology, show culture as plural rather than singular. It also questions conventions and supposedly absolute norms.

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

Lesbian and gay writing continue to be written. Neil Garcia and I have published The Best of Ladlad. My other books Riverrun: A novel,  Rampa: Mga Sanaysay, while my  book of stories and essays called Happy Na, Gay, Pa, has just been reprinted.

Technology is also an important part of this literature, centered on the rise of the city and anchored on globalization. The economic boom, albeit benefiting only the elite, has led to the opening of the Philippines to diverse economic interests. Writings on Filipinos abroad and of Filipinos abroad also add to this more cosmopolitan, if not more consumerist, attitude of the 21st-century Filipino. I just had a meeting with an editor who wants me to write online opinion in two languages – English and Filipino.

Moreover, writings from the regions have served notice that “imperial Manila” is no longer the only fountain of ideas. We have to thank Ateneo de Naga University Press, National Commission on Culture and the Arts, UP Press, and University of San Agustin Publishing House, among others. The Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature has opened its magisterial doors to writing from the regions. Ateneo de Manila University Press and UST Publishing House are both in fine form, publishing important works from Katipunan and Espana.

Nowadays, writers are no longer made to feel guilty if they write in English. In true subversive fashion, they now write not just in English or Filipino but in both languages. Some books show poems printed en face: one side in English, the other in Filipino. The twains have met, and you can no longer detect which was written first, and which was the translation, for there is equal facility and fluency in both. This recalls the verbal legerdemain of our ladino poets in the 17th century.

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 into 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 in our archipelago.

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

It is no longer the very proper English from the old textbooks, or the Americanese in books copyrighted in New York. It is now a language filtered by our regional languages and by mass media – printed, seen, broadcast, livestreamed – as well as shaped by social media, by the fragmentation of text language, by sound bites,  anime, graphic novels, and cosplays (costume plays).

In 1995, the Philippine Studies journal of Ateneo de Manila University published New Philippine Writing, which was edited by Professor Emmanuel Torres and I. Prof. Torres said: “An alternative poetics is at work. . . . 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.”

Prof. 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 poem about a poem; or a poem with Greek or Roman allusions; or a story set in Greenwich Village. There is now a certain historicity; allusions to Philippine myth and fable, lore and legend;  satires of popular culture and political foibles. Anglo-American writers are still being read, but now they are hyphenated and seem like dispatches from the global village. Works, in translation, of African, Asian, and Latin American writers are being devoured. There is the shock of recognition in reading about postcolonial experiences similar to ours, and fears and dreams coming from the same socio-political conditions.

The internet has also made the Filipino writer less insular or old-fashioned.  Bob Ong started a blog, “Bobong Pinoy” and parlayed it into bestselling books. Other blogs have become popular books and even box-office-hit movies, i.e., Ang Diary ng Panget. Celebrities are now supposedly writing, while radio anchors are turning their zany scripts into books. The late Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago’s book, Stupid is Forever and its sequel, is the doyenne of them all: it has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Pimply teenagers can upload their stories in Wattpad, watch them viewed 15 million times, and now get contracts for a TV series or a romance film. Ghost stories are selling, and so do children’s books and graphic novels. Young-adult novels are being written, for a generation on the run (or eyes glued to their gadgets). I have done a controversial – and bestselling – translation of Greene’s The Fault in Our Stars and Anvil has also published my translation of Marivi Soliven’s novel, The Mango Bride and the best-selling Tuesdays with Morrie.

The Filipino public has begun to read – and we are all the better for it.