The impact of Palanca Award stories

Look up to our current crop of literary artists if you want to witness revelations of trenchant sociology of the Filipino as an individual, as a family, as a society.

You’re in for riveting moments. You can loathe, despair, gasp or become clueless in experiencing fellow Filipinos’ lives which are non-existent in your awareness, but now unraveled before your eyes, naked to the gut, heartfelt to the soul.

The three top winners in the Short Story English Division in the recent Palanca Awards (2005) have all the critical writer’s savvy, impact, originality, style, and substance.

"The Shakespeare Guy" (by Alesix Abola), which won first prize, is a lament on the creeping obsolescence of the classical man of letters who is rendered irrelevant in an age of websites, cryptic text messaging, and short attention span. From its micro significance to its macro big value, our English proficiency has deteriorated. No thanks to the nationalism of the ’60s spawning Filipinism which emaciated English curriculum in our schools. It was fashionable then to condemn anything American. Anything colonial was deemed a hindrance to our attainment of a strong Filipino identity. Our shortsightedness did not foresee the eventual globalization of life and commerce, with English as the lingua franca for progress in an internationalized economy. Now Filipino grammar is bad and sounding Neanderthal (e.g. "c u 2moro b4 ugh xsam n inglish 4 ugh") while the Chinese, Thais and Koreans are learning English the hard way to be more competitive and conversant in the global arena.

The Shakespeare Guy is the right person to champion English eloquence and international literary excellence in the way of Humanities. But we are demoting him, in fact phasing him out. Can we fence-sit as idiots remove Shakespeare from our schools? Are we insecure? Stuck to Balarila only?

"Shut Up & Live," second prize (by Lakambini Sitoy), is an atrocious behavior happening in another sector of our society. The story involves a mother, daughter up to a granddaughter centrally transfixed on sex, vice and divisiveness reaching the dangerous level of practical materialism whereby people deem moral orthodoxy is hardly needed to haunt individual sin.

This story is female psychology in its harshest and real terms. Egoism, rebelliousness, sex and adventurism weave in and out within the same family of women, as if their misfortunes are subjected to the law of DNA. Conscience appear in cameo roles to rescue wrongdoings from becoming a total moral disaster. The originality and impact of "Shut Up & Live" manifest in the characterization of women as rendered in flesh and blood by a person of the same sex, Lakambini Sitoy, a gifted writer who stupefies us with her depth and daring.

Abortion horrifies when seen purely as clinical. Absolutely necessary to free oneself from shame and responsibility. Abortionists are spooky, doing their deeds in a curt and silent way. Women share the same tragedies with painless indifference. Unbelievable!

The third prize, "At Merienda" (by Maryanne Moll) is parochial life surprisingly extant, where remnants of Filipino local culture resides in a Bicol town, where a clan of women get together at the dining table to partake their all-time favorite merienda of suman at latik, as only lifetime housemaids can dish out, meltingly sweet, sticky, and comforting.

Here, we meet women whose secret of steadfastness is the self-denial of ugly episodes in their lives. Harmony is preserved among mothers, aunts, and nieces because of their non-confrontational relationship. There is an obvious resignation to fate, as predictable as the serving of yummy suman at latik. The merienda serves as cover-up for family sadness, so archaic, so Maria Clara.

The reader of Philippine literature feels re-awakened by insightful writers like Alexis Abola, Lakambini Sitoy and Maryanne Moll. They take us to the nooks and crannies of local psychographics, exposing us to distinctly defined personas whose unique existence, ferrets out issues in life to be resolved.

Without Abola’s tragic hero, Benito Deluria, the expert teacher on Shakespearean drama, reduced to an oddity among the school’s philistines and barbarians, how can our children achieve literacy in language and arts? Shakespeare does not exist in isolation. He exists in the company of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Aquinas, Tolstoy, and others who make up the holistic excellence in a human being. What will become of Filipino gifted children? Can they become world-class artists?

And here comes Lakambini Sitoy so sharply attuned with female intuition, treating us to a life experience almost bereft of family values in "Shut Up & Live" With Sitoy, we witness the harshness of a life full of disrespect between mother and daughter within two generations and our instant re-action is to turn away. Or go mad. The death of family values and the need for it nags our consciousness.

For Maryanne Moll’s "At Merienda," women’s existence in a parochial milieu can be insidiously cruel when the women themselves impose a communal silence on their men’s infidelities, smugness, and physical illnesses. This incredible behavior is meant to eliminate emotional brutishness within the close circle of family ties. We are peeved by the seeming stupidity of "At Merienda." Or are we just impervious to the virtue of tolerance?

Have a good read. Gifted writers not only tell unique stories. They also touch a nerve in us.

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(The writer served recently as one of the judges in the English Short Story Division Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature 2005. Comments can be sent to Minyong.Ordonez@publicis-manila.com.)