Wordpress theme and web development by @joelsantiago
Because there are no words, none worth using to talk about the Ampatuan Massacre, no words worthy of lives lost to such violence, to such power. What we should’ve been was out on the streets, angry, fearless, pointing a finger at (giving the finger to) the system that has been feeding private armies. But none of that happened. Instead we were quiet and enraged, watching the news at home, receiving word about the rumored real reason behind the encounter, which… Continue reading »
<…> if these two talks of Dalisay are any indication <…> what our texts have and what ails our texts by default given colonial history <is that> we are out of the Commonwealth loop <…> and while American colonization gave us the English that we use for our writing, we all seem to have forgotten that, and we’re like the bastard children that appear at the family Christmas dinner. There are no favors to be had from our colonial fathers… Continue reading »
It seems like a foregone conclusion: how else would Singapore do a writers’ festival but with seriousness and business-like professionalism? What’s striking about the first few days of the Singapore Writers’ Festival (SWF) though is this: while business sense would dictate the selling of books in relation to the event, there’s also a clear sense here of going beyond that. And the SWF does so by showing us how literature and writing might on the one hand be celebrated as… Continue reading »
because i’ve been thinking about, which is to say struggling with, writing and self-centeredness, this can only be serendipitous: a piece on poetry, but which is really about writing, from mabi david: To write is to come to an awareness, says Carolyn Forché, which I believe wholeheartedly. I write because it is the way available to me of thinking about the world, of apprehending experience. Thus is the self implicated in the poem. We must write with vigorous self-reflection and… Continue reading »
in April 2000, Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall died in a plane crash, along with her husband and two children. she was a wonderful woman/teacher/friend/human being whose teaching continues to resonate with me, 15 years since she was first my teacher in 1996. these two essays were written soon after she died, the first one for a SEA newsletter, the second one i read at the tribute put together by the DECL in U.P. in 2010, i give birth and lose a… Continue reading »
it was daunting more than anything else, though at some point all that operated was an amount of yabang: i’ve seen friends do this before, i’ve seen wonderful beautiful local books happen without a big publisher behind it, without press releases coming out in papers. and this book, i knew, deserved the major major effort of blood/sweat/tears because it is about family and history. because it is unconventional in form, an almost refusal to fall within the genres that are familiar,… Continue reading »
because this is what happened when Krip Yuson apologized for his act of plagiarism: he opened a can of worms about writing in this country, about the hubris of the editor, about the question of writer versus editor, etc. etc. and you know I’m all for letting it all hang out, but given the gravity of an awarded Filipino writer plagiarizing, it just seems like the wrong time for invoking other worms. Worm #1: Yuson talks about being the editor… Continue reading »
these were up elsewhere that i love because they are untouched, unexpurgated, and i’m left to fawn or freak out and everything in between. art can only be about how it makes you feel eh? (1) Pilipinas Street Plan at the Lopez Museum’s Extensions. (2) The end of the art world via Kin Misa’s rust and color. (3) J Pacena’s After Mall Hours. (4) the Pinoy toy as art form and mythmaking. (1)
a version of this is in the Arts and Books Section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 9 2010. From afar, the first thing you notice about Ruben de Jesus’ works is its colors. Reds, blues and blacks are rendered in various and unexpected hues that play around with light and shadow and emphasis. Up close, each of the pen and ink works is a story in itself, at the same time that all together they could be bound into one… Continue reading »
a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 14 2010. Lawrence Lacambra Ypil’s first books of poems has many things going against it, including the fact that it is poetry and that it is in English, both of which limit it to a particular audience. More importantly, it comes at a time when the kind of Philippine poetry in English that’s celebrated – if publication and recent award-winning collections are any indication – has been about… Continue reading »
As with all year-ender lists, this is necessarily full of itself, and can be accused of having a false sense of power, imagining itself to be comprehensive and truthful and correct. Unlike many of those Best of 2009! lists though, this is conscious of itself and its limitations, and is willing to be shot in the foot for missing the point entirely. Too, this isn’t really a Best Of list (haha!); this is really just a list of my top… Continue reading »
The premise of the disappeared is their silence. In Desaparesidos, Lualhati Baustista’s latest novel, what one is treated to is an articulation of these silences that the disappeared bear, over and above the lives that they live as names on a list of people who have been captured and jailed, raped and tortured, and killed. And while you might say Bautista has done this before, or that this story about the Marcos dictatorship is old hat, Desaparesidos is anything but a… Continue reading »
i’m the last person who will look down on what people enjoy reading, nor will i insist that you must read certain books in order for you to be called “literary”. i will insist though that anyone who decides to diss any form of literature, particularly philippine lit, even more so literature in our vernaculars, has better sense than just his or her superficial notions of taste and literature, and in this case, language.
chanced upon Korina Today, with Samantha Echavez, Carljoe Javier and Dean Francis Alfar, talking about their works included in what seems to be the anthology on tales of enchantment and fantasy, which is really beside the point of this critique. the point being this: Alfar says that having readers isn’t a matter of length or short attention spans, as with the blog and its accessibility in terms of form, but that it’s a matter of, and i quote, “the story”.… Continue reading »
once, long ago, someone was reporting on “The House of Spirits” in my M.A. class, and she started it off with the line: this has as audience the professional as well as the non-professional reader, but their appreciation of it is different. i don’t remember much of what else she said, but i do remember that a classmate and i could barely let her finish, because her premises were unacceptable. my mother who reads for leisure (as opposed to reading… Continue reading »
published in PCIJ i-report, special report on Literature and Literacy, of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 19 June 2007 http://www.pcij.org/i-report/2007/chick-literature.html N.B.S.B. (No Boyfriend Since Birth). Love hurts. Hearts heal. Relationships are overrated. Marriage or living in? Promiscuity versus loyalty. Every girl needs a gay bestfriend. Better pay or fulfilling job? M.U. (Mutual Understanding). Shopping! Vacations. Self-worth and –confidence. Self-love. Single – not an old maid. Falling in love with your male bestfriend. The search for Mr. Right. H.D. (Hidden… Continue reading »
“National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera reaffirms Asian identities in the national languages, as Int’l Literature Conference closes” This was a most fitting end. After two days of plenaries and panel sessions that talked about particular aspects of a very diverse set of cultures within Asia, Filipino National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera tied everything together by highlighting our dependence on, and thus the importance of, translation in his paper entitled “The Necessity of Footnotes: Translating the Culture.” In light of the various languages… Continue reading »