An excellent Hiligaynon fictionist as an Other Other

FINALLY, a book from leading contemporary Hiligaynon fictionist Alice Tan Gonzales came off the press late last year. Sa Taguangkan sang Duta (In the Womb of the Earth) is a collection of ten award-winning stories written by Gonzales, a professor of literature at the University of the Philippines Visayas in Miag-ao, Iloilo. All the stories in this book won a prize from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Cultural Center of the Philippines Literature Grants, and Yuhum Magazine Short Story Contest. When it comes to the writing craft, Gonzales is one of the best in Western Visayas, as well as in the whole country. Her stories are about the dreams, struggles, and hopes of ordinary people. The title story “Sa Taguangkan sang Duta," which won first prize in the Palanca, is about the young couple Elena and Andoy. Elena works at a pawnshop in Iloilo City while Andoy tends their farm in the foothills of San Rafael. They have been married for a year but remain childless due to Elena’s work, which takes her away from her husband. When Elena decides to take a break from her boring job, she goes home to find Andoy facing a problem in their farm, which has not yielded a good harvest for two consecutive seasons. The moon is full that evening. Elena wakes up at dawn to see the farm bathed in golden moonlight. She remembers her grandfather, Lolo Matias, who used to sow the seeds at dawn during the full moon naked to make the harvest bountiful. Elena rouses Andoy and tells him to get the seeds. In the farm, Elena instructs the half-awake Andoy to take off his clothes and sow the seeds, and he follows her even if he finds it kind of weird. After sowing the seeds, the couple makes love on the moonlit earth. The story ends on the wistful note that the next harvest will be bountiful, and Elena’s womb will soon be heavy with their first child. This is typical of the stories of Gonzales: although critical of bad governance and capitalism in a subtle way, they always end in hope. Purely for Hiligaynon readers The stories have no translations in English or Filipino because, as Gonzales writes in her preface, “Una, isa ini ka pag-ako nga ako manunulat sa Hiligaynon kag indi sa Englis, kag ikaduha, ginakabig ko nga utang sa bumalasa sa Hiligaynon nga wala nakaangut sa mga buluthuan ang akon kapaslawan sa pag-upud sang akon mga sugilanon sa mga pamantalaan nga mapahapos nila mahagilap…" (First, this is my testimony that I am indeed a writer in Hiligaynon and not in English, and second, I deem it my debt to those readers in Hiligaynon who are not in the academe my failure to get my stories published in popular publications that are easy for them to acquire.) Actually, the stories were translated by the author as part of her dissertation for a Ph.D. in English Studies at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. But she chose to publish her first book solely in Hiligaynon for she knows that her ideal readers are the grassroots Hiligaynon speakers. She also deplores the fact that her works are published in academic literary journals which are not usually available to ordinary readers. This book is also printed on newsprint material to make it affordable. It is available in the newsstands in Iloilo City for only PhP90, as intended by Gonzales, who says, “Yari karon ang akon libro nga wala sang dugang nga kabayaran para sa mga pahina nga linubad sa Englis kag nabalhag sa indi malahalon nga papel. Bugal ko nga makita ang mga kopya sini nga libro sa mga balasahan sang mga buluthuan kag sa mga tapangko sang dalan Aldeguer kag J.M. Basa nga ginabakal sang ordinaryo nga pumuluyo nga mahuyog magbasa sang mga sugilanon sa pulong Hiligaynon." (Here is my book now without the additional pay for the pages in English translation and printed on cheap paper. It is my pride to see copies of this book in the public school libraries and in the kiosks in Aldeguer and J.M. Basa [old streets in Iloilo City] being bought by ordinary people who love to read in the Hiligaynon language.) Linguistic imbalance This is the difference between Manila writers (especially those who are writing in English) and the writers in the regions: Manila writers want to be read in America and Europe while many regional writers wish to be read by their people who are close to the earth. There is a surge of writing and publishing now in the regions, unlike Metro Manila where many writers’ communities (or should I say “cliques"?) are really mutual admiration societies. Writers in the National Capital Region have a lot to learn from regional writers like Gonzales. Critic Isagani R. Cruz in his essay “The Other Other: Towards a Post-colonial Poetics" writes about one of the defects of Western literary tradition. He says its critics and scholars have only read works in Europe and American and “otherized" the literature of the rest of the world, especially that of Asia where there are scores of great literary traditions. Cruz says, “If literary theory is only as good as the literary texts that give rise to it, how can theories that take into account only half the world’s literature be taken seriously? Most pre-modern, modern, and even some postmodern Western theories derive from readings of Western literary or cultural texts, but they completely ignore Balagtas and the two Bautistas (Cirilo and Lualhati), not to mention the vast reservoir of literary texts in China, Japan, and other non-European countries. In contrast, Filipino theories attempt to explain T.S. Eliot as well as Amado V. Hernandez. Yet no one in the West would argue that Virgilio Almario is a much more comprehensive critic than Stanley Fish." The same thing could be said about literary politics in the Philippines. How can we respect the work of literary historians and critics in the universities and colleges in Metro Manila when we know that most of them can only read English and Tagalog-based Filipino? There are even critics who pretend they cannot read Tagalog text, so how much more for works written in the vernaculars? But the situation is not totally hopeless. Regional literary scholars are now working triple time to translate and read critically the works of their writers. Hope Sabanpan Yu of Cebu is one good example. Books like Roderick Galam’s The Promise of the Nation: Gender History, and Nationalism in Contemporary Ilokano Literature and Isidoro M. Cruz’s Pungsod: Damming the Nation (Region/Nation and the Global Order in Contemporary West Visayan Literature) are little steps towards the formation of a democratic and truly representative Filipino national literature. It also make sense that when you study for a graduate degree in literature at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and De La Salle University-Manila, you are required to have reading and writing competencies in another Philippine language aside from Tagalog. This will correct the linguistic imbalance among our literary scholars. Literary awards So will Magdalena Jalandoni be ever voted as National Artist? Maybe, but I’m not that hopeful. She was shortlisted a couple of times before but those so-called Manila critics would ask stupid question about her works, and that would be enough reason for the search committee to erase her name from the list. It’s the same thing with Alice Tan Gonzales. Because of her refusal to publish her works with translations, Gonzales is being othered twice: An Other of world literature and an Other of Philippine literature. Of course, not getting name a National Artist will never be a concern of true artists like Jalandoni and Gonzales. A literary award, as my poetry teacher Cirilo F. Bautista has said, will not add nor subtract any beauty or merit to a writer’s work. A short story or a full-length play that is badly written, even if it wins first place in the Palanca, will remain badly written. So even if Sa Taguangkan sang Duta will never win the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board because it does not have a translation in the colonial English language and/or in the hegemonic Tagalog-based Filipino, it will remain an excellent collection of short stories in Hiligaynon. If Jalandoni and Gonzales will never become National Artists, as well as those other excellent writers writing in regional languages (Cebuanos Gremer Chan Reyes and Ernesto Lariosa, and Hiligaynon writer Ramon Muzones come to mind), Philippine literature will never be truly national. That is the plague brought upon our literary culture by Manilacentrism. – YA, GMANews.TV