It is not that Dumaguete is in want of literature about itself.
On the contrary, any cursory inspection of Philippine literature reveals a feast of stories and poetry and essays about this small city on the eastern coast of Negros Island. Most of them wax poetic about its spread of acacia trees, the mint-green surf off Tañon Strait, the narrow roads leading to the seaside tree-lined boulevard the length of which, so legend has it, Rizal once walked and then readily proclaimed a “place of gentle people.”
Nobody is entirely sure the Rizal story is factual–but Dumaguete is a place of riveting stories, both in fact and in fiction, which is ironic given the placid (some would say even parochial) exterior the city offers the uninitiated. Scratch the surface though, and the intrigues spring forth, ready to give any reader a taste of Southern sugar-flavored gothic. Sample, for example, Bobby Flores Villasis’ elegantly fictionalized collection of Boulevard stories in Suite Bergamasque, where he takes in the wealthy denizens of the so-called “sugar houses” lining the Rizal Boulevard and spins out of their stories tales worthy of James Joyce’s Dubliners
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The appeal is obvious. Dumaguete is unlike any other small city in the country. It is small enough for gossip and scandal to thrive in barriotic fashion, but it also has a sense of sophistication derived from Spanish sugar stock which is tempered by American Protestant sensibility. A practiced eye could see the tension between those two cultural influences everywhere in Dumaguete–down to the difference between the type of trees planted before specific mansions along the Boulevard: an acacia for Protestant families or a palm tree for Catholic families. The city also maintains a surprisingly refined sense of cosmopolitanism, perhaps derived from the place being a University Town, which keeps it young. Everybody knows everybody else, although gone are days when one could tell who was driving by the mere sound of that somebody’s car. It is a place bordered by the Cuernos de Negros in the west and Tañon Strait in the east–a sensibility of mountain and sea that stirs in both an illusion of conservatism and gung-ho liberalism. It is a place of flux and contradictions. It is no wonder that writers from all over the country have come to it over the years and learned to tap into that mystique.
The most recent addition to the mix is Lakambini Sitoy’s The Girls of Sweethaven, newly published in translation in France, which takes into fictional account the infamous video sex scandal that rocked the world of video piracy a few years back. That book and my own novel Sugar Land (which is loosely about the equally infamous serial killing that happened in Dumaguete in the early 1980s) were long-listed in the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008. Together with novels by Edith Lopez Tiempo, Edilberto Tiempo, Krip Yuson, Ernesto Superal Yee, and forthcoming ones from Bobby Flores Villasis and Cesar Ruiz Aquino, you have a place firmly etched in literature.
But perhaps to underline that distinction, Anvil Publishing is releasing its latest title in its City Series with a focus on Dumaguete. They’ve done similar treatments of other Philippine cities before–Baguio, Manila, Cebu, and Davao. Now it is Dumaguete’s turn, and for some reason, it seems like it’s about time.
The Dumaguete We Know, edited by the poet Merlie Alunan, features essays of recollection (and perhaps even exorcism) by some of the country’s top writers–all of whom have a strong connection with Dumaguete. It includes the late historian Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez, Allan Pastrana, Eva Rose Repollo, Grace R. Monte de Ramos, Laurie Raymundo, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Jaime An-Lim, Lakambini Sitoy, Niccolo Rocamora Vitug, Ian Rosales Casocot, Alfred Yuson, Timothy R. Montes, Edgar Griño, Linda Kalayaan Faigao-Hall, Niño Soria de Veyra, Dinah Roma-Sianturi, Susan S. Lara, Christine Godinez-Ortega, Priscilla Supnet Macansantos, Anthony L. Tan, Marjorie Evasco, Merlie M. Alunan, Francis C. Macansantos, Bobby Flores Villasis, and Cesar Ruiz Aquino. Some live and work in Dumaguete. Others were born in Dumaguete but now live somewhere else. And still others are langyaws from other places who once found themselves rooted in Dumaguete, in the tradition of daguet (or kidnap) which the city’s name takes itself from. Once used to indicate that this was a place constantly pillaged by Moro pirates, it has now come to mean something else: that when any visitor comes to Dumaguete, they will find themselves soon succumbing to a kind of charm that makes them stay. Sometimes for months, sometimes for a year or two. Sometimes forever.
