This column celebrates the vibrant literary culture and heritage of Dumaguete City, in anticipation of its bid to be designated as UNESCO City of Literature under the Creative Cities Network. It is produced by the Buglas Writers Guild, a network of literary artists from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor. Each week, we will focus on the work of one local writer. For this month, the guest editor is Dumaguete fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot.
Here’s an excerpt from the Palanca-winning short story Pamalandong ni Antigo Mokayat by the Dauin writer Michael Aaron Gomez:
“Kon akoy pangutan-on di man nimo kinahanglan mobasa og daghan. Tan-awa: ang akong basahon dires balay ang karaang Bibliya sa akong lola, mga basahon sa pangadye, mga karaang dyaryo. Di bitaw ko mobasa pero maminaw ko. Maminaw kog radyo mabuntag, balita mahapon, balita magabii. Mga istoryas mga amigo bahalag puro binuang. Bahalag puro inamaw, puro binastos. Mga hunghong sa katigulangan. Day kabalo ba ka nga si…si kuan biya kay…Gaw tan-awa ra god nas kuan, morag… Kabalo ko ana, mas insakto pa nang akong mga madunggan kaysa akong mabasahan. Pero lagi kuno art man kuno nang iyang gibuhat, kinahanglan niya magtigom og libro.
Ingon pas Michael, di diay ka ganahan mahinumdoman sa mga reader, bay? Pinasagad man na gaw, maoy akong tubag. Pero kabalo ko oy. Naa ra koy trabaho kay daghan mobasa sa akong mga gipanulat matag adlaw. Kon masipyat gani ko o naa silay di ganahan ingnon man ko nila didtos among FB o di ba kay tawagan nila among opisina kay magbagotbot didto: ngano kunong si kani gipusil o di ba kato siya kay gitulon og bitin, mga ana ba. Ako wala ra pod ko kay kabalo man pod ko nga si bossing ang gabayad sa akong sweldo. Sa ato pa: kon naay reader gaatubang nako karon dire, moando ra ko niya. Morag: gaw, nakit-an tika, nagbagotbot ka, pero wala koy labot, pero salamat pod kay nibasa ka. Kon gusto ka may pa manginom ta aron mawala nang imong problema. Atbanganay ta, morag si Boy Abunda. Tan-awa ning akong “magic mirror.” Unsay imong isulti sa imong kaugalingon?
Wa ko kaila nila—wa sad sila kaila nako. Unta mao kini atong timan-an sukad karon. Ikaw isip reader wa ko kaila nimo; ako isip manunulat, wa ka kaila nako. Ako rang mama ug ang Ginoong Makagagahum sa Tanan ang nakaila nako. Unta makontento na ta ana.”
Is Michael Aaron Gomez, writing in Binisaya, an anomaly among local writers? Here’s the thing: when you are a writer from Dumaguete City—or once trained under the pioneering creative writing program ran by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo at Silliman University—this usual kind of pigeonholing occurs: that you write exclusively in English, and is hopeless in the area of literary writing in the local language, which is Binisaya.
This is absolutely untrue. The closest thing to this might be our popular reluctance to write in Filipino [which is really Tagalog], and this is encapsulated in a retort Edilberto Tiempo once gave. Asked once why he wrote almost exclusively in English and not in the “national language,” he gave this telling answer: “I do not want to be colonized a second time.” Truth to tell, Tiempo, a Waray who has written important works of fiction in English, actually also wrote in Binisaya: many of his wartime reportage published on The Daily Sillimanian, a clandestine publication published before and during the Japanese occupation of Negros Oriental, were written in the local tongue.
But we must grant this pigeonholing some kernel of truth. Oral and folk literature abound, but literary writing as we know it now did not really have a strong foundation in the province even during the Spanish colonial period. Only with the coming of the Americans—and especially the foundation of Silliman Institute in 1901—did a semblance of modern creative writing take place. And because the teachers were American missionaries, this constituted mainly attempts by their students at a literary writing in English. The early issues of Silliman Truth—the first true community paper of Dumaguete—actually had sections devoted to both Spanish writings and Binisaya writings, but these missives were of the journalistic variety. Silliman students, who were taught to read such works by Defoe, Hawthorne, Irving, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Lowell, followed the form and expression of the authors they read, and wrote mostly romantic literature in the English language in the first quarter of the 20th century. As late as 1925, we still got pronouncements in The Sillimanian, the official school organ, that tried to reckon with the English-only orientation in campus: “We should always bear in mind that if we are learning our own dialects, Silliman cannot help us out and we had better not be here. It is evident that we are here to learn among other things, to read, to write, and to speak in English correctly.”
When the Tiempos founded the SU National Writers Workshop in 1962, the accepted manuscripts were in English—and this continued on for many years, creating the reputation that the workshop was the bastion of English writing in the country. (In 2018, however, the first manuscripts in Binisaya were finally accepted.)
This does not mean, however, that the fellows of the workshop—and especially those who also studied at Silliman—have written only in English. It is actually quite telling that many of the alumni of the creative writing program at Silliman later went on to establish writing careers that included delving seriously into the so-called “regional literature.” This would include Marjorie Evasco, Leoncio Deriada, Erlinda Alburo, Merlie Alunan, and Christine Godinez-Ortega, who have devoted much of their academic scholarship exploring regional writings. [Evasco is known for her translations of works in Binisaya; Deriada is considered by many as the Father of Western Visayan Literature, championing works in Hiligaynon and Kiniray-a; Alburo was once director of the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City; Alunan authored the groundbreaking anthology, Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature in 2013; and Ortega is one of the co-founders of the Iligan National Writers Workshop, most known for its pioneering inclusions of manuscripts in the regional languages.] They have also written significant bodies of work in Binisaya, in Waray, and in Hiligaynon.
Other local writers in Binisaya also include Hope Tinambacan, Junsly Kitay, Benjie Kitay, Nicky Dumapit, Grace Monte de Ramos, and Lina Sagaral Reyes. Enriquita Alcaide is known nationwide for being one of the best contemporary practitioners of the balitaw. And to date, we have several Silliman writers who have won the Palanca for the short story in Cebuano, including Shelfa Alojamiento, who won for Ang Mga Babaye sa Among Baryo in 2002, and Alunan, who won for Pamato in 2007.
Add to that Palanca-winning list the Dauin writer Michael Aaron Gomez. He graduated with a degree in creative writing from Silliman University in 2017, and was a fellow at the Silliman Workshop in 2012 and the IYAS Creative Writing Workshop in 2013. His first Palanca win was in 2016, when he won for the one-act play Tirador ng Tinago. In 2024, he won both a special prize for the novel in English for The Republic of Negros, and the first prize in the short story in Cebuano for Pamalandong ni Antigo Mokayat.
Of his short story, Mr. Gomez remarked: “I had wanted to try writing in Cebuano for a while but I didn’t have enough confidence I could pull it off for a sustained form like the story. But once I had the character’s name, the voice came after, and then the process became easier.”
Why this short story? “The story is one of the results of my self-examinations about what it means to be a writer not only in the Philippines, but also—and more importantly—in the regions. I wanted to create a direct response or a counter-image to what we commonly interpret as ‘literary writers,’ at least from my various experiences, and see whether there was any fruitful tension between the two, and then explore the idea of the validity of this counter-image as a literary practitioner as well,” Gomez said.
