What qualifies as a “Filipino-American writer?”
Ironically, some writers, some Filipino-Americans in general, are uneasy with the term ‘Fil-Am’ applied to them because the term really originated with non Fil-Ams. In other words, it came from Filipinos in the Philippines. They would rather be called the name they named themselves and that is Filipino-Americans, or even Pinoys and Pinays, which at least originated in the U.S. There is now among academics and postmodernists the term “Filipina/o.” That is also in the mix now. There is a sort of history in this naming. During Ben Santos’s (pre- and WW II) times in the States, some called them “Amboys.” What about the “Amgirls?” You see, it really is never adequate and forever in debate, problematic. I think the term to be more accurate should really be “Filipino-U.S. American,” but I am willing to concede this for the sake of further confusion and nitpicking.
What is Filipino literature and what is Fil-Am literature? It really all depends what criteria one is using. For some, it’s simple enough. If the work is published in the U.S. or Canada, it’s Fil-Am. It really should be Filcasa or something like that (Filipino-Canadian-U.S. American). Remember that I speak only of literature written by Filipinos in English here.
I rather define it by its sensibility, not so much by geography, though the times and the place certainly envelope that sensibility. So it really helps to have some sense of context and history. I’ll try to provide both.
There is the category of Filipinos writing in the Philippines in English, no matter what era. Then there are the Filipinos writing in the U.S., a) pre-world war 2, b) post-world war 2, c) the hippie, beat, anti-Vietnam civil rights era of the late fifties and early sixties, whence sprang d) the Liwanag writers (1972-3?), then e) the post-1965 immigration act and the post-martial law expats to f) now era. One can put a writer of Filipino descent in any one or sometimes more than one of these categories. The turning point I think is the era of the Liwanag writers. I wrote about that point in a piece called “The Filipino American Sensibility in Literature” published in a collection of Filipino writers writing about writing, Pinoy Poetics, edited by Eileen Tabios and Nick Carbo, Meritage Press, San Francisco.
Here are some marks of that Liwanag writers’ sensibility that reverberates until today.
The feeling of being on the fringe. Alienation is a constant theme from the experiences of marginalization from mainstream white U.S. society, as opposed to homesickness expressed by the writers before Liwanag. The Liwanag writers claim the U.S. as their home just as much as any white man, and rage at their non-entitlement of it.
While Filipinos in the Philippines comprise the mainstream in the Philippines. They are Christian Catholic lowland Filipinos, the hegemonic group in the Philippines. Artists and writers and other folks born and/or raised in the States related more or at least sympathized more with and are in many cases, more knowledgeable and appreciative of Muslim Filipinos and indigenous Filipinos because of that common angst of being on the outside, on the fringe, marginalized, as Muslim and indigenous Filipinos are.
The Liwanag writers and their descendants to this day see women as out of the mainstream in Filipino consciousness, out of the Catholic mainstream, which is now being manifested by issues such as the HR Bill, condoms, birth control and divorce. The idea of the separation of church and state in general. This is not to say that women in the Philippines do not have this consciousness, nor that the writers don’t, but it is not in the consciousness of the institutions of the Philippines.
The kinship with other ethnicities of color and their separation to whites and their constant rejection and battling of whiteness as a result of racism, civil rights struggles are their constant themes beside alienation.
Struggle for identity. Struggle for roots. Black and brown and red and yellow as brothers and sisters, not strangers and foreigners.
The birth of the Liwanag publication was born in the Vietnam war era. Sensibilities of anti-war and anti-military sentiments emerged and were never really put out.
A pro-labor mentality, too, became part of that consciousness and its legacy reverberates until today in many Fil-Am writers. This sentiment comes from the “manong” (first generation Filipinos) experience, and the rage of not recognizing leaders like Larry Itliong and Philip Veracruz and the Filipino common farm workers who ushered and sparked the forming of the now famous United Farm Workers Union for which only Cesar Chavez is known.
The non-idolizing of white writers and white publishers and white editors and white schools and workshops on writings. Hardly any Liwanag writer took the Iowa Writers’ training workshops really that seriously. I for one will be forever grateful to my white teachers for introducing me to great literature and writers like Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickenson, Jane Austen, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, and Dylan Thomas, but I will not be forever grateful to them for not leading me to Edith and Edilberto Tiempo, F. Sionil Jose, NVM Gonzalez, Ben Santos, Estrella Alfon, Aida Rivera-Ford and Jose Garcia Villa, for being a cog in the system that neglected these great writers.
Fil-Am sensibility takes in the machinery of having gone through the institutions of the U.S. starting as a child. They have gone to the racist grind of institutions starting with elementary schools in the U.S. and early television programming.
Generally speaking (and exceptions are if the writer has lived in the States or Canada for at least twenty years), one is still not a Fil-Am writer if he/she has already published at least one publication in the Philippines when he/she left the homeland.
Filipino-American sensibility from that point of the Liwanag writers are more akin to the vernacular, non-Tagalog literature writer of the Philippines against that of writers of Filipino and English in the Philippines. They commonly feel the angst of hegemony and marginalization always.
Filipino writers recently residing in the U.S. and Canada, whose psyches have already been established in the Philippines or whose calling or profession has already taken root might be considered “Fil-Ams” by many because of geography. But not to me, not really. Their creative minds were not developed in the States or Canada, but in the Philippines. These different sensibilities are good to know, but sometimes it is very difficult where to categorize a writer. Me, I was born in Barugo, Leyte. I moved to Manila at age 5. At 12, I left Manila and lived in North America for the last 55 years and now thinking more and more of staying here in the Philippines. Where do I belong? How would I be categorized? You tell me. In the final analysis, I think it is more important to know these contexts and histories of the differing sensibilities than where to categorize a certain writer.
“I am just a country boy who grew up in the big cities of the world (Manila, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, and San Francisco), imbued by values and a sense of justice by my elders who were mostly women.” Oscar Peñaranda is an internationally published writer and educator. Among his works are two books: Seasons by the Bay, a novel in stories and Full Deck, (Jokers Playing), a collection of poetry. He was awarded the most prestigious award of Gawad ng Alagad ni Balagtas by the Writers Guild of the Philippines and Unyon ng Mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) in 2012. He is speaking this Thursday, 23 January at Silliman University’s Audio-Visual Theater at 10:00 A.M. The title of his talk is “Myths and Realities, Misconceptions from Images of the Philippines and the United States: History, Literature and Social Justice.” Admission is free and open to all students and the community.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
