Category: books

“The Filipino is Worth Blogging For” and indie publishing

The Filipino is Worth Blogging For is the title of a book katrina and i are self-publishing and launching on thursday july 19, along with the main attraction, katrina’s first book: of love and other lemons, essays personal and political about being girl-woman-pinay, otherwise known as ka-women-an (hyphens mine), in this day and age in this macho-pa-rin country, the kind of essays i would have wanted to write for my generation but never had the courage to, just because my parents and sibs would have disowned me.  a must-read for all girls, young and old, and their fathers sons brothers lovers too.  the essays are illustrated with new and previous works of artists met, friends made, in the last two years.

… an honest, moving portrait of a young woman who cannot but train her critical eye on the world even as her life splinters around her and who realizes, not without cost, that “the most personal things that informed our real lives, kawomenan could not respond [to].” Where the writer breaks into a lyrical mode, the reader becomes privy to the intimate and the hidden that the persona shares with a beloved. No mere intermissions, these privacies serve as yet another act of resistance when held in counterpoint to the weight of the public and political that inform her life, small acts but no less significant. By turns brave, bewildered, unsparing, and vulnerable, the essays strive to reinvigorate kawomenan by accommodating the experiences and aspirations of a new generation of Filipinas. — from the foreword by Mabi David

while katrina was wrapping up of love…, this second book happened on the side.  the title had come first, inspired by the slogan “The Filipino Is Worth Designing For” on t-shirts of the cobonpue-layug-pineda group at the height of the naia-1 controversy.

joel remembers when it came to him, The Filipino is Worth Blogging For! that at once he bought the domain name, for a support marketing website.  then we sat on it, haha, naghintayan, until i realized that it was i who had the luxury of time while awaiting the foreword and blurbs for my edsa uno book, so i plunged in.

the hard part was going through more than a thousand blogposts over 4 years and choosing the events / issues / people that katrina and i had both blogged about (without repeating each other), and finding that with some rearranging, under new categories and in chronological order (rather than newest blogpost first), narratives are revealed of recent and current history, social and political, as it unfolds in natural time.  a leap from the computer screen into the pages of a book, and it works (if i may say so myself who shouldn’t)!

… this collection fairly crackles with inquisitive and insightful electricity, and serves as engaging, persuasive testimony regarding the merits of following the writings of these authors in venues online or otherwise.  — from blurb by blogger Jaime Oscar M. Salazar

Binabasag nila ang pagkamanhid na namamayani sa lipunan, ipinaparamdam ang samu’t saring porma ng pang-aapi at panlilinlang. Kung hindi ka man sang-ayon sa isang tindig, hindi mo naman maikakailang may punto ang kanilang pag-iisip.  — from blurb by blogger Teo Marasigan

why indie publishing

mainstream publishing houses can make it easy for you, in a sense, put out your book at little cost to you, if any, but usually you have to make pila for who-knows-how-long — unless you’re part of the canonized circle, or very well-connected — but you get only a rather small share of sales, far from commensurate to all the time and energy and creativity you poured into your work, unless of course you’re already a sikat bestseller, in which case you get a better deal, someone correct me if i’m wrong.

the alternative is to do it yourself.  you put out your own money to pay artists who will layout your book and design your cover.  meanwhile you find a printing press, preferably one that’s known to do good work for indie publishers, like benny jalbuena’s corasia, and you choose the paper you like or can afford, and you negotiate prices, and talk serious deadlines, so you can plan your launch.

of course you’ll try to keep expenses low.  you’ll make tawad the artists — helps if you know them personally, mga kindred souls ‘yan — but make sure they’re also into digital technology, because the printing press will expect a usb stick or hard drive containing all the book data.  you’ll choose cheap but presentable paper; you might even keep the number of pages down as the cost per book goes up the thicker the book, and the fewer the number of copies you want.  if you’re lucky the printing press will ask for 50 percent down lang, the rest to follow as the book sells.

you’ll get your money back naman , and possibly turn a small profit in the long run depending on how you price your book — what profit margin you’ll be happy with — and, most important, how you sell it.  you could get into the bookstores, directly or through a distributor, but they’ll want anywhere from 40 to 55 percent of sales (yes, without any puhunan on their part, at least the ones we checked out) which would mean your book gets quite expensive, unless you’re willing to forego profit and just make bawi your puhunan, then it gets just a little expensive.

the alternative is to sell it yourself, which means turning on your most shameless and yabang self — your book is worth buying and reading, you’ll even sign every copy, who knows it might become a collector’s item!  at the launch, get as many of your family and friends and friends of friends to come and buy.  it helps a lot if you give away copies to writers and columnists in the hope that one out of ten comes up with a rave review for the papers and/or the internet.  it helps a lot, too, if you have a website for your book, where you can promote it and  post contact numbers for orders.

we learned all that when we published lola concha’s book, revolutionary routeslast year.  i didn’t want to be edited by a publisher whose concerns would be different from mine, and i wanted to be sure it would look exactly as i envisioned it, which meant katrina working closely with the artists to the very end.  and i wanted to price it cheap while making a little for my work, so i did the index myself, and a cousin did the editing, gratis et amore, and i asked for and got donations from family that covered printing costs and a sosyal launch sa filipinas heritage in makati, lots of food and drinks, lola concha style.

in contrast, of love and other lemons is a katrina project — sampid lang ang the filipino is worth blogging for — all expenses ours, so we’re doing it the way katrina’s indie-publishing friends do it.  in a launch-friendly venue, chef’s bistro in q.c, which doesn’t charge for events in the hope that those who attend will order some of their good food.  katrina’s buying the first 100 or so bottles of beer to get the ball rolling. :)

the good news is, mang benny has texted, tapos na katrina’s book, and worth blogging for is almost done, delivery on wednesday, what a relief!   see you at the launch!

The Secret of Paula Herrera, from Tiaong to Tayabas circa 1891

by curatormuseo

“In 1891, WHEN my great great grandmother Paula Cerrada Herrera was arrested, her arms tied behind her elbow-to-elbow, and made to walk all the way from Tiaong to the town of Tayabas escorted by four guardias civiles, she was no ordinary peasant even if she could neither read nor write.”

After reading this first sentence of Angela Stuart-Santiago’s engrossing Revolutionary Routes: Five Stories of Incarceration, Exile, Murder and Betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980, the innocent reader falls into a beautiful trap. After all, who wouldn’t be curious to find out what sin, or crime (is there a difference?) Paula committed 120 years ago that deserved all 50 years of her aching body to walk for about 30 kilometers and to be imprisoned for about 67 “harrowing” days?

read on 

Family memory as fine history

By Alfred Yuson

If there’s one book that has impressed me overmuch with its conceptualization and execution, read ambition and fine writing, it’s Revolutionary Routes: Five Stories of Incarceration, Exile, Murder and Betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980 by Angela Stuart-Santiago.

The exemplary work is based on the memoirs in Spanish of Concepcion Herrera Vda. De Umali, as translated into English by Concepcion Umali Stuart.

That it’s a history book should not intimidate our usual readers, for there are lessons to be learned here: basically how an author can transmute extant material that may have only been originally of interest to family, clan, tribe or province into a nation’s pure gold.

I’d be very disappointed if it doesn’t grab a book award next year for its category, or even when ranged against all other titles produced this past year.

The foreword alone by the eminent Reynaldo C. Ileto attests to its importance:

“Revolutionary Routes is more than a family history across three generations. Author Angela Stuart Santiago has deftly woven together the memoirs, clippings, correspondence and other traces of her family’s past into a micro-history that spans the late 19th century up to the 1950s. While this book is rooted in the specific experiences of a family that lived in Tiaong and its adjoining towns in southwestern Tayabas (now Quezon) province, it also tells us much, from the ground up, about everyday life in the countryside under the shadow of successive imperial and national regimes. This book can also be read as a modern history of the Philippines.”

Indeed, deft has been the handling of material that turns precious only through projection and extension into what it may also or all mean, like poetry. And no, it isn’t simply interpretation or “deconstruction” at work here, but a loving, inspired, and often brilliant retelling that gathers both kinds of force — centripetal and centrifugal — to whip up the fervor of candor, imagination, personal mythos, narrative construct — yes, that very telling tapestry of all things cerebrated and celebrated — often accompanied by a Cheshire cat’s grin.

Fast takes:

“Señor (Rafael) Palma continued to relay to Conchita’s maestras the course that the revolution was taking, such as the attacks and advances in some provinces, towns, and the outskirts of the capital. By then the action was in Cavite where Emilio Aguinaldo was proving to be a knight in shining armor. And Jose Rizal was back in Fort Santiago, accused of treason and complicity in the evolution.”

Follow an excerpt from a young Palma’s recollection, then the author’s interspersed dialogue with this voice, as it does with other voices, such as that of the child Conchita:

“We did not hear the shots but we did wake up when we heard drums and shouting. We ran to the windows and saw a town crier flanked by two soldiers. He was striking a drum hanging from his neck, announcing at the top of his voice: ‘Ngayong umaga babarilin si Dr. Jose Rizal!’ (Dr. Jose Rizal will be executed this morning!) This was repeated every 10 minutes all over the streets of Tondo, probably in all the streets of Manila.”

Forward to the Spanish-American-Filipino contretemps of triangulation, with the home turf of Tayabas as scene, and the author providing a compressed picture show:

“Life was organized so that anytime the war’s wounded, sick, and hungry walked in, there would be food and medical treatment available. Every night, six men came to pound two sacks of palay and six women to air and clean the one cavan of rice produced for consumption the next day. Adjacent to the corral where the carabaos rested at night was another enclosure where farmers stacked the hay and grass for feed and also where the cooks broiled meats. Sometimes, as many as two hundred barbecue sticks with five pieces of meat on each stick would be cooking at one time.”

Conchita is made to “weigh in”:

“Several times we gave refuge and food to our soldiers who with courage and fervor sustained the war against the Americans bent on forcibly taking over the Republic. The Battalion Banahaw had its quarters here, and a company led by Captain Norberto Mayo of Lipa, and two other battalions.”

Why, this is fascinating storytelling, with many voices, of past and present, immersed in conversation, and the reader simply eavesdropping in sustained delight. And what we’ve quoted is only from the third chapter, on “Isidro, the Revolutionary,” which follows “Family Secrets” and “Paula, the Peasant.” Characters are introduced and allowed entry, if peripherally for some, into the dialogue.

The rest of the chapters are titled “Tomas, the Lawyer”; “Crisostomo, the Guerilla”; “Narciso, the Congressman”; and “Family & Country.” Thus do the five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal (and then some: the back stories involving romance, gossip, farming rice and coconut, generational torch-passing, etc.) unfold and provoke an ear to be better pressed against memory’s “dear filial roar” of nation-building.

This is how history ought to be shared, or okay, dispensed or taught, in schools and hearths and homes. Not just by applying the now over-trendy “out of the box” mode, but by throwing out the box altogether. And allowing all of the gift items that come prancing through the family door equal, individual entry. And have them dance together in the moveable feast of a ballroom, enclosed or rustic, that spells clan party.

These convergent narratives aren’t just an airing of skeletons in aparadors and tocadors, but an orchestrated jangling of memory as of those nights of street caroling, from house to house, provincial boundaries go hang (as a mobile that could fascinate and bode well for the occupant of a rocking baby’s crib.) And we are all taught how a nation we’ve become, or are becoming, in more ways than one.

The book is published independently, that is, by StuartSantiago Publishing, Mandaluyong City and Pulang Lupa Foundation, Brgy. Lumingon, Tiaong, Quezon. And for the most part, made available through direct purchase. Check out www.revolutionaryroutesbook.com. You’d do well to curl up with this book through cloudy Christmas.

Author, author! Bravo, Angela Stuart-Santiago!

Slim pickings @ Manila’s lit fest 2011

by Katrina Stuart Santiago

Let me begin with a confession: I take festivals and conferences, no matter how big or small, seriously.

Regardless of whether I pay to get in or not, whether it’s here or elsewhere, whether it’s an art fest or a literature conference, I go in on that first day, knowing I will go the rest of the days, always ready to get involved in discussions and prepared to be blown away by the brilliance of artists who are ready to discuss their work and the landscape of creativity that they are necessarily part of. These gatherings after all carry the weight of diversity and difference, rendering us all—participants and panelists alike—uncomfortable to some extent, and rightfully so. We prepare to be questioned, we prepare for discussions.

The Manila International Literary Festival (MILF) 2011 deserved this expectation. Organized by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), this is a measure of what government thinks important in light of literature and publishing in the country; happening in posh Makati with a P2000-peso price tag, its exclusivity was clear.  But I paid. Despite my gut telling me I shouldn’t need to—I’m a working writer after all, and I was flown in by the National Arts Council (NAC) of Singapore for their Singapore Writers’ Fest after all.

But I’m not one to throw my weight around. Besides I thought this would be a venue for some intelligent discussions on literature and publishing as they happen in these shores, and I thought this was something I couldn’t miss because it will inform the kind of writing that I do. Given the changing landscape of publishing and literature, at the very least I thought the conversations to be had here would be new.

A sinking feeling  

I thought wrong. A day in, and after the tone was set for more critical discourses on literature and writing by both plenary speaker Resil Mojares and Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Diaz (both of whom deserve essays all their own), I began to have a sinking feeling that this wasn’t a literary fest as it was a writers’ fest; that this wasn’t even a writers’ fest, but a how-to-be-a-writer fest. Because there were one too many panels with the international literary agents and book editor who were invited to speak; there were also by-invitation-only meet-and-greet sessions with them for “chosen writers”—that should’ve been a sign that this was not for those of us who are not chosen. Later it becomes clear that the goal was to bring together our writers and these international literary agents; had I known this was the point, I wouldn’t have attended the MILF at all.

But of course there were other panels here, and surely steering clear of the how-to-get-published-elsewhere and how-to-write talks should’ve meant some intelligent discussions with our local writers? Surely the brilliance I was looking for, the reason for these international agents to even want to be here, must come from our own writers?   But our local writers could only be found wanting.

Granted I could only go to one panel out of three parallel sessions at any given time, and experiences will differ (check out Carmela Lapeña’s write-up ), but for a government-organized international festival, at a price so steep even middle-class-earner-me had to think twice about paying up, every darn panel should’ve been brilliant.   Or at the very least honest about the creative task, with a great dose of self-reflexivity about the literary system in these shores, with a sense of what needs to change especially if the goal is global competitiveness.   No such luck. If there’s anything the MILF 2011 proved, it’s still this fact: the literary world in this country remains a very small circle made up of older writers who have cared for and to whom a set of younger writers are indebted.

Here was literary patronage like no other, nepotism lives, uncritical participants included. That the last time I was a Comparative Literature major was in the year 2000, and that a decade since things remain within the same bubble, is just tragic.

Of false notions and shamelessness 

In the panel with the international literary agents, instead of the Pinoy audience honestly answering questions about why there’s no editing process in place for local books, the response was about a lack of funds instead of the truth: in the land of sacred cows, established writers would get offended were they told they needed editing.   In the panel on writing away from home, the representative for Filipino American writing, Gemma Nemenzo, categorically said that the Filipino-American question has “long been settled.”

I wanted to ask: pray tell, since when? In truth when you talk about Filipino writing that happens elsewhere in the world, you must also know that it’s only as unstable as an economy that’s dependent on foreign remittances. In truth if we are to talk about Filipino writing in America, we must only raise two names and right there see how false notions of settling and celebration are: Carlos Bulosan and Miguel Syjuco.

The former was a migrant worker, an apple picker who published books on the migrant Filipino experience in America in the 1940s, and a writer of fiction in English who rarely studied in the academe, rarely honored with inclusion in seminal anthologies and studies on Filipino writing, much less Filipino writing in America.

The latter is celebrated by the local literati, and in an interview with The New York Times decided to talk about being part of the elite in Manila, with no apologies in sight.   We might say that this is shamelessness reserved for someone like Syjuco, elite in Manila, expat in Canada—far from being a Filipino apple picker.

But there is shamelessness in our shores too, and it’s the kind that we reveal when we decide that we can sit in a panel to talk about writing and not prepare for it. It’s a shamelessness that’s about resting on one’s laurels—in fact, a shamelessness that’s about even imagining laurels to be true.

Not prepared    

Now much must be said about the Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgos, Charlson Ongs and Gemino Abads of this world who prepared for their panels, no matter that they might invoke their right to not have to, or go the way of their peers who presume that charm and extemporaneity can see them through to a panel’s end. But there’s no excuse—no excuse!—for younger writers to think that all they have to do is sit in front of an audience, rattle off the work they’ve done, and then demand that they be seen as credible.

The panel that was supposed to discuss literature off the page, that is literature being rendered in other media, only had as one bright light Joel Toledo, jetlagged and obviously tired, but prepared with a piece on how poetry must first work on that page, before it’s removed from it in whatever way.  That panel went downhill from there.

Khavn dela Cruz talked about his work as filmmaker and showed a clip of the film version of Norman Wilwayco’s “Mondomanila,” saying nothing about the process, and instead spending his time talking about the film festivals he’s been invited to. Kookie Tuason talked about herself, and then showed spoken-word videos that she’s worked on recently and not much else. For both dela Cruz and Tuason there was nothing but a whole lot of self-centered rhetoric, not even a sense of being critical about their own work, about the kind of creativity that must be negotiated, sacrificed, and highlighted in the act of transferring text from the page to elsewhere.

The lack of a critical stance was also in the panel on creative non-fiction. Save for Susan Lara who actually wrote something for the panel (but rightfully thought she should be in the panel on the memoir), here were young writers who had nothing prepared for the subject of writing the real, and nothing new to say about creative non-fiction: none of them were going beyond the notions of honesty and just writing about oneself.   When asked how to deal with real people being hurt by this kind of writing, the answers were either of the you-can’t-please-everybody vein (Luis Katigbak and Carljoe Javier) or the fictionalize-it! vein (April Yap and Lara); that these are highly questionable responses seemed beside the point. When questions about the form being masturbatory and the lack of liability they all subscribed to were raised, the answers were neither here nor there.

In this sense, it’s not even the fact that these young writers didn’t prepare for their panels that’s the problem; it’s the fact that they think exactly within the box set by their literary parents, which is just ultimately sad. It’s also proof positive of how the system of patronage works, sacrificing the kind of critical thinking that has to inform any kind of writing at all.

Refreshing honesty

Thank goodness for four (count that!) younger writers who were obviously removed from this system in some form or manner, and had the gall and temerity (probably without knowing it) to talk about their work differently. Tweet Sering and Bebang Siy’s panel on gendered writing was refreshing because both women were honest about the task of creativity.

Siy’s narration of her writing history was riddled with stories of the pittance she’d get paid and the difficulty of getting into a writers’ group. Sering’s take on the question of gender inadvertently revealed her as a writer who reads, and thinks her writing part of these other voices.

Across these two writers it became clear how putting a premium on honesty ties together with a clear sense of being responsible for what we say. And how it is hard work, no ifs and buts about it.

Hard work resonated as well in the panel on poetry with Abad and younger poets/teachers Paolo Manalo and Allan Popa. I would’ve wished the latter two a panel that wasn’t focused on the teaching of poetry, especially since there weren’t a whole lot of teachers in the audience anyway. Suffice it to say that Manalo’s take on poetry as something that’s about both mind and body, and Popa’s piece on inhabiting a poem and its field of possibilities, alongside Toledo’s piece, should’ve been in a poetry panel all their own.

That Popa responded to Mojares’ questions about local poetry and its teaching, with the intelligence of someone who knows it like the back of his hand, and who knows of the landscape bigger than that small room in Ayala Museum and the smaller circle of the literati, was that one moment when I thought there was hope for literature extraneous to the MILF.

That the Popas and Serings, Manalos and Siys, of this world are few and far between, and are dealt with accordingly by the young and old members of the literati, with nary a celebration is telling of the kind of systemic parochialism that ails publishing and writing in this country. That this is all I take from an event organized by my own government via the NBDB, is beyond tragic.   I want my money back. –KG, GMA News

read the rest here