Going home, coming home

Thematic anthologies are the literary rage, and our Fil-Am counterparts have been complementing the local bandwagon in commendably assuring intelligent readers of such fine, memorable books of great value.

We can cite signal collections over the past decade that have been conceived and produced in the US by inspired and conscientious editors, such as Luis Francia’s Brown River, White Ocean, Eric Gamalinda’s and Francia’s Flippin’, Nick Carbo’s Returning a Borrowed Tongue; San Francisco’s celebrated fiction anthology Seven Manangs Wild; and only recently, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s Growing Up Filipino.

Early next year the long-awaited Screaming Monkeys is due for release, while Carbo and Eileen Tabios should also come out with Pinoy Poetics.

These efforts parallel homegrown anthologies which have been enriching our shelves, let alone our understanding of ourselves, as with the recently released Life On the Cusp, edited by Rita Ledesma and Mert J. Loinaz; Sleepless in Manila: Funny Essays, etc., on Insomnia by Insomniacs, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo; Tribute: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Fiction, edited by Timothy R. Montes and Cesar Ruiz Aquino; National Book Award winners Cogito Ergo Sum & Other Musings on Science, edited by Queena Lee-Chua, and From This Day Forward: Widows and Widowers Write, edited by Erlinda Panlilio. On Dec.9, Panililio and Anvil Publishing launch the anthology Comfort Food, with no less than National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo in attendance as a contributor.

Yesterday, Sunday, Nov. 16, at the hallowed if endangered Pinoy theater venue that is Bindlestiff in San Francisco, a book launch party was held to welcome the latest addition to the Fil-Am anthology genre.

The invite we got by e-mail from flipster Barbara Jane Reyes, forwarded from Dawn Mabalon, read thus:

"Celebrate Pinay poetry and performance at Bindlestiff Studio as we launch the long-awaited and historic anthology, Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas, a collection of works of 52 Filipina writers from around the world, edited by Marianne Villanueva and Virginia Cerenio, and just published by Calyx Books."

The benefit affair at Bindlestiff Studios on 185 Sixth St. at Howard, SF, was held from 2 to 5 p.m., with a door fee seen to contribute to the ongoing crusade to save the performance venue from threatened deconstruction.

Per the e-mailed release, "Featured writers and performers include Marianne Villanueva, Michelle Bautista, Barbara Jane Reyes, Jean Gier, Lilledeshan Bose, Veronica Montes, Alma Dizon, Angela Torres, Alison de la Cruz, Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Olivia May Malabuyo, Golda Supanova, Bernie Sibayan… Refreshments will be served and books can be purchased and signed by the contributors and editors at the event.

"All proceeds and a percentage of book sales will benefit the Save Bindlestiff fund. Help us keep the nation’s only Filipina/o American theater/performance space open! The theater is in danger of forever shutting its doors unless we raise $11,000 by December. Please help us make this goal! This event is sponsored by Bindlestiff Studios and Arkipelago Books."

On the landmark collection that assembles a good number of our finest contemporary women writers, the release from publisher Calyx Books reads as follows:

"This remarkable anthology wraps the reader in a tapestry of voices, themes, flavors, and textures, all interwoven with the thread of an Asian culture that is the unique product of American and Spanish colonization. The fiction and poetry featured in Going Home to a Landscape provide universal themes of love, sorrow, memory, loss, and triumph, while presenting a shared history of Filipinas’ struggle to maintain identity in the far-flung Philippine diaspora…

"The anthology reflects the myriad changes faced by Filipinas in the 21st century, their songs of survival, and the bridging of cultures. It gives voice and vision to the current condition of Filipinas throughout the world, while celebrating the lessons of childhood, memory, and place. These women challenge the traditional ideas of home and show how landscapes inhabit us, making up who we are, how we think, and how we live."

Among the 52 contributors are such familiar literary bylines as those of Merlie M. Alunan, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Lakambini Sitoy, Katrina Tuvera, Erma M. Cuizon, Susan Evangelista, Fran Ng, Noelle Q. de Jesus, Mabi Perez David, Lilledeshan Bose, Isabelita Orlina Reyes, and Justine Uy Camacho. And that’s only as far as the Philippine-based contributors go. Leading the sterling list of expatriate Flipina poets and writers, besides the accomplished editors themselves, are Linda Ty-Casper, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Merlinda Bobis, Luisa Igloria, Reine Arcache Melvin, Eileen Tabios, M. Evelina Galang, Catalina Cariaga, Nadine Sarreal, Conchitina R. Cruz, Angela Narciso Torres, Alison M. de la Cruz, Dawn Mabalon, Shirley Ancheta, Michelle Macaraeg Bautista, Jean Vengua Gier, Maiana Minahal, Veronica Montes, Barbara Pulmano J. Reyes, Elda Rotor, Leny Mendoza Strobel, and Grace Gamalinda Talusan.

Sorry we can’t cite everyone, and should confess that the selection of namedrops owes itself to personal familiarity with the bylines, many of whom are our fellow (e-group) flipsters, while some we recall as either having featured or enjoyed the contributions of in our own anthology Fil-Am: The Filipino American Experience of three years ago.

The foreword written by Rocio G. Davis encapsulates the rich tenor, er, soprano, of these collective voices. "The challenge, and the success, of the collection lies in the way the writers experience the blending of inner and outer landscapes, of memories that intersect with national and emotional affiliations, and of carving out a voice that speaks to everyone who has ever contemplated the problematic intervention of place and self."

The blurbs we’ve received since late October also point to an important, riveting collection.

Jessica Hagedorn, our celebrated author of the novels Dogeaters, The Gangster of Love, and the recently released Dream Jungle (which we’re receiving a copy of soon, yehey!), and who happens to be in Manila this week to participate in the Women’s Theater Festival (she’s also figuring in a book-signing session of copies of her latest novel, courtesy of Anvil Publishing, tomorrow, Nov. 18, 6 p.m., at National Book Store, Edsa Shangri-La Plaza branch), offered the following re Going Home…

"Brava! In this anthology, Marianne Villanueva and Virginia Cerenio have gathered together a vibrant, diverse array of Filipina poets and fiction writers writing in English. A wonderful new addition to the growing body of Philippine diaspora literature."

Adds Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of The Vine of Desire and The Mistress of Spices: "An evocative mélange of history and memory, daily life and dream, spanning generations and continents, speaking powerfully to all of us who know what it is to be far from home."

Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, author of Blood into Ink, Living in America: Poetry and Fiction by South Asian American Writers, weighs in: "This collection of poetry, prose, and prose poem is amazing. The voices in it vibrate across continents and can be recognized anywhere in their uniqueness."

And our good friend and favorite occasional guest reader and speaker before our Ateneo poetry class, the peripatetic R. Zamora Linmark, author of Rolling the R’s, writes: "The poems and stories in this stunning collection are poignant, raw, hip, and beautiful. A lyrically charged landscape worth revisiting again and again."

We received an advance copy of Going Home… some weeks back, courtesy of co-editor Marianne Villanueva and contributor Angela Torres. We’re only sorry that our own diasporic tendency prevented us from going through the proof more rigorously as to offer more of our own commentary. It would have been positive, too, and not only because we’ve always held Villanueva in high esteem for her own fiction, or that we happen to know and have made e-mail love with a good number of the contributors.

A product of the Ateneo (as they say), Villanueva is the author of Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (also from Calyx Books). She was a finalist for the O’ Henry Prize and received a Bread Loaf Writers Fellowship and California Arts Council Fellowships. She currently teaches at Notre Dame de Namur University and Foothill College.

Co-editor Virginia Cerenio was born in California and is a second-generation Filipino-American whose parents immigrated to the US Trespassing Innocence, a collection of her poetry, was published by Kearny Street Workshop Press.

This month has seen a series of Going Home… launchings, readings and book-signing sessions across the US of A. On Nov. 3, an evening of poetry, prose and music billed as "Bold Girls: Authors from the great new Filipina anthology, Going Home to a Landscape," was conducted at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, with the participation of contributors Melissa Aranzamendez, Luisa Igloria, Isabelita Reyes, Elda Rotor, Eileen Tabios (who flew in from Napa Valley), and editor Marianne Villanueva. Classical guitarist Michael Dadap provided music for the evening.

Another reading in New York was held at Bluestockings the next day. On Nov. 19, another launch and reading will be held at the Teachers and Writers Collaborative at 5 Union Square West, NYC.

On Nov. 1, the serial launching activities swung West with a reading at the Pusod Center in Berkeley, with Bay Area contributors Malou Babilonia, Angela Torres, Holly Calica, Dawn Mabalon and Michelle Bautista.

Malou Babilonia writes for Philippine Print News and produced documentaries for Bay Area Filipino television. Her early poems were published in Broad Topics Journal.

Angela Narciso Torres graduated from Ateneo de Manila University, and received a masters in psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her poetry has been published in the Asian Pacific American Journal.

Holly Calica is a visual artist and also expresses herself through poetry, dance and music. She has recently incorporated text and poetry into her artwork.

Dawn Mabalon tells stories as a poet, writer, and Filpina/o American historian. She co-directed and produced the video documentary Beats, Rhymes and Resistance: Pilipinos and Hip-hop in Los Angeles.

Michelle Bautista’s work has been published in Babaylan (Consortium Books), Unfaithing U.S. Imperialism, Eros Pinoy, The Asian Pacific American Journal, and maganda.

On Nov. 7, the Waverley Writers hosted a reading by three poets from the anthology at the Friends Meeting House in Palo Alto. These were Jean Gier, Dawn Mabalon and our good friend Angela Torres, who hopes that the collection is eventually co-published and/or released in Manila. Paging Karina Bolasco of Anvil!

As for the book’s publisher, Calyx Journal and Calyx Books have received numerous awards, including the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award, Literary Arts Stewart H. Holbrook Award, and The American Book Award. Since 1976, the press has published the work of over 3,500 women writers and artists.

For now, having just gone home or come home ourselves, to a chaotic landscape being governed against all odds by a woman president whom we must continue to support, not only owing to her gender, we can only quote from the final poem in the book, Leny Mendoza Strobel’s poem "Adobo":

"Adobo is of the hand-made life/ The sticky juice of pungent cloves/ Clings for days/ Clings to your hair and collar/ To your pillow and sheets/ Carries over into your dreams/ Of Home."

Villanueva and Cerenio have done generations of Filipinos and Fil-Ams – our women, men, children, terrorists and politicians, in that order – a signal service by showcasing what is best in the Pinoy, which is our incomparable ties with, however sometimes undeserved by, the homeland.