In Los Angeles, the Philippine Expressions Bookshop and the Philippine Consulate General present "A Century and More, of Challenge and Change: The Filipino Migration to the United States Through Printed Words and Images" as a feature of the annual Authors Night, starting at 5:15 p.m. at the Consulate’s Rizal Hall.
The event helps commemorate the Filipino American Centennial celebrating 100 years of Philippine migration to the United States, which milestone has occasioned The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program to present public programs highlighting various aspects of the Filipino American experience.
Linda Nietes, the lady behind the mail-order bookshop that has served the Fil-Am community all over North America for 22 years, started Authors Night in December 1989 when she was still tending a real bookstore in Beverly Hills. New books were launched and new authors introduced. An outreach program featured lectures by visiting Filipino scholars, as well as poetry readings, "Meet the Author" parties, and other literary soirees.
When constant rain inundated LA in 1992, the bookstore became a casualty, so that eventually Linda – who had run the Casalinda Bookshop in Forbes Park in Makati before she moved to the States in 1983 – established a mail-order bookshop instead.
In 1994, the celebration of Authors Night resumed. Sometimes it had an "In Memoriam" segment that honored the memory of our fine writers who had passed away during the year. In 1999, honored were NVM Gonzalez and Renato Constantino.
I recall attending one such Authors Night some years back, when it was also held at the Consulate. Good friend Wilfrido "Ding" Nolledo was there with his butihing maybahay Blanca Datuin Nolledo. I still treasure our group photos during that occasion.
For the past few years it’s been held on the eve of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which this year takes place on the UCLA campus on April 29 to 30. Linda has made sure that Philippine Expressions will have a booth at the bookfest.
For the Authors Night program, being presented are the following books and their respective authors:
Rustle of Bamboo Leaves: Selected Haiku & Other Poems by Victor C. Gendrano, a retired librarian of the Los Angeles County Public Library and a resident of Southern California. From 1987 to 1999 he edited and published Heritage, a quarterly magazine on Filipino culture, arts and letters and the Filipino American experience. Now, his very personal book of poetry dedicated to his departed wife Lucy consists of traditional Japanese-style poetry: haiku, senryu, tanka, haiga, haibun, as well as the American cincquain, Korean sijo and some free verse, a few of which are written in Filipino. It has been hailed as "a wonderful requiem."
Ambrosia, a fully illustrated book for children by Dan Manalang, an L.A. resident who started writing journal entries on growing up Filipino American. Now he has produced his first book, a "poetic story that teaches children to see the beauty of diversity."
Ghosts of the Insurrection, a novel by Wilmo C. Orejola, born and raised in Basey, Samar. He migrated in 1982 after receiving cardiovascular surgery training in the Philippines. In 1991, the New Jersey-based surgeon authored his first book, an epic poem titled A Mat Weaver’s Story: The Legend of Bungansakit. His second, the novel being launched on Authors Night, evokes the "howling wilderness" episode in his native province, an offshoot of the Balangiga massacre during the Philippine-American War.
Common Destiny: Filipino American Generations by Juanita Tamayo Lott, a founding co-chair of the first Pilipino Studies Program in the US. Her previous titles include Asian Americans: From Racial Category to Multiple Identities; Asian American Almanac; and Spotlight on Heterogeneity. Her latest book "recognizes the diverse and complex US population and its destiny through scenes depicting four generations of Filipino Americans." The Table of Contents alone promises a fascinating read: "The future of Nicholas and fourth generation Filipino Americans; Crossing waters: the pioneer generation of Filipino Americans; The dinner table: children of the pioneers; Flying across skies: the post-1965 immigrant generation; Fast food take out: multicultural/ multiracial grandchildren and great grandchildren; and The common destiny of multigenerational Americans."
A program highlight will be the screening of Isabel Enriquez Kenny’s documentary on the fabled Manila Men – "Dancing the Shrimp: The Filipinos in Louisiana." Fifth- and sixth-generation Filipinos reminisce about growing up in New Orleans, and recreate the little-known history of a once-thriving shrimping community known as Manila Village in Louisiana, possibly the earliest Asian settlement in the United States.
Isabel recently completed a screenplay on the Filipino American experience in the salmon canneries in Alaska, titled "Till... the Salmon Sing" (a line from W.H. Auden’s poem "As I Walked Out One Evening"). Intended as a "feature-length docudrama about the first class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of migratory non-white cannery workers against some of Alaska’s largest salmon companies," the screenplay awaits funding.
Authors Night 2006 in Los Angeles should be another memorable get-together for the Fil-Am community. Authors will sign their books during the evening, as well as at the Philippine Expressions booth on the weekend of the LA Times bookfest. Interested parties can place orders for autographed copies until April 27, by e-mailing Linda Nietes at linda_nietes@sbcglobal.net.
On the same day, the breadth of a continent away, The Carlos Bulosan Symposium titled "America Is in The Heart for The 21st Century" will be held from 9:15 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Room LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Bldg., in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
The following is from Reme Grefalda, editor of Our Own Voice online literary journal for Filipinos in the diaspora:
"The Library, in conjunction with the Asian Division Friends Society (ADFS), is coordinating the program as a centennial project to commemorate the first-wave migration to Hawaii by Filipino nationals. Our Own Voice is the ADFS’s partner in the project to reintroduce the writings of Bulosan to the public. Bulosan depicted the early Filipino migrant experience in the United States and is best known for his book America Is in The Heart.
"In conjunction with the symposium, attendees will have the opportunity to view the Philippine Collections on display at the Asian Reading Room.
"Because the Library is considering this a major event, the Asian Division will be digitally recording the entire proceedings for transfer into its website sometime this summer so the symposium can be downloaded by classes and by scholars worldwide.
"A book on these symposium papers and other writings on Bulosan is due for release in mid-September this year, to be published by Our Own Voice.
"On April 29 at the meeting of the Asian Division Friends Society, the Carlos Bulosan Archives will be formally launched. Remy Cabacungan, the major sponsor, together with R. Sonny Sampayan, Bulosan’s grand nephew, will be doing the honors of cutting the ribbon. (Remy Cabacungan turned 98 this year.)
"Symposium co-sponsors include the Philippine American Writers and Artists Inc.; the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA); Arkipelago Philippine Books, San Francisco; Carayan Press, San Francisco; and Remedios G. Cabacungan."
Oh to be in Washington that weekend, if only I can quadrilocate from Manila through LA and Cleveland, Ohio.
The symposium starts with welcome remarks by Dr. Hwa Wei Lee, chair of the Library’s Asian Division, to be followed by the keynote address by Albert F. del Rosario, Philippine Ambassador to the US.
The papers to be read by notable Bulosan scholars are the following:
"Blueprint for a Bulosan Project: Prospects for Renewing the Filipino Critical Imagination" by Dr. E. San Juan, Jr., Philippine Cultural Studies Center, Storrs, CT;
"The Third Oriental Invasion: Filipino Immigrants as ‘Race Problem’ in the Early Twentieth Century American West" by Dr. Rick A. Baldoz, visiting fellow, Stanford University Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity;
"Carlos Bulosan, the Postcolonial Poet" by Dr. Susan Evangelista, Palawan State University;
"Some Notes for Reconsidering Carlos Bulosan’s ‘Third World Literary Radicalism’ by Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao, University of Michigan;
"Carlos Bulosan’s Songs of Innocence and Experience: From Utopian Americanism and Internationalism to Filipino Nationalist Politics and Culture" by Dr. Tim Libretti, Northeastern Illinois University;
"Are We There Yet? – Mapping Carlos Bulosan’s America Is In The Heart" by Dr. Jorshinelle Taleon-Sonza, Rutgers University;
"Carlos Bulosan: The Filipino Working Class Legacy as Reflected in the Alaska Cannery Workers’ Experiences" by Cindy Domingo, co-founder, the Carlos Bulosan Historical Project in Seattle; and
"Bulosan’s Laughter: The Making of Carlos Bulosan" by Dr. Lane Hirabayashi, University of California-Riverside, and Marilyn Alquizola, San Francisco State University.
Carlene S. Bonnivier serves as moderator, while writer-composer Rod Garcia performs "Songs in Exile: A Musical Tribute."
Video footage will also be screened: Scenes from The Romance of Magno Rubio as adapted for the stage by Lonnie Carter, courtesy of Ma-Yi Theater New York. It comes to a close with a PowerPoint presentation by Reme-Antonia Grefalda, titled "Healing by Recollecting."
Going by a quick browse of some of the symposium papers currently featured in the special Bulosan issue of Our Own Voice, why, not even the NBA playoffs can pull me out of the capital that day. (Well, especially since the Cleveland Cavaliers are likely to be visiting with the Washington Wizards for Games 3 and 4.)
I was particularly impressed by Epifanio San Juan’s and Susan Evangelista’s papers. Too bad we’re running out of space to share larger excerpts here. But here’s from San Juan, who may rightfully claim to have started the Bulosan adulation trend by authoring, in 1972, the UP Press book Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle, and subsequently editing the first anthology of Bulosan’s writings as a special May 1979 issue of Amerasia Journal.
In his symposium paper he warns:
"Because Bulosan is now required reading for thousands of college students and an icon for local folks, he is in danger of becoming an allergy or aversion. We may cite here places or sites honoring his memory and example: the Carlos Bulosan Memorial Exhibit in Seattle’s International District; the Carlos Bulosan Theater in Toronto, Canada, a community-based professional theater company run by Filipino Canadians; a rumored plan of the National Press Club in Manila to set up a Carlos Bulosan Foundation Prize; and a Carlos Bulosan Heritage Center recently inaugurated in New York City. Is there a Bulosan Pizza Parlor or Bulosan Shopping Mall around the corner? Like Rizal, Bulosan is in danger of becoming inutile, trivialized, taken for granted and museumified as a literary ‘high priest,’ or monumental anito (ancestor)."
For her part, Evangelista contextualizes Bulosan as poet:
"Bulosan liked to think of himself first as a poet, even though most of his readers are more familiar with his fiction…. (H)e did seem to have a poet’s sensibility – he was extremely emotional and had a very vivid, highly sensuous imagination; he loved the details of sight and sound and feeling, whether he was idealizing the more pastoral aspects of his homeland or struggling with the wide, alienating landscapes of the US.
"Note, for example, the sensuousness of "My Father was a Working Man": ‘My father was a working man/ In the land of the big rains,/ The water glistened on his arms/ Like the cool dew in the morning/ When the rice was growing tall: / The rich clay clung on his legs, / Dark brown clay of great fertility, / Dark brown like his body in the rain.’ …
"His sensitivity to visual imagery gives us industrial images that are just as startling and vivid as his natural images: ‘I saw sunlight mount intricate / Webs of steel and stone/ Will you…/ Remember the bewildering upward thrust of buildings, / The amazing conflagrations of stabbing lights?’
"He also has a very unique way of inserting his own physical being into a much broader context: ‘I find it hard to walk in the night./ But I watch history rush through the heart of America, / From one ocean to meadow to another ocean, feeling / The voluminous downpour of blood from the lung, / The sudden snapping of red wires upon my side.’ …
"But he also commented that it was his poetry that offered the clearest, most complete form of his political thought – and he was a highly political being. For some of us the union between poetry and politics is a bit problematic, since poetry seems by its very nature to be personal and concrete, and a poem that ends with an abstract political generalization of some sort thus strikes a false note.
"Bulosan managed to bridge this gap successfully most of the time, despite the occasional ‘false note’."
For the rest of these wonderful papers, you may log on to www.oovrag.com. Like me, you’ll thank Sonny San Juan for managing to procure and preserve Carlos Bulosan’s library card for the L.A. Public Library.
Mabuhay si Bulosan! Indeed, as Grefalda pays tribute: "The man was a writer. He wrote about a Dream. Dipped this dream in blood and scars. Made it reachable. Gave it structure, the stuff of searing soul. What he wrote about captured the spirit of Asian peoples migrating from their homeland. For the migrant is Everyman. He unleashed a vision so that his voice rang clear beyond his own time, and will peal like bells or toll a dirge throughout centuries."