True stories
April 24, 2006 | 12:00am
One of the innovations we introduced into this year’s UP Writers Workshop in Baguio was the presentation and discussion of works of what’s been called "creative nonfiction." I wrote about CNF in this column a couple of years ago, and just to refresh your memory – or to introduce CNF to absolute newcomers – it’s a kind of writing that uses the best of both journalistic and fictional techniques to present a story more dramatically than a straight factual report or something completely made up.
Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia definition of creative nonfiction, which pretty much sums up what this genre – not all that new, as it turns out – is all about:
"Creative nonfiction is a genre of literature, also known as literary journalism and narrative journalism, which uses literary skills in the writing of nonfiction. A work of creative nonfiction, if well written, contains accurate and well-researched information and also holds the interest of the reader. Forms of creative nonfiction can include essays, diaries, autobiography, biographies, magazine writing, travel writing, nature writing, science writing, histories, journalism, and the memoir."
Hundreds of students – many of them mature ones – join writing programs every year not to write stories or poems, but to draw from their own lives and experiences, shaping them into the stuff of literature. That "stuff" is a personalized form of reportage, and it is this personal engagement of the author/narrator in the subject – something that "really happened" – that distinguishes CNF from other genres and accounts for its widespread appeal. The demands of CNF on the writer are no less stringent than those of other forms; everyone may have something remarkable and memorable to write about, but not everyone can write good CNF (for that matter, not everyone can write, period).
Our graduate writing program at UP has already produced prizewinning works of CNF – among them, Lourdes Montinola’s harrowingly subdued Breaking the Silence and Erlinda Panlilio’s Teacher to Tycoon. Anyone interested in learning the craft on his or her own would do well to consult Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo’s Creative Nonfiction (UP Press, 2003), a two-volume set comprising a manual and a reader.
In the Baguio workshop, both CNF pieces drew powerful emotional reactions. The first excerpt comes from Dr. Virginia Villanueva’s account of the bombing of Jolo in 1974. A physician, Ginia was born a Tausug princess but converted to Christianity later in life. Her unique position and perspective yield passages like the following:
After the failed ambush of the plane, we return to our half-eaten breakfast with our ears buzzing. The coffee is still warm; it steadies our nerves. We barely finish when the throb of twin Huey helicopters draws us once more to our vantage point from the terrace. To get a better view this time, I stand on a marble bench connecting two corner pillars. These are broad and solid, made of poured concrete and finished with adobe. Ample protection from bullets, I think.
"The two helicopters slowly descend, making for the airport, following one another. Just as the lead Huey is over the runway and the other, hovering over the Cathedral, a concerted volley of shots burst from the ground. Simultaneously the helicopters do a vertical take-off but one falters in mid-flight, then slowly descends, a spiral of smoke in its wake, to the runway. The other, unharmed, whirls further up and turns on a dime towards our house, 50-caliber machine gun spitting fire and cutting a wide swathe on Busbus Road. The stream of refugees on the road splits into two as they dive for the side ditches. Why, there was no one on the road when I opened the gate earlier!
"Too scared to move, I press my body to a pillar. The helicopter is now so close I can see the face of the young gunner: he looks as horrified as I. But his hands are glued to the machinegun. As the helicopter passes by the house, all the trees in the garden sway wildly. The coconut tree, standing less than 10 meters from the house, is shorn of its branches like magic. The bullets thud into the front of the house and our glass jalousies rattle and splinter. I bury my face in my arms, crouching beneath the marble bench to where a force has knocked me down. Somewhere inside the house Dora cries out to her children to take cover behind the sofa as the shards of glass fall all around the living room. Were the curtains not drawn?"
For his part, writer and translator Dr. Mario Miclat told a sometimes poignant, sometimes droll story about his long years of exile in China – where he worked for Radio Peking – during the martial law period. Here’s one highlight, set in the euphoric wake of Edsa 1.
"Beijing was covered with frost when I rose from bed and saw Alma off to where her office car fetched her the following day. I preferred to tarry, unsure how I would be greeted by my officemates at Radio Peking. Just a day before, I walked out from work. It was my turn to read the news. It headlined Marcos’ swearing in as reelected president, omitting the fact that Cory Aquino was also declared president by the People Power revolutionists. I had always edited the news, citing grammatical lapses on the part of the translators, to conform to reality as much as possible, to lessen the impact of blatant disinformation that Radio Peking broadcast as the CCP’s propaganda arm. But this time, I could not do much about a one-liner bit of news. Our section chief, Li Lin, could not believe our officemates when they told him that I refused to record the day’s news. He phoned me at home. I told him I could not tell a lie.
"‘What are you hinting at?’ he wanted to know, starting to raise his voice, the very first time he ever did, too. I said that I was doing something more than a hint. I now realized, more than ever, why the announcers were encouraged to read the news and features as if they were unfeeling voice machines. The colloquial writing and conversational reading style I had introduced was totally incongruent to a totalitarian set-up.
"‘I often wondered how you could excuse yourself at night when you read the news that you would later claim were obvious fabrications of this or that party clique,’ I told him.
"‘You can’t say that over the phone!’ he said. He remained quiet for a while before he added, "OK, when you come to the office tomorrow, be sure to bring your doctor’s certification that your were sick today."
We look forward to the publication of these memorable – and true – stories in full.
I remember Pasig for other reasons more devout than the crush I had on our catechist Isabel, and on Luzviminda the dark and toothless local beauty, and on Julie Andrews and Rosanna Podesta. I was a member of the Legion of Mary (Praesidium Virgin Most Powerful), which enabled me to enter every house in the neighborhood and slurp milky macaroni soup after the Block Rosary under the holiest of guises, but which also required me to perform appropriately prayerful duties, such as attending the Good Friday procession around the poblacion. I enjoyed that task, truth to tell, reveling in the mystery of the shrouded pasos (pledged penitents in characteristically dark and heavy gowns), in the swell of the paraffin-thickened air, in the noble beauty of the mestizas who seemed suddenly to emerge from the town’s farthest and best-protected corners, like short-lived blooms.
For the first time in many years, I returned there last Good Friday, armed with a camera and a yearning to remember a life before all the missteps and complications of adulthood. I saw some of it, and was glad to recognize albeit fading vestiges of a Pasig I knew. The procession seemed shorter and less imposing than it used to be; one of my teenage crushes might have passed by and I wouldn’t even have noticed. Sic transit gloria mundi, as my priest-friend and fellow political prisoner Fr. Joe Nacu used to exclaim whenever he lost in chess, but I think some candle had flamed out within me first, through none of Pasig’s fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
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