Shibboleths and stories
This just in: I’ve just learned that Nam Le, the Vietnamese-Australian writer whom I mentioned a couple of weeks ago as this year’s incoming David T. K. Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, has also won the Dylan Thomas Prize for his first book of stories, The Boat. Only in its second year, the prize — one of the world’s largest at GBP60,000 (that’s over P4 million) — is given to the best work in English in whatever genre by a writer under 30. Just 29, Nam Le is fiction editor of the Harvard Review. Oh, to be 29 again! Filipino 30-and-under writers, start your engines. Here’s the link to the news and the prize: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7720094.stm.
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Excuse this flurry of announcements that’s about to follow. ‘Tis getting to be the season to be jolly, but as everyone knows, this time of year is also crunch time for culture and things cultural, which is probably why the National Book Development Board moved its National Book Development Month from June to November (more on that next week).
As for today, if you’re a writer and are reading this in the morning, then it’s not too late for you to make plans to scoot over to the National Bestsellers Bookstore at Robinson’s Galleria this afternoon, where — from 2 to 5 — a visiting professor and expert in intercultural language education from the University of Glasgow will be meeting with some Filipino writers to discuss issues of language and writing in English in these globalized times.
I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to John Corbett earlier this year at a British Council seminar in Singapore, and I was so impressed by his presentation that I actually took notes and retained a copy of the story he used to discuss how our understanding of language can direct our life-and-death decisions.
In that particular lecture, Corbett took up the story “Walking the Dog” by Bernard MacLaverty, in which a man is kidnapped by someone whom he suspects to be an IRA gunman, and his life depends on how he pronounces the alphabet. As it happens, Irish Catholics pronounce the letter “H” as “haitch,” while Protestants say “aitch.” This is the concept of the shibboleth, a kind of verbal litmus test that establishes one’s membership in a particular group. It goes back to the Bible, where the men of Gilead used the word as a test of whether someone passing through was a friend or foe (their enemy, the Ephraimites, couldn’t pronounce the “sh” sound). So today “shibboleth” means a password, a watchword, or any word or phrase that distinguishes a group. For example, if you know “Yeba!” and “Walastik!”, that means you’re a Pinoy who was alive and sentient in the 1960s.
This afternoon, John will be meeting with writers to discuss “Writing Across Cultures,” and on tap will be questions such as:
1. When one writes consciously for a global market, must one culture-load to make the work exotic?
2. Or when that happens naturally as one writes, how much of it has to be explained to a global market?
3. Why are we not reading one another’s literature in Asia? How is translation handled in Europe? The great classics of world literature are translations to English from literature originally written in other languages — this says a lot for the art of translation.
4. Writing in English is automatically writing for an international market.
Chances are other cultures will discuss or appreciate the works. How is this method or approach to teaching another culture’s literature maximized or used competently?
I’m deeply interested in these issues, so I’m going to do my best to be there, coming from another meeting. I’m told by Karina Bolasco (the managing director of Anvil Publishing, which is sponsoring John’s visit here) that the regional directors of Random House and Simon & Schuster — Rino Balatbat and Jenny Javier, respectively — will also be attending this afternoon’s session with writers.
If you can’t make it today, or if you’re a teacher rather than a writer of literature, Prof. Corbett is also scheduled to make a presentation on Nov. 22 at a workshop on English language and literature teaching. This will be held at the Philippine Stock Exchange building in Pasig, and slots are still open for this workshop. For details, call Anvil Publishing at 637-5692 and look for Joyce Bersales or Jo Pantorillo. By special arrangement, Anvil is selling its edition of John Corbett’s An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching, and I’m sure you’ll find copies at the lecture, aside from National Book Store.
I’m hoping that after my morning meeting and the Corbett event, I can still find the energy to drive over to Makati for the launching of Ben Bautista’s Stories from Another Time (Ateneo de Manila University Press) at 5:30 at Veritas, fourth floor, Ateneo Professional Schools, Rockwell Center. Though largely self-taught as a creative writer (as they usually were, in those days), Ben managed to produce stories that — according to the master himself, Gregorio Brillantes — are “among the finest ever written in the world of the short story.”
Those stories have won Bautista Free Press, Focus and Palanca awards, and it’s about time that they were put together in a book. Fittingly enough, it’s the Ateneo — Ben’s old stomping grounds — that took the worthy project on. When I was just starting out in fiction, and never having met Ben, I stood on the receiving end of his critical judgment when he served on the board of judges of the Palancas. He judged me kindly, and today I hope to repay some of that kindness back with my presence and applause.
And just to underscore how busy and exciting things get on the cultural scene as we approach the holidays, this Friday, on Nov. 21st at 2:30 pm, playwright and puppet maker Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio — the grande dame of Southeast Asian children’s theater — will be giving a lectureon “The Challenging Art of Puppetry inthe Fields of Medicine and Education” at the Pulungang C. M. Recto, Bulwagang Rizal, UP Diliman.
Tita Amel is widely known as a pioneer in the art of puppetry in the Philippines, and for over three decades now, her Teatrong Mulat has delighted many thousands of children (and let’s not forget adults) here and abroad. Under her directorship, what used to be the UP Creative Writing Center spearheaded efforts to establish formal academic programs in creative writing, and she has been a tireless advocate of writing for children in a society too often and too narrowly obsessed with adult concerns. See you Friday as well.
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I was still too jetlagged (strange thing — this never happened to me before, so it’s another sign of creeping age) to make it to their homecoming concert last Nov. 4, but here’s three cheers, anyway, for the UP Singing Ambassadors, who returned from their sixth European tour with a string of major prizes. Conductor Ed Manguiat was elated to share the news that the UPSA had won two Grand Prizes, seven First Prizes, and three Third Prizes in five prestigious international choral competitions they joined in Poland, France, Wales, Hungary, and Switzerland. Bravo, Ed, and way to go!
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Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.
