Moving around ‘kind of made me an observer’

MANILA, Philippines - At the Writer’s Bar, Raffles Makati, I learn that Mia Alvar’s dad is from Davao (where she recently attended the National Literary Festival), so I can’t help asking her about Mayor Duterte. She admits not being up on local politics (“My impression is he’s a disciplinarian”), so we move on to literary matters.

Getting picked up by Random House and Knopf books is no small matter; it’s kind of a holy grail for any writer, with all that shrinking readership out there. Does Alvar feel her being Filipino has something to do with being published?

“My sense is that they did emphasize the immigration theme, because there’s a precedent for that in recent publishing successes,” she says. “I think that happens with some writers, they’ll play up the international aspect and East-West cultural clash aspect. But I felt in my day-to-day dealings that they did it in a very respectful way.”

And of course, she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if the stories weren’t solid and strong — with validation from New York Times and Oprah, no less. I ask her about karaoke, which features in several stories, if only tangentially. “I do it,” she allows with a smile. “I’m not good at it though, so I feel like I break that Filipino stereotype. I actually worried about not exploiting or exoticizing that detail by bringing it in so often.”

I ask her if Pinoy details that once seemed exotic to foreigners only 10 years ago— like sari-sari stores, balut or videoke — are commonplace now, with a new generation of millennials traveling so much and exploring everything online. Do young Americans “get” the Filipino stuff more?

“I’m not sure. Where I grew up in New York, the Philippines felt almost beyond exotic because the Fil-Am presence isn’t as vocal and unified as it is maybe on the West Coast,” she says. “I really felt like I was often the one Filipino face, and people knew more about other Asian cultures, they knew Chinese culture or Thai food.”

Which is strange, I tell her, because Filipinos are, like, the second biggest Asian group in America.

“I don’t know if I’d attribute it to a trait on the part of Filipinos, but for people observing Filipino culture, there’s a quality to it that’s harder to categorize for Westerners or Americans.”

So they resort to clichés like Imelda’s shoes?

“Yeah, that’s one of the recognizable emblems of it. For example, Filipino food is a huge trend now, but back in the day, people would ask what is Filipino food like, and it’s not easy to give a short answer. But I think people now understand that it’s not one thing, so it’s not so confusing to people.”

Brought in by the National Book Development Board and NBS for this brief book tour, Alvar’s next project — a novel — will carry on where “In the Country” leaves off. “It will be a continuation of that story, taking Milagros through after her decision at the end of the story.” Her deadline is “somewhere toward the end of 2016.”

I ask if being an outsider helped her as a writer, or helped define her as a Filipino writer.

“I do trace my own becoming a writer back to the multiple migrations when I was a kid,” she says thoughtfully. “I feel like, having moved around so much and not being able to give a short, simple answer to the question ‘Where are you from?’ attracted me to books, where it’s not about simplicity and there’s room for complicated questions of identity. It also kind of made me an observer in a lot of spaces I ended up in.”

She clarifies herself: “I hope for Filipino writers it’s not the only theme. Sometimes I get the sense in American literary fiction, if you’re an American of mainstream culture, you can write about whatever you want, but if you’re a minority or immigrant, you need to be writing about being a minority or an immigrant.”

One character in her book describes writing about the Philippines as “chop suey.” Is it hard to capture the essence of your home country in words?

“I think writing is hard, no matter what,” Alvar says. “If you stay in your own town, that’s just as hard as writing about a country with a history as complicated as the Philippines.”