PNU and gender- sensitive literature

I would like to thank Dr. Bert J. Tuga, president of the Philippine Normal University, and his team for holding a literary contest on gender-sensitive literature focusing on women and LGBT-plus issues. It shows how this issue has taken root even in the groves of academe. Writing about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender experience has come a long way. Remember that in 1993, Neil Garcia and I spent one year looking for contributions to our foundational text, Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing. Some wanted to use pseudonyms like Jodie Foster, while others were afraid that being in Ladlad would “destroy their reputations.”

Ladlad was launched on Holy Monday, April of 1994, with National Artist Francisco Arcellana Sr. in attendance. Our cover had a shirtless model with his face covered. The print run of 2,000 copies was sold out in two months. It was a publishing sensation. But it also had a casualty: one of our writers had to resign from his job not because of his work in Ladlad, but the school said he was “often absent.” He was sick and had filed his sick leaves. But when a school wanted to kick you out, it could invent 1001 reasons to do so.

For Ladlad 2, our brave publisher Karina Bolasco said we should focus less on sexual matters but on friendship and spirituality. We followed her request, but Ladlad 2 published in 1996 did not sell as well as the original Ladlad. In the meantime, I would collect my gay-themed journalism in three books: Seduction and Solitude, X-Factor and Gaydar. I would also translate them into Filipino, to reach more readers. Neil Garcia would also publish his books of essays. What was funny was that even our poetry books sold, because of the reputation – or notoriety – we had gained from Ladlad.

One day, I looked at the short stories I had written and saw an emerging pattern. I was actually writing a bildungsroman, a rite of passage story about a young gay man growing up in a chaotic and colorful dictatorship. I finished a first draft of my novel in 1993 at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, on a one-month writing fellowship.

I read one chapter at the Cambridge Conference on Contemporary Writing in July 1993, in a section devoted to Asian writing. After I read, the Latin Americans ran to me and asked where was the original in Spanish? I said that I write in English. And the Eastern Europeans, the grandchildren of the wicked Franz Kafka, told me that I write the way they write: with deadpan irony, making fun about the country we love.

This was my novel Riverrun. I sent it to a Philippine publisher, who wanted me to take out the middle part of the novel. It lost in a major writing contest here, since the head or the jury said there was “no ending to the novel.” I then sent it to another Philippine publisher, who wanted me to turn it into a Young Adult novel. So I took out the sexy parts and retained the parts where the gay character was as prim as a nun. But the other reader in the publishing house said it did not work as a YA novel, so I brought back the parts I had taken out.

So Riverrun was finally published in October 2015, with three other novels, as part of the Asia-Pacific Writers and Translators Conference in the Philippines. Half of the copies sold out in a few months; the rest were kept in the warehouse because I think there were alleged problems with distribution.

When there was no reprint after five years, I revised the novel and sent it to Penguin Random House South East Asia. I was expecting to wait for six months, if they would ever answer me at all. They answered after one day. The associated publisher said she had read five chapters, she liked my novel and could I give them a marketing plan and they would decide in a month?

After one month, the editor at Penguin wrote me and said, “Your novel reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez even if there is no magic realism. You have written an elegant and stirring novel.” Be that as it may, she asked me to add at least two sex scenes. I explained that gay men during my time did not have sex because they lived in conservative and Catholic Philippines. But I did write the sex scenes: one was lyrical and other was a satire. She liked both and we were set.

We already had a grand marketing plan: the novel would be launched in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, the UK and the US. When COVID-19 came, all the plans were scrapped. My novel was published six months later, in August. And there was only one launching: at the Manila international book fair, a virtual launch.

But that was fine. What I found funny was what happened later. In the UK, my book is classified as Contemporary Literature, year 2000 to the present. In the US, my novel is classified as a gay romance. The copies in the US sold out, such that they are now doing a reprint right in the US.

I told you about this odyssey of my novel Riverrun to tell you not to lose hope. I kept my novel hidden under my bed for 22 years before a Philippine edition was published. And when I later revised it and sent it to the world’s biggest trade publisher, they bought it and is now selling it globally.

There is a hunger for good Philippine writing overseas. And there is a space, as well, for marginalized writing by women and by members of the LGBT+ sector. I wish our young people would keep on writing even after this award. An award gives you cash and recognition, but it is only a pat in the back. The bigger challenge is to go back to your room and write again. Writing is not a 100-meter dash: it is a marathon.

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Email: [email protected]. Danton Remoto’s Riverrun (Penguin Books) is available at Shopee and Amazon.