21st century literature

The proposed curriculum for Senior High School (SHS) contains two literature subjects – “21st Century Literatures of the World” and “21st Century Literatures from the (Philippine) Regions.” (It has been suggested that the latter be changed to “Contemporary Philippine Literature and the Arts from the Regions.”)

These are derived from the two literature subjects in the old General Education Curriculum (GEC), namely, “Literatures of the World” and “Literatures of the Philippines.” In the new GEC, these two literature subjects are no longer included, because the new core subjects are all interdisciplinary rather then disciplinal.

The two subjects in SHS are disciplinal. They are meant to ensure that all Filipino high school graduates have a good understanding of what is happening today in the field of literature, and by extension, in the arts.

Why 21st century only? Simply because SHS students were all born in or just before the 21st century. This century is their century. For them, the 20th century is what the 19th century is to us teachers.

There is also another reason. Just as the British writer Virginia Woolf said of the turn of the 20th century, namely, that “on or about December 1910 human character changed,” something major happened to literature on or about December 2000.

C21: Centre for Research in Twenty-first Century Writings, based in the University of Brighton, puts it succinctly: “The first decade of the new millennium witnessed a range of exciting developments in contemporary writings in English, from innovations in recognised forms such as the novel, poem, play and short story to developments in digital writings, creative writings and genres. Alongside these developments, the publishing industry also changed, with technological advances giving rise to the dawn of the eBook and corporate sponsorship igniting debates about the usefulness of literary prizes and festivals.”

Just think of the most recent literary texts done in the Philippines. We have “textula,” a poetry genre mastered by Frank Rivera: entire poems are written and read on mobile phones. Graphic novels are becoming as respectable as prose novels among literary critics. Poems meant to be recited in front of large audiences have become more fashionable than poems meant to be read silently by a single reader (fulfilling one of Cirilo Bautista’s prophecies about the future of poetry, by the way).

Elsewhere in the world, writers are doing things they did not do much until recently. Think of prose novels being serialized on blogs, with readers suggesting to authors (and authors obediently accepting) that the plot or the characters should be changed. Think of hypertextual poems, where readers move from one website to another because of embedded links in the words, sometimes not returning to the original pages at all. Think of enhanced eBooks, where readers are treated to audiovisual clips that not only support the narrative in a novel, but actually are crucial to the development of plot and character. Think of flash fiction, which has been brought to an extreme with six-word and even one-word short stories.

Of course, none of these forms of literature were born only in the 21st century. Hypertext, for example, has been around for at least two decades.

Six-word short stories have been around for a long time. The best-known is Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Urban legend (which may actually be true) says Hemingway called it his best work.

Pre-21st century writers like Margaret Atwood have written such stories. Atwood, for example, wrote this: “Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”

Neil Gaiman (perhaps the best example of a 20th century writer who has successfully transformed himself into a 21st century writer) wrote this: “I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss …?”

There is a growing body of literary criticism on 21st century literature. There is, for example, an entire journal devoted to it, “C21 Literature: Journal of 21st Century Writing.”

There have been several professional conferences on the topic, such as “E-reading between the lines: 21st century literature, digital platforms and literacies” last July in Brighton. The paper titles reveal some of the main trends in the emergent field: “Digital Theory on Literature Reading Lists, The Digitisation of Reader Response, Star Texts: The Next Generation, The Book App, Digital Literatures: Digital Democracies [or] Digital Threats?” The conference raised a practical question: “Should readers be given the choice of both printed and electronic formats – or is the (printed) book set to become the vinyl of the twenty-first century?”

In our country, graphic novels such as Ferdinand Benedict G. Tan and Jonathan A. Baldisimo’s “Trese 5: Midnight Tribunal” and Carlo Vergara’s “Zsazsa Zaturnnah sa Kalakhang Maynila 1” are challenging the traditional definition of fiction. Even more in-your-face is Alan Navarra’s “Ang Panlimang Alas ay Nakabaon sa Iyong Dibdib,” a literary text that defies classification into any of the traditional categories of “poetry, fiction, and drama.” (Even if we added the genre-come-lately Creative Nonfiction, Navarra’s work still does not quite fit in.)

Since curricular reform happens only every decade, the SHS curriculum will still be in place by the year 2022. By that year, the 20th century will no longer be in the memory of our students. We pre-digital teachers of the two literature subjects must ensure that their frame of reference will be theirs and not ours.