on the “fiction” of the “fil-am”

now truly on pregnant pause, but elsewhere, more relevant discussions/blog entries are happening. this is sir edel garcellano on eugene gloria’s use of a real-life gelacio guillermo as subject of his poetry. and when taken to task about what it is he does create of guillermo, gloria invokes the “fictionality” of poetry. kumusta naman, e buhay na taong may malinaw na pulitika at kasaysayan ang pinaguusapan. another man’s fiction as a real man’s life? gamitan kung gamitan?

Gloria must be running around with a writerly hood given to pursuit of radical chic & grants that would spark their prodigious explosion in the American market.

 

Gloria had probably in mind his fellow workshoppers who would spike their texts with ethnic Filipino exoticism & filiation that would allow minority discourse researchers to put them under their radar, so to speak.

 

Is this the imperative of Fil-Am writing? Making use of tribal ethos & valorizing the drift toward the counterrevolutionary? Identification & skin color are not enough for one to speak on behalf of a country that simply serves as reference point.

such a great assessment of the whole enterprise of fil-am writing, given how it is celebrated as the best thing that’s happening in/to philippine lit.