Dreaming In English
Danton Remoto writes about how he ended up where he is today as a writer in this piece, "Dreaming In English". The piece was commissioned by Pru-Life, the British Insurer, as part of Planet English, a project to promote the use of English in the Philippines. An excerpt:
In her introduction to Stories, Kerima Polotan said: “Life scars the writer but he is not without weapons of vengeance. The art [of writing] is a prism that he can use to refract human experience. That one can write about something gives him courage to endure it; that he has written about it gives him, if not deeper understanding, some kind of peace. In other words, the writer is first a human being before he is anything else, prone, like much of mankind, to fits of joy and pain. What happens to those around him – and yes, to him – is legitimate material, but only if he is able to illumine it with a special insight.”
I enrolled at the Ateneo for a Management degree, but my heart was not in it. Every day I went to the Rizal Library and sat near the books in PS 9991 – Philippine writing in English. I would get the books, read the names of the Ateneo writers who have borrowed them (Gilda Cordero Fernando, Rolando Tinio, Eman Lacaba, Freddie Salanga), and borrowed the books.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
In her introduction to Stories, Kerima Polotan said: “Life scars the writer but he is not without weapons of vengeance. The art [of writing] is a prism that he can use to refract human experience. That one can write about something gives him courage to endure it; that he has written about it gives him, if not deeper understanding, some kind of peace. In other words, the writer is first a human being before he is anything else, prone, like much of mankind, to fits of joy and pain. What happens to those around him – and yes, to him – is legitimate material, but only if he is able to illumine it with a special insight.”
I enrolled at the Ateneo for a Management degree, but my heart was not in it. Every day I went to the Rizal Library and sat near the books in PS 9991 – Philippine writing in English. I would get the books, read the names of the Ateneo writers who have borrowed them (Gilda Cordero Fernando, Rolando Tinio, Eman Lacaba, Freddie Salanga), and borrowed the books.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
posted by pgenrestories at 5:35 AM
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