Elaborations on the State of the Nation of Speculative Fiction
An Exercise In Youthful Blasphemy has put up his blog entry, Necessary Ficciones Part 1, Elaborations on the State of the Nation of Speculative Fiction. His goal is "to put to bed some of the issues surrounding the genre, i.e., the claims that SpecFic is still marginalised, and maybe effort to start new topics for further discussion and debate, i.e., the development of a functional critical framework solely for Speculative Fiction." Head on over to read his entry, and feel free to leave your own thoughts/ideas/comments here (since I'm not sure if you can leave a comment there on his blog). Thanks!
posted by pgenrestories at 1:04 PM
2 Comments:
just my 2 cents (and i'm not even sure if it's worth that...)
palagay ko dapat mas maraming magsulat sa filipino. at hindi naman kailangang malalim na filipino o kung anu-anong shit. basta filipino. kahit ano kasi ang sabihin mo, kapag nakakita ako ng isang kwento na sinulat ng isang pilipino pero in english, ewan ko ba, nangangani-ngani ako. minsan na eenjoy ko ung kwento, maganda rin naman e pero dahil english meron pa ring para bang pader na malaking sagabal.
kung may lumabas lang na speculative fiction o kung anu-ano pang ibang shit na tawag sa genre sa ilalim ng spec fic na nakasalalysay sa filipino palagay ko mas maraming taong magbabasa.
pero siyempre, ung mga writers kasi ngayon, mas comfortable sa english kaya english ang pagsulat nila which is okay lang naman. pero kung ang purpose mo kasi e mas maraming magbasa, palagay ko dapat filipino ung kwento. pero wag na nating pag awayan kung anong dialect sa pilipinas ang mas maraming nakakaintindi at nakakagamit.
un lang. labo pa rin pero dalawang sentimos lang eh.
personally di ako nag-aalala. eventually, lalabas din ung mga writers na may sapat na libog para magsulat sa filipino. kaya ayos lang yan, basta sulat lang ng sulat.
kapag binalatan mo ang bawat tao sa mundo, kapag wala na ang sagabal ng kulay at lahi at pananampalataya, maaaninagan mo lahat tayo, taga-kwento.
Hi, Anonymous! Care to identify yourself? I mean, what you wrote, as far as I'm concerned, makes sense, and your argument would become stronger if it were not anonymous. Huwag mong sabihin na malabo ang dalawang sentimos mo, kasi hindi iyan totoo. Frankly, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I'm on record on this blog on some of its posts for preferring a public education curriculum taught in Filipino and not in English, which is against what some Congressmen want. I'm sure you can find those posts.
With regard to the current set of writers' and editors' proficiency in English, well, I can only speak for myself and not for them (lowly among these editors as I am), but I think it's safe to say that due to our upbringing and educational system during our time (back in the 70's and 80's), it was English to which we were mostly exposed to because of our personal circumstances, and thus came our resulting proficiency with it. This is not an excuse, but the reality, a statement of fact, lest someone out there decide to misread and jump all over my statement. Admittedly, I could do well to learn better Filipino (and Chinese also, in my case), which I am doing privately through personal reading. I doubt if I'll ever be as proficient with those languages as I am with English, but yes, I do want to increase my skills with them anyway. I'm missing out on a lot of nice Chinese movies and books, I'm sure.
I would like to address your concerns about English stories by Filipinos being an "obstacle" to your reading. I too experienced that before, though only briefly, for reasons that I will try and express. It's similar to that guilt some writers talk about when they write in English knowing they're Pinoy, feeling that they should be writing in Filipino, or at the very least, about Filipino topics, and not about anything else or even self-created (like Fantasy secondary worlds). In your case, it's reading Pinoy works in English, but knowing you're Pinoy, and thus, feeling that disconnection because Filipino is what comes naturally to you, is what you are, is what you identify with.
But I've long gotten over it. Why? Not because I've come to some logical conclusion/resolution on the matter. Far from it. This issue has been in discussion for years, according to some older writers I've spoken with. Smarter people than I have talked about it and have come to no clear resolution. And here we are in the 21st century and it's still a live debate. Still the same thing being talked about. Still a main topic. No progression to new things. Still the same thing holding us back.
And there's the rub (and this is only my personal opinion, mind you, not those of others)...if I let such bug me too, then I won't be able to move on myself. It's going to become a monkey on my back keeping me from seeking/reading/pushing new things, keeping me from reading/enjoying/understanding new Pinoy writers and what they're writing about no matter what language they're writing in. I can't speak for everyone, but I don't want to be held back, and I don't want to carry with me this hang-up which will prevent me from reading and enjoying the thoughts/ideas/fiction of fellow Pinoys, no matter what dialect/manner they try to express themselves in. I do not want to have some hang-up in the back of my head that just because a fellow Pinoy has expressed himself in English, or Chinese, or Spanish, that his work is somehow tainted, and thus, it would blind me from seeing his story, his ideas, his skill with storytelling, the potential beauty of his work. I do not want to say, "Ay, maganda siya, pero 100 over 100 sana kung nagsulat siya sa Filipino. O Cebuano. O Bisaya. 99 nalang, sige." The reverse also is in effect: "Oops. He wrote in Filipino. I've read it, it's good, but it would've been better in English, I'm sure. The writer knows English, and his story would've reached more international readers, too. It's cool. Could've been cooler, though." In other words, I refuse to let my personal language proficiency and preference discriminate against what I want to read and know about my fellow Pinoys.
And not just Pinoys. Hell, for what it's worth, as out-of-practice as I am since I graduated from my Chinese school, I'm doing my best to occasionally read even Chinese language essays and flash fiction because that too is part of my heritage. And I do not prevent myself from reading English works--whether translated into English from some other language or originally written in that language--of writers from other countries. They could be from other parts of Asia, from the USA, from Europe, Africa, South America, wherever. It's a hang-up that I will not allow to take root in me and hold me back, so that I can have a glimpse into the circumstances these other people live in, and learn about these other people out there. Because if English works by Pinoys stop me from enjoying those works fully, where will it end? That means I can't fully enjoy Indian works written in English unless they were written in their original Indian dialect, which I'll have to learn. That means at the back of my mind, I would end up thinking that Arundhati Roy's works are lesser for having been written in English, and not Urdu or Punjabi. That means a Japanese sounding name like Kazuo Ishiguro, or a Chinese sounding name like David Hwang, will never be read by me, because I would have the hang-up that those guys should be writing in Japanese or Chinese respectively, and not English.
I am also on record on this blog as saying that I am trying to explore coming out with a PGS issue in Filipino. Given the current world economy, which is poor, I'm having a hard time coming out with the digest regularly as it is, but trust me when I say that that issue is still very much on the table for me. I'm just going to need an editor I can work with for that issue, or maybe for at least a couple of stories in a regular issue. Call it a test-run, if you will. But oh, the fiances have to be fixed first, somehow.
Tulad mo, di rin ako nag-aalala. I know the time will come when fiction in Filipino will become more widespread. I'll try and contribute to that in my small way as a publisher, while I also look forward to people like you producing such. Tama ka, sulat lang ng sulat. Sa akin, may punto ang mga sinabi mo, kaya ang halaga niya ay di lang dalawang sentimos. Wala po akong duda na kung tumulak lang tayo ng tumulak ng pagbabasa at pagsusulat, makakatulong tayo kahit sa isang bata man lang na makadiskubre ng mga katotohanan di lang ng 'pinas at ng mga Pinoy, pero ng mga ibang bansa, mga ibang lahi, at ng mundo. At sana, makikita niya na lahat ng kuwento ay sinulat din lang ng mga tao, at tungkol sa tao, at ang linguaje--kahit anong linguaje--ay pamamaraan para ang kuwento ay bigyang buhay.
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