filipino friday is a weekly meme that promotes the 1st filipino reader conference. for all you bookworms out there, this is definitely worth checking out. it will be held on september 14 at the SMX Mall of Asia, Meeting Room 2. this is just in time for the manila international book fair, so it would be a breeze to just swing by and listen to what other fellow readers have to say. better yet, my friend, Chachic, will be part of a panel discussion on book blogging (yey! check out her book reviews here). information on the conference program can be found here.
meme topic posted last friday was about filipino literature. unfortunately, i don't get to read as much filipino literature as i would like. a lot of the filipiniana i have read have been written in english, or if not, are written in the colloquial lingo, which is so far from the literary filipino we have been taught in school. i gravitate more towards books written in english, probably because my tagalog comprehension skills are not as strong as my english comprehension skills (i speak a mixture of tagalog, english, and hokkien in my everyday interactions with people, but english has remained prominent as my thinking language). the last books that i've read which were written in tagalog were florante at laura, el filibusterismo, and noli me tangere, which we all know are required school readings here in the philippines.
i don't have a favorite filipino author, but i can name some authors and their works which have made an impression on me:
- f. sionil jose's ermita was the book that made me interested in history (i read this when i was in the 4th grade by secretly "borrowing" my sister's when she wasn't using it in school--yes, i was a nerd that way). it tells about life in prewar and post-war ermita, and reading it at a young age made me want to know more about the background stories that happened during our country's historic moments.
- i also liked dean francis alfar's salamanca which essentially tells a love story in a magical realism backdrop. the characters, the sorcery, the fantastical events in this book are so filipino, and you cannot imagine it happening anywhere else but in the philippines. yet at the same time, there is a certain universality in them in the way that everyone can identify with unrequited and requited love. reading this also reminded me a bit of gabriel garcia marquez's love in the time of the cholera--epic and poignant, but it all comes down to love.
- i have a well-worn copy of the best philippine short stories of the twentieth century, edited by isagani r. cruz. this book is a good introduction for anyone wanting to venture (reading) into english filipiniana (which is something of a paradox). some of my favorite short stories included in this compilation are dead stars by paz marquez-benitez, the virgin by kerima polotan-tuvera, and portents by jessica zafra. i liked these stories because they had been written with so much sensitivity and subtlety that you end up thinking and wondering about them even after having read them countless times.
- i'm currently reading miguel syjuco's ilustrado. i'm still on chapter 6, but it looks promising so far. syjuco's writing style is pensive and satiric at the same time, and there were moments while reading this book where i have been torn between being saddened and wanting to laugh out loud.
local chick lit is also one of my fave reads (those pocket books printed by summit publishing). i believe that chick lit is one of the most underrated genres in literature, more so our very own. if you think about it, the works of jane austen and the brontë sisters were the "chick lit" of the 19th century, and now those books are sold and shelved with other "classics." there are too many titles to mention under this category, but the works of mina v. esguerra, tara ft sering, maya calica, and vince o. teves (chick lit from the male point of view) are at par with other well-known (a.k.a. foreign) chick lit authors.
so that's my take on filipino literature. hope you guys can also join in the filipino friday meme to help promote this event. until my next (and the last!) filipino friday post!
Yay, Jacq, you made a Filipino Friday post! :) Thanks for participating and for promoting the ReaderCon.
ReplyDeleteSalamanca is already on my wishlist, someone else recommended it in their post and I've never read anything by Dean Alfar although I've heard good things. I loved Pugad Baboy when I was younger, I remember collecting all the different editions but I haven't read Pugad Baboy since high school, I think. And hey, I had no idea you read Filipino chick lit too! I've read all of the authors that you mentioned and I love Mina's Fairy Tale Fail. :)