A Native Clearing Revisited

—— Positioning Philippine Literature

C HELVA K ANAGANAYAKAM

I N 1998 T H E P H IL IP PI NE S CE L E BR A T E D 100 YE AR S OF IN DE PE N DE N CE ,
an event that was accompanied by considerable fanfare, orchestrated by
the state. In literary circles, the centennial remained largely unnoticed,
the one major exception being the decision taken by the University of the
Philippines Press to reprint one hundred literary texts, many of which were
available only in libraries. In comparison, the celebration of fifty years of in-
dependence by India, and the literary response thereto, was striking, with a
number of international journals and magazines, including A R IE L and the
New Yorker, bringing out special issues to mark the occasion. From a post-
colonial perspective, the literature of the Philippines has generated very little
international interest during the last two decades, much less than the number
of shoes that Imelda Marcos owned. The objective of this essay is to reiterate
the need for recognizing writing from the Philippines as a distinctive and im-
portant segment of postcolonial writing in English. While this essay does not
seek to discuss the specificities of a Filipino poetic, it attempts to provide a
frame and a backdrop as a way of initiating discussion about postcolonial
notions of canonicity.
In general, anthologies of postcolonial literature have tended to pay little
attention to writing from the Philippines, and while the growing corpus of
Asian-American literature often includes Filipino writing, it focuses on North
America, or diasporic writing, rather than on literature from the ‘home’ coun-
try.1 As a Filipino writer, Jessica Hagedorn is much better known in postcolo-

1
A case in point would be Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English
(Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1995), edited by Victor Ramraj, which includes Africa,
384 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

nial circles than, say, Nick Joaquin or Alfred Yuson.2 Curiously enough,
while other postcolonial literatures have moved from obscurity to promi-
nence, the reverse has happened with Filipino writing. Filipino writing was
better known in the 1940s and 1950s in North America than it is today. De-
spite the complex relation between politics and literature in the 1970s and
1980s, and the substantial body of important literature it produced, very little
critical attention has been paid to that body of writing. Despite the censorship
of the Marcos era, literature flourished. But literary giants such as Joaquin
have never been considered for major literary awards given in the West. San
Juan sums up the situation by saying:
Complex historical reality always defies ‘postcolonial’ wish-fulfilments Born
from the violence of colonial occupation, Filipino writing in English, for exam-
ple, has never been recognized by U.S. arbiters of high culture upholding
canonical standards of taste.3
The reasons for this chronic neglect by postcolonial studies are unclear.
Some countries, such as Malaysia, are often under-represented in postcolonial
studies, but at least that might be justified on the grounds that, in quantitative
terms, the output from that country is relatively small.4 Singapore, Fiji, Bang-
ladesh, etc., may well fall into this category, although Singapore has in fact
asserted its presence effectively. Apart from the argument that, strictly speak-
ing, the term “Commonwealth” does not include the Philippines, there is no
rationale for the neglect of a corpus whose literary history is as rich as that of
other postcolonial nations. Man of Earth, the anthology edited by Gemino
Abad and Edna Manlapaz, begins with a poem published in 1914, and this is

Canada, the Caribbean, India, the South Pacific, the U K , and the U S A as its major regional
categories, thereby excluding the Philippines. The only Filipino writer who is included is
Jessica Hagedorn.
2
While Hagedorn is a diasporic writer, Joaquin and Yuson have remained in the Philip-
pines, as has the most prolific novelist, F. Sionil José.
3
See E. San Juan, Jr., Reading the West / Writing the East: Studies in Comparative Lite-
rature and Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 1992): 28.
4
Nevertheless, Malaysian writing is healthily promoted by such publishers as Skoob
(London), in their Pacifica series, although, once again, creative writing from the Philip-
pines barely gets a look-in. Curiously enough, though other South Asian writers are repre-
sented by extracts from their longer fictional works in Skoob’s Pacifica Anthology No. 2,
The Pen Is Mighter Than the Sword, intro. John McCrae (London: Skoob, 1994), the only
Filipino writer included, F. Sionil José, is represented solely by one of his political essays
and a critical study on him by Dudley de Souza.
 A Native Clearing Revisited 385

not even the first work to be published in the Philippines.5 The trajectory of
literary history in English begins at least one hundred years ago.
Strangely, Jose Rizal’s work has been known internationally for almost a
century, although he wrote his novels in Spanish. Jose Garcia Villa enjoyed
and continues to enjoy a reputation in North America, but it can be argued
that he turned his back on the Philippines after he moved to the U S A . But
they were, nonetheless, products of the Philippines. And yet the corpus as a
whole continues to be neglected. The lack of international recognition has not,
however, been a serious deterrent for Filipino writers. Their output, signifi-
cantly, has been both consistent and prolific. But a crucial difference has been
that the publication of this literature has been confined to the Philippines.
Local publishers with limited print runs have accounted for much of the mate-
rial that is currently available. One thinks of New Day, Anvil, and Kalikasan,
for example, which printed or published so many texts written by local
authors, including Joaquin, Bienvenido Santos, and N.V.M. Gonzalez. Sionil
José, yet another prolific author, published his own works under his Solidari-
dad imprint, though several of his novels have also been published by major
U S imprints. It is only with the University of the Philippines Press entering
the market more aggressively that the situation has changed to some extent.
Even so, in comparison to, say, Indian authors who choose mainstream pub-
lishers in the West, writers from the Philippines have remained consistently
local.
Regardless of international neglect, the fact is that there is intense activity
and excitement about literature and its role in the Philippines itself. Admit-
tedly, English is not seen as the language of the masses; consequently, litera-
ture in English does not have the same immediacy as, say, Tagalog. But Eng-
lish is not a marginal language as it is in India. The widespread use of Taglish
ensures the presence of English as an everyday language. The writing work-
shops, located in Siliman and Manila, for example, have produced excellent
writers. Among critics and authors, and the groups that espouse different
stances, the ongoing discussions about the relative value of writing in English
as against Tagalog and other vernacular languages etc. have ensured a lively
literary atmosphere. But debate about what needs to be valued and what lite-
rary responses are appropriate has remained localized. It does not matter to

5
Man of Earth: An Anthology of Filipino Poetry and Verse from English 1905 to the
Mid-50s, ed. Gemino H. Abad & Edna Z. Manlapaz (Quezon City: Metro Manila: Ateneo
de Manila U P , 1989).
386 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

writers or readers in the Philippines whether they gain admission to the house
of postcolonial writing; they are quite self-sufficient. But it certainly makes a
difference to us whose interests are comparative and who wish to be as inclu-
sive as possible in our approach to postcolonial studies. By neglecting Philip-
pine writing, we are ignoring a wholly different historical dimension that does
not exist elsewhere.
To make this statement about neglect is not to discount the work of schol-
ars such as San Juan or the presence of anthologies such as Brown River,
White Ocean, or Returning a Borrowed Tongue.6 Such works do have a
readership. However, in the process of framing postcolonial studies along
certain lines, we have, I think, denied ourselves the opportunity to confront
some of the distinctive questions posed by this body of writing. The concep-
tual frame of Philippine writing is unique in its own way, and sidelining this
corpus impoverishes postcolonial literature as a whole. Canonicity in post-
colonial studies is a complex topic, but it can hardly be denied that the canon
has shaped what we choose to foreground.
It is against this backdrop that the present essay draws specific attention to
an anthology edited by Gemino Abad in 1993, titled A Native Clearing.7 This
collection, together with the aforementioned anthology Man of Earth, consti-
tutes more than a gathering of material that had hitherto remained forgotten in
occasional journals and newspapers. These anthologies, along with their criti-
cal introductions, were an attempt at literary history – to bring together, clas-
sify, and evaluate a century of writing in English. The first collection includes
almost eighty poets, the second fifty. The task, as the editors points out, is
hardly over, and there is much more that needs to be done by way of collect-
ing and editing. While anthologies had appeared before, here was a pioneer-
ing attempt to classify and anthologize a body of work on the strength of
aesthetic value and literary tradition. In making the selection, the editors also
felt the need to provide a critical frame for both poetry and literature in gene-
ral. Clearing a space becomes a central trope for their project, and it serves as
a valuable motif for this essay as well.

6
Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature
in English, ed. Luis H. Francia (New Brunswick N J : Rutgers U P , 1993); Returning a Bor-
rowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry, ed. Nick Carbó
(Minneapolis: Coffee House, 1995).
7
A Native Clearing: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English Since the 50s to the Pres-
ent: From Edith L. Tiempo to Cirilo F. Bautista, ed. Gemino H. Abad (Quezon City: U of
the Philippines P , 1993).
 A Native Clearing Revisited 387

The two introductions that precede the selections are notable contributions
to literary criticism, in that they position themselves, tactfully but forcefully,
in relation to much that has been said in order to justify or critique Filipino
writing. While celebrating a century of literary activity, the editors also feel
the need to offer ways of reading this literature. Implied in the introduction is
an idea of poetics that many other critics have failed to acknowledge. One
thinks, for instance, of the Lopez–Villa controversy about the purpose and
value of art.8 The Marxism of the one and the formalism of the other paved
the way for a very interesting exchange of ideas, but neither was willing to
transcend a simplistic binarism. One thinks of all the essays of N.V.M. Gon-
zalez that provide a window to his own sense of the shaping influences in
Filipino writing. One is reminded of Nick Joaquin, who once wrote: “Before
1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino; after 1565 we
can be nothing but Filipino,” thereby drawing attention to the complex
historical and cultural genealogy that shapes the present.9 Into this mix, Abad
and Manlapaz bring their own justificatory argument. While constructing a
literary history, they also feel the need to establish a critical frame that does
not simply relate text to context. The relation between the two is inevitable,
since writers obviously belong to their time. The significance of their position
is that they demonstrate that the text – in this case, writing in English – also
shapes the perception of context. Writing in English, because located in that
strangely fertile space created by historical circumstance, was in a position to
shape and conceptualize the nation in singular ways. As Abad puts it,
If language fixes the forms of the world we inhabit and forges there our sense of
our own native reality, then it can be said that through Spanish and English as
we had adopted them to our purposes, we have in fact shaped our Filipino con-
sciousness, with much the same force as through our own native tongues.10

He adds:
If with English we saw things in another light, we also began to criticise that
way of looking and created our own clearing within it. Even where we have
made peace (having no choice) with foreign powers and colonizers, we insist
upon our own native ground.11

8
For a critical introduction to the lively debate, see Salvador P . Lopez, Literature and
Society: Essays on Life and Letters (Manila: University Publishing, 1940).
9
See Nick Joaquin, Culture and History (Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil, 2004): 170, 21.
10
A Native Clearing, ed. Abad, 9 (italics in the original).
11
A Native Clearing, ed. Abad, 20.
388 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

There is no easy consensus about this native ground. In fact, the major
authors and critics have, over a period of time, expressed their own stands and
stances about how to articulate the contours of this native ground. Gonzalez,
for example, speaks of “a love for the land, a concern for community, and a
belief in salvation” as constitutive elements in all Filipino writing.12 Abad’s
views in his introduction may not necessarily be the most popular ones, but he
certainly advances an authoritative perspective about the manner in which
language and literature offer the possibility of understanding and defining the
land, its history, and its people. The struggle with language thus becomes a
struggle with ethos. It is against this backdrop that one needs to evaluate
Abad’s anthology, which has to justify its choices as it undertakes the task of
providing a literary history of sorts.
The terms in which postcolonial discourse has functioned are not wholly
alien to the Filipino context. The similarities are in fact quite striking. Resis-
tance, politics, and religion, for example, remain important in ways that are
familiar. Colonialism and nationalism are familiar tropes in the Philippines,
where the people had to resist the Spanish, the Americans, and the Japanese in
the compass of less than a century. But their narratives about the land, about
their perception of the world they inhabit, have their own distinctive quality.
To say this is not to essentialize and exoticize a relatively unfamiliar literary
world. But a Filipino tale such as “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a
Wife,” by Manuel Arguilla, is very different from, say, “The Drover’s Wife”
which has a particular relevance to the Australian context.13 Such stories
become master-narratives because they embody the nuances of a culture. Ar-
guilla’s story is about a village, and the plot itself has a familiar ring to it. The
trope of the village runs through much of African and Indian literary history.
But Arguilla’s mode of narration hints at a particular confluence of perspec-
tives that makes the Filipino experience quite different from that of other
postcolonial nations.
Joaquin’s views about literary history are often considered idiosyncratic,
but he certainly has moments of insight that are truly remarkable. Focusing
specifically on that crucial moment of transition from Spanish to English, he

12
N.V.M. Gonzalez, “The Novel of Justice,” Chicago Review 39.3–4 (1993): 39.
13
Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” (1892) and Arguilla’s “How My Brother Leon
Brought Home a Wife” (1940) enjoy the reputation of being ‘national’ stories that encap-
sulate elements that are specific to their respective countries. Even a cursory reading of the
two would reveal the fundamental differences between the respective contexts.
 A Native Clearing Revisited 389

advances the argument that after several centuries of visual culture, a complex
intermingling of the visual and the oral now became possible. English, too,
was foreign to the Philippines, but allows a kind of vernacularization that
Spanish never permitted. As Joaquin puts it, “on the one hand the Filipino
writer in English is joined to the Filipino writer in Spanish. On the other hand
he is joined to the Filipino writer in the vernacular.”14 In short, Arguilla is
now able to produce a story that is deeply rooted in the oral but is no longer
dependent on the diachronic movement of oral tales. It is this particular com-
bination that enables the resurgence of a very different kind of literature.

In a useful essay about the ambiguities of the term ‘post-colonial’, Niyi Osun-
dare, referring specifically to African literature, makes the observation that
the tag ‘post-colonial’ is more useful for those who invented it that it is for those
who are supposed to wear it, its passive signifieds. It rings truer for those who
have ‘posted’ colonialism in posh conference halls and arcane seminar rooms
conveniently far from the real battleground of colonial encounter.15

The issue, for me, is not the term itself, since we have now learnt to accept it
with all its limitations. More pertinent for the present purpose is the hege-
mony of a particular set of conventions that closes off the possibility of new
influences.
Abad’s preoccupation in his introduction is fundamentally with language.
Ultimately, the challenge for the writer, according to him, is about writing in
and writing from the language that was made available. And this is not be-
cause other languages were not available. There were the so-called vernacu-
lars, and there was the possibility of Spanish. But writing in English was a
necessary act, for it not only brought newness but also facilitated the shaping
of a new world. There is a kind of systemic circularity involved. One needed
to engage with the language in order to shape one’s own view of the world. In
political and economic terms, a world was imposed on the writer and the pub-
lic. It was up to the writer to reshape that world, and that was the responsi-
bility of the writer. The obstacles and the possibilities changed, depending on
circumstance, but the writer’s task was always to reinvent and refashion lan-
guage. This, for Abad, is the thread that ensures continuity. And, given the
14
Nick Joaquin, “The Filipino as English Fictionist,” Manila Review 4.2 (1978): 5.
15
Niyi Osundare, Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture (Tren-
ton N J : African World Press, 2002): 208.
390 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

specific cultural and historical personality of the Philippines, the manner in

which this process occurred is something new.
The first stanza of his remarkable poem “Jeepney” demonstrates Abad’s
preoccupation not only with the boundaries of language but also with an ethos
that shapes and is shaped by language:
Consider honestly
this piece of storm
in our city’s entrails.
Incarnation of scrap,
what genius of salvage!
Its crib now molds our space
its lust gewgaws our sight.16

As the poem moves from the religious to the secular, from the celebratory to
the ironic, from the historical to the quotidian, it is the language that shapes
the reality of the Jeepney – this ubiquitous form of transport created ingeni-
ously from American military vehicles left behind after the Second World
War – into something far more symbolic and significant. The intertextual re-
ferences to canonical British and postcolonial authors are deliberate. They de-
monstrate a debt to the literary world outside while insisting on difference and
originality.
Naturally, the literary activity in English itself appears to forge ahead in
multiple directions. Take, for instance, the four major writers – Bienvenido
Santos, Sionil José, N.V.M. Gonzalez, and Nick Joaquin. The impulses that
drive their writing are remarkably different, and there is no consensus about
which one constitutes a richer stream. And then there are the more recent
authors, Jose Dalisay, Charlson Ong, Eric Gamalinda, Linda Ty–Casper, and
Alfred Yuson, for example, who move in other directions, giving expression
to other voices, absorbing the diaspora, and striving for a more internationalist
focus. They mark a point of departure. And, of course, there are the diasporic
writers such as Jessica Hagedorn, who write from a global and diasporic per-
spective.
The issue, then, might well be that some of the terms employed in post-
colonial criticism might not work so effectively when applied to Philippine
writing. The historical context also defamiliarizes much of the subject-matter,
since the common British element no longer applies in quite the same way.

16
Gemino H. Abad, “Jeepney,” in Returning a Borrowed Tongue, ed. Nick Carbó (Min-
neapolis: Coffee House, 1995): 5–7.
 A Native Clearing Revisited 391

The struggle with language, too, is of a different kind. But there is, one might
argue, a central element in Filipino writing that allows for a distinctive fram-
ing of this literature. Abad’s introduction is a way of saying the same thing in
a different way. The transition from an oral to a written culture did occur with
the Spanish, and in the intellectual ferment of the nineteenth century. This is
familiar territory in previously colonized nations. The transition from Spanish
to English in the Philippines was a particularly striking moment that was both
challenging and empowering. English was a beachhead in the confluence of
the vernacular and Spanish, as it were, with the consequence that writing in
English occupied a special status. The space cleared by English was unique,
and any attempt to conceptualize Filipino writing in English must recognize
this particular dimension. English was the language of the colonizer, but it
came to the Philippines without the baggage that one encounters elsewhere.
English established a frame, but it also allowed for empowerment within that
frame. In literature and culture, a new conceptual mode was made possible by
this curious transition from Spanish to English.
One would require a much longer essay to demonstrate the specificities of
this claim with examples from literature. Suffice it to mention that writing
from the Philippines needs to be seen as much more than one more practical
proof of the theories we have formulated to understand postcolonial literature.
It has to be recognized as a distinctive corpus with its own claims, strengths,
and challenges. Our failure to pay attention to Philippine writing in English is
unfortunate – a major blind spot in our perspective on postcolonial literature.

W O R K S C I TE D
Abad, Gemino H., ed. A Native Clearing: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English
Since the 50s to the Present: From Edith L. Tiempo to Cirilo F. Bautista (Quezon
City: U of the Philippine P , 1993).
——, & Edna Z. Manlapaz, ed. Man of Earth: An Anthology of Filipino Poetry and
Verse from English 1905 to the Mid-50s (Quezon City: Metro Manila: Ateneo de
Manila U P , 1989).
Carbó, Nick, ed. Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino
American Poetry (Minneapolis: Coffee House, 1995).
Francia, Luis H., ed. Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century
Philippine Literature in English (New Brunswick N J : Rutgers U P , 1993).
Gonzalez, N.V.M. “The Novel of Justice,” Chicago Review 39.3–4 (1993): 39-43.
Joaquin, Nick. Culture and History (Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil, 2004).
392 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

——. “The Filipino as English Fictionist,” Manila Review 4.2 (1978). Repr. in Lite-
rature and Social Justice, ed. L. Yabes (Manila: Philippine Center of P E N , 1982).
Loh, C.Y., & I.K. Ong, series ed. The Pen Is Mighter Than the Sword, intro. John McCrae
(Pacifica Anthology No. 2; London: Skoob, 1994).
Lopez, Salvador P. Literature and Society: Essays on Life and Letters (Manila: Uni-
versity Publishing, 1940).
Osundare, Niyi. Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture (Tren-
ton N J : African World Press, 2002): 45.
Ramraj, Victor, ed. Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English
(Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1995).
San Juan, Epifanio, Jr. Reading the West / Writing the East: Studies in Comparative
Literature and Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 1992).