Recently, at a community literary event, one of the elders in my community (not “elderly” but a PhD candidate when I was a first or second year undergrad), said to me (and I paraphrase) after hearing me read, it’s young folks like you who will receive recognition and be remembered for your writing, not “old” folks like us. And that struck me, because of the sincerity with which it was spoken, and because the tone was so pained, though I was grateful for this brief conversation because it was honest. And civilized. Two grown up’s just talking.

Apologies for my nebulousness; I haven’t asked for permission to drop this person’s name in a public blog post. My point though, in bringing up this exchange is this — I was struck by the statement, and more so by the pained tone. It brought back my acute awareness of the attitude and negative/tenuous vibe I’ve been receiving for years now. Because apparently, I’m that “you” with the (honestly, limited) recognition others want. I’d naively or idealistically thought that decades of work in this community — my own work and community work — were slowly sloughing away the “you” versus “us.”

I’ve thought of my community work serving to supply knowledge, to encourage, and to empower — and always to challenge. For example, for all the folks who have asked and even demanded poetry and/or publication advice, assistance, and opportunities from me (and even tantrummed at me for not being at their disposal), I’ve done my best to make available and accessible the information that’s been most useful to me — publishing information, workshops, panels, submissions calls, funding opportunities. I have also spoken on panels regarding literary and publishing and book process, fielded questions about grad school, conducted/lead or organized workshops and panels on these subjects, in order to make the information available and to point folks to more resources.

I do my best to support those writers whose work I find promising, interesting, or just plain fantastic. I promote writers whose work I do not know too well, but hear good things about, see their hard work and hustle, and admire it. Especially younger writers.

I’ve made this a part of my everyday work. In addition to my own jobs, and my own writing.

I’ve never lied about any of this being easy, because it’s not.

If it were so easy, then no one would ask or demand my advice and support. They’d just do it.

But apparently my work is serving to accentuate that “us” versus “you.”

I am very conscious and informed about the previous generations of writers and artists, in what contexts they were writing and publishing. Their community arts activism enabled me to envision my own writing in print. While I may not always agree with these previous generations’ opinions or methods, I acknowledge the times and priorities being different, the access to various resources being different, the beliefs about art and poetry also being different — from my own priorities, levels of access (and access to what), beliefs about art. This is fine. Difference is always fine. Difference should always be fine, and not be reduced to “us” versus “you.”

Part of what I’ve been feeling lately in a more amplified way has to do with ongoing conversations I’ve been having with fellow writers. By ongoing I mean, conversations we’ve been having since we were in college, in our early twenties, as these pesky intergenerational differences tend to manifest in really unpleasant ways — machismo, paternalism, ivory tower elitism versus the masses, whitewashed versus authentic — if we’re lucky to even have a dialog — or straight up dismissal and erasure.

This is not specific to my community. Others have told me that elders in their own communities refuse to acknowledge that younger generations of writers and artists exist, are accomplishing some good things, doing different things, and building upon the traditions of the previous generations. We know that our previous generations have in many ways made our emergence possible. Many of us pay mad respect to that. There’s no need for paternalism, dismissal, and erasure.

And why the paternalism, dismissal, and erasure in the first place? Is this an acting out as a result of the sentiment behind the above interaction? If so, that’s totally uncalled for and whack. If not, someone please elucidate me.

In all fairness, I’ve had good exchanges with some community literary elders, Ates and Kuyas, generous mentors and role models, even experiencing growing pains while transitioning out of the mentor/apprentice relationship, time and work have revealed these relationships as positive ones. So props and salamats today to Al Robles, Vangie Buell, Cecilia Brainard, Evelina Galang, Luis Francia, Marianne Villanueva, Vince Gotera, Jean Vengua, Eileen Tabios, Nick Carbo, and Jaime Jacinto.

Not speaking for them, my guess is that they would also agree there’s no need for paternalism, dismissal, and erasure.

[Today, I am allowing my self to be irritated.]

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