Chorus: Manuscript Process Notes
By Barbara Jane Reyes | December 29, 2011
From Nara Denning's Neurotique.
Chorus: A Poetry Manuscript in Progress
These words and stories do not belong to me. So much of my poetry to date has been an assumption of a Filipina American or Pinay voice, an academic assumption of Pinay concerns. The demand for me to be some kind of Pinay spokesperson has come to fill me with ambivalence, and so I needed to ask, to pass the mic, to step aside and let other Pinays speak, to listen to what they have to say, how they speak, write, and make art about what is important to them. What stands out in their responses is a struggle against invisibilities and silences, a hunger to be heard, and to be acknowledged. Here are their words and narratives, from which I have built poems. Here, I am only one of a chorus of Pinay voices.
Some (mostly Pinay) informing texts and works of art include Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik’s “1492,” Nara Denning’s Neurotique [and other films], M. Evelina Galang’s “Deflowering the Sampaguita,” Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan’s “One Question, Several Answers,” Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, Melissa Roxas’s “Poems as Evidence,” and Jenifer K. Wofford’s “MacArthur Nurses.”
A debt of gratitude to my collaborators: Kimberly Alidio, Olivia Ayes, Terry Bautista, Richie Biluan, Caroline Calderon, Rachelle Cruz, Niki Escobar, Diana Q. Halog, Aileen Ibardaloza, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor, Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Veronica Montes, Camille Ikalina Robles, Leny Mendoza Strobel, for lending me their words and stories. Maraming salamat, at Diyos ti agngina.
* * *
That is how I am opening my manuscript, this growing and changing body of words. Some of my source material is currently untapped. Responses are still forthcoming, so not all my respondents are named yet. The challenge is how to handle these disparate narratives. There are inward turning narratives, rooted in personal and domestic spaces, and then there are those whose concerns are historical, socio-economic, geopolitical, rooted the “big” world – man-made, mythic, and natural/geologic. Where are our places in such largeness? And how do I seam these together? Do I concern myself with the visibility of those seams — these necessary quiet moments, and then, equally necessary moments of shouting, so much joy and lightness, and then rage. And how do I fashion an arc out of the poetry on these 60+ and growing number of pages? Do I? Should I?
To reiterate about the manuscript: I’ve circulated a series of questions about body, voice, mothers, home, ritual. I’ve asked my respondents to answer any of the questions in any way they thought appropriate. I don’t want to burden myself with “representation,” but at the same time, I continue to be compelled to write Pinay narratives. The happy solution (for now) is to write in a poetic voice that is a we, a chorus of voices. My hope was to work at it as if I were quilting (NB: I can’t sew, much less, quilt), or piecing together a mosaic. I can’t tell you exactly what the larger picture looks like, but I can tell you that its language is deceptively simple, and what is most satisfying so far is that the picture of Pinay is more complete (and surprising) than what I could ever come up with by myself.
6 Comments
Rashaan Alexis Meneses on December 29, 2011 at 6:25 pm.
I love this idea of breaking down and stepping away from the representational. I’m excited to hear more about your process of threading the voices together. I wonder if there’s something in why the public, and even the Pin@y community demands representation, when essentially its such an empty and reductive ideal. What is this need for people to “represent” or be represented by an ambassador or spokesperson? I’m curious to explore that instinct from both sides of the Other and the non-Other.
Thanks for sharing. I look forward to reading more!
Barbara Jane Reyes on January 4, 2012 at 8:49 am.
Thanks Rashaan, first, I am so glad you are a part of it. Second, yes on representation. I too don’t know exactly what it’s about, but agree it’s a totally reductive ideal. I’ve wondered if it has to do with a line of thinking that only one or few of us (whoever “us” is) will ever get to have the stage/platform, in which case I think it’s pessimistic? Or more problematic, maybe folks prefer that someone else have the platform, and the responsibility and consequences that come with it? Anyway, it’s also telling how trying to get people to actually respond is like pulling teeth — really deeply rooted, stubborn ones.
Lyle Daggett on January 1, 2012 at 8:45 pm.
Your blogpost here leads me to think of the existing (if somewhat scattered) tradition of such gatherings of voices and narratives. I thought immediately of some of Muriel Rukeyser’s poems series during the 1930′s that she wrote based on testimony by construction workers at a Congressional committee about the health problems they developed from working on the construction of a tunnel through a mountain area.
I also thought, in a different way, of much of the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks; many of her poems talk in the voice and person of someone other than Brooks herself (i.e., the poems are intentionally in the voice of another person, though not necessarily a specific named person).
A more recent example that I’ve read some of (though haven’t yet finished) is Wisteria: Twilight Songs from the Swamp Country by Kwame Dawes, a collection of poems which are, more or less, brief oral histories written in the voices of African-American residents of the town of Sumter, North Carolina.
I also recall examples of writing from Nicaragua during the years of the Sandinista government in the 1980′s (though specific titles and authors are eluding me at the moment). There are surely other such works that I’m not thinking of.
I’ve never attempted anything of this kind myself. I like the approach you’ve taken, circulating a series of questions as (as I’m understanding from your blogpost) a starting point, more or less. Clearly that would result in a remarkable range of narratives and perspectives and (again) voices. I recall reading some excerpts or drafts of the work-in-progress here in your blog, and I remember thinking at the time that they seemed to hold together well as a mingled and coherent whole (even if not yet completed).
Barbara Jane Reyes on January 4, 2012 at 8:52 am.
Thanks Lyle, indeed it is challenging going for that cohesion. If anything, I think it’s the form that will give these diverse voices cohesion, so now that’s where I am concentrating my efforts.
Yes, there are various types/examples of collaborative narratives out there, and I think of stories passed through oral tradition as also collaborative — generationally, and in the telling, with audience participation, interjection, etc.
Collaborative narrative also challenges “ownership,” which is also very interesting to me.
Susan Layug on January 3, 2012 at 12:03 am.
A bold and exciting project — a quilt of Pinay narratives. I can’t wait to see how your poetics will thread the different stories these embossed vignettes and utterances tell. Bravo for the radical imagination!
Barbara Jane Reyes on January 4, 2012 at 8:53 am.
Thank you Susan, if you’d like to participate, here’s info on how:
http://www.barbarajanereyes.com/chorus-a-pinay-narratives-project/
Would love to hear from you!