I gave my For the City That Nearly Broke Me talk in Filipino Lit class yesterday evening. I’d realized, as I was preparing my presentation, that not only was I (and the collection) asking the more obvious question of “where is home,” for the immigrant woman of color poet, and even, where is home for the exile and/or the expatriate, which I have been asking in my work for a long time now.
Tag Archives: Carlos Bulosan
Writing and Publication: What is at Risk
We’re back from a few days in Seattle, just eating, book buying, spending time with family and friends. While we were away, Aztlan Libre’s press release for my chapbook came out, and the chapbook also became available at SPD Books. As with any good vacation, I’ve had some good time with my thoughts on writing and publishing.
While in Seattle, Oliver de la Paz helped us find Carlos Bulosan’s grave. Yes, we do know how young Bulosan was when he passed away in 1956. He was also destitute and very sickly. Perhaps he was able to create so much great work precisely because he was dying. He was definitely angry, as per his essay, “I am not a Laughing Man,” and justifiably so, for the racist bullshit he, his countrymen, his fellow working poor, had to live through, for what he was learning about America, not at all the America of equality, freedom, and opportunity, the America of the American Dream.
Towards a Pinay “We” Poetics
[This is a draft of an essay I'm currently writing for an anthology on women and creative process. Indeed, I am surprising myself with this not-so-sudden burst of productivity; I'd recently been asked what inspires me to write, or what do I need to continue writing. I'd responded that I needed external impetus, and thankfully, this came in the form of an invitation to submit new work to Hambone, from Nate Mackey himself. I say this because I am pleased to be acknowledged by him, and because being acknowledged by someone I deem important to my practice meant that I really had to produce work. I submitted new poems, and they are scheduled to appear in the journal's next issue. It's a happy by-product, that there is momentum for me to continue writing.]
[Some edits below.]
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I am interested in a “we” poetics. “We” is a persona in which I’ve been writing for a long time now, and even my “I” is a “we.” This came to my attention fully when poet Nathaniel Mackey articulated this “we,” in his discussion about the ongoing journey/emergence of a people in his serial poem, “Song of the Andoumboulou.” This “we” is appealing to me as a Filipina; indeed, I was raised in a culture of “we.” There are two Tagalog terms, pakikisama, and bayanihan, which speak to the social value of this “we” in practice. We are valued as members of a larger whole, in interaction and relation to others within this larger whole. We know ourselves as members of a larger whole, in interaction and relation to others within this larger whole.
Poetically, I also come from a tradition of a “we”; think of the community organizer, activist Filipino American poets Carlos Bulosan and Al Robles. While Robles wrote about and in the voices of the Manongs, the West Coast Filipino American migrant laborers of the early twentieth century, in Rappin’ With Ten Thousand Carabaos in the Dark, Bulosan invoked Whitmanesque multitudes of working men in “If You Want to Know What We Are.” I, too, have attempted to write as “the people,” this multitude of Filipinos:
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, Moluccas and Magellan
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, Starfruit and Sampaguita
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, Pepe and Pilar
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, Coconut and Crab
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, Eskinol and ESL
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, Igorot and Imelda
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, B-boy and Bulosan
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, Subic Bay and Stockton
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, Gangsta Rap and Galleon Trade
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, Comfort Woman and Carabao
We, Malakas and Maganda
We, Lea Salonga and Lapu-Lapu
We, Devil and Dogeater
We, TnT and Taguba
We, Malakas and Maganda
I think of this poem as conventionally “masculine”; indeed, I have already cited more male poets speaking as “the people,” in an essay about Pinay “we” poetics. I also see how many women have found themselves pushed to the interior, in the province of the domestic, the personal, and private, while the men are charged with handling issues of representation of “the people,” addressing the outside world. Ultimately, many women find themselves pushed so far inside, discouraged from speaking on that “too big” world, efffectively silenced. This is one contradition I am trying to unravel; the fine details of our everyday lives comprise a human being, communities of human beings, and the cultures of communities of human beings in the world.
Reading Carlos Bulosan: For Whom and About What Do We Write
Thank you to Jean Vengua for pointing me towards “I Am Not A Laughing Man,” an essay on writing penned by Carlos Bulosan, published in the out of print collection, On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan, edited by E. San Juan, Jr. I picked up this book a while back, as my original plan was to teach Bulosan’s poetry for my Filipino American Literature course which ended up being canceled.
Anyway, I have taught one of these essays, “The Writer as Worker,” for my Poets of Color class. I really appreciate Bulosan’s thoughts on the publishing industry, and what it means for him to be a writer, what his social and political role is as a writer:
Why should I write about labor unions and their struggle? Because a writer is also a worker. He writes stories, for example, and sells them or tries to sell them. They are products of his brain. They are commodities. Then again, the writer is also a citizen; and as a citizen he must safeguard his civil rights and liberties. Life is a collective work and also a social reality. Therefore the writer must participate with his fellow man in the struggle to protect, to brighten, to fulfill life. Otherwise he has no meaning — a nothing.
Political Poems: Ongoing Thoughts
Again, this conversation comes up in Poets of Color class, in this case, as regards the poetry we’ve just read in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, edited by Francisco Aragón.
Or, I should say, I bring up “political poetry” all the time in class, as we discuss stretching the boundaries of the term and the criteria by which we deem a work as political. Paul Martínez Pompa’s “Bones,” about a you who is on his/her feet all day at work in a grocery store, whose 52 bones of the feet hum, each with its own pain, when the you finally gets a moment to sit. “While Late Capitalism,” in its specific form, reflecting the crush of dying bodies of undocumented Mexican workers, expendable commodities in this economy. “Want,” slowing down to a crawl a scene of day laborers sweltering as they await without guarantee the truck that could take them to a day of construction work. The Dr. Seuss rhymes of Urayoán Noel’s “Kool Logic,” ridiculing our culture of capitalism-on-steroids, how we not only accept such ridiculous consumerism, but desire to become commodities, beautiful and happy by late capitalism’s distorted standard of beauty and happiness.
These are not “protest poems,” the poems which immediately call us to action, but still, we agree these poems are political.
Teaching Poets of Color 2
In my previous blog post on teaching poets of color, David Keali’i requested in his comment that I post some of the readings here. So as I scramble to create a syllabus, here’s how I figured I’d start the class:
- Carlos Bulosan, “The Writer as Worker” (Essay, 1955).
- –. “If You Want to Know What We Are” (1940).
- –. “I Want the Wide American Earth” (ca. 1950′s).
- Julia de Burgos, “#1 To Julia de Burgos.”
- –. “#180 We Are Closed Fists.”
- –. “#191 Awaken.”
Now I don’t know the exact dates of the de Burgos poems, but according to Jack Agüeros, who translated the entire collection, Song of the Simple Truth (Curbstone Press, 1997), and who also wrote the introduction, these poems were written between 1933 – 1943. She died in 1953 (the anecdote Agüeros provides in his introduction makes me so sad).
But now the question is: Why start with these two poets? Well, that’s up for discussion. I may add more for the first day of class, but for now, this is what I got.
We’ll also be reading from The Wind Shifts (University of Arizona Press, 2007) later on in the semester, and so far, it looks like I will assign Sheryl Luna, Paul Martínez Pompa, Urayoán Noel, and Adela Najarro. Finally, for now, from the Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Cafe (Owl Books, 1994) anthology, I would love to assign the whole section of “Founding Poems,” which I know is a lot, and maybe even too much. More soon.
Poetry in Epiphanic Mode: Carlos Bulosan, "If You Want to Know What We Are."
I am still unclear on what is meant by “poetry in epiphanic mode,” as we are discussing over at Craig’s blog, but I believe the following Carlos Bulosan poem may be that. I found it at Bulalat.com.
Sprawling thoughts on literary community while reading Juan Felipe Herrera
I am currently reading Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, and it’s making the little hamster wheel in my head turn. As I blogged yesterday, I am thinking/revisiting this local scene, this grassroots, DIY Filipino American scene, and I am thinking on what can be said about our literary traditions as San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American writers/artists.
Herrera discusses the Floricanto tradition, and its influence on his generation of Xicano/Chicano writers/artists. Without getting too deep into what Floricanto is, I can say I had previously encountered the term at SFSU’s Poetry Center where Alejandro Murguía was hosting a Floricanto Festival which sprawled SF’s Mission District, and which featured so many younger poets. That’s where I first heard Tomás Riley read/perform from his book, Mahcic.
My point here is the active work of ensuring continuity of literary tradition.