In this Filipino Literature course, we will read and discuss works of fiction, essay, and poetry written by Filipina/o writers in English. We will read and discuss the literature as both art and document, and the writers as cultural historians humanizing the supposedly objective details of academic texts. We will alternate between USA-based narratives/texts, and texts with a transnational focus.

We will be digging deep into these texts, asking ourselves some of these guiding questions:

* What have Filipinos been writing about themselves and the world, and how have they been writing about it?

* What are their historical, cultural, political, literary, artistic, and aesthetic concerns?

* How are these handled in the work?

The authors we will read and discuss this semester write with deference and/or resistance to high Western literary movements, grassroots/“street” movements, and oral tradition, sometimes simultaneously. Their languages are a blending of “formal” English, vernaculars, and native languages. At various geographical locales, they read and inform one another’s work. Their subject matter includes post-colonialism, language, displacement, diaspora, war, exile, racism, misogyny, gender, sexuality, labor, and poverty. The purpose of this course is not to attach a tidy label to any author and his/her work, but rather, to read and engage in critical discussions of the literature well beyond self-expression and ethnic identity politics. Starting with the elders, and working our way into contemporary times, we will discuss their use of English, and we will consider how younger authors build upon or break the traditions which their elders have established or abided. We will dsicuss younger writers’ relationships to English, and whether younger authors are inventing new traditions.