The last time I was at AWP, I was still in graduate school, renting an apartment, and unsure about what came next post-MFA. Italy won the World Cup, and Gnarls Barkley was top of the charts with “Crazy.” It’s been more than awhile (17 years–ouch!), so much so, that I’m now a mother, a professor, a homeowner, who still feels just as lost with so much still up in the air only now I get to chat about this lostness and all the many balls in the air with fellow parent-writers. I am both nervous and truly excited to be sharing a panel discussion with fellow writers John Messick, Keema Waterfield, Sean Prentiss, and Ukamaka Olisakwe.
For those attending AWP, I hope you can join us at this panel “Impossible Balance” on Saturday, March 11, 3:20-4:35pm (Room 327, Summit Bldg), where we attempt to put into our words the crazy-making, acrobatic experiences of parenting [small children] and writing [during the pandemic]. I would love to catch up and meet fellow writers, readers, and lovers of word in Seattle, so please drop me a line and see you there!
The Guardian UK loves lists, and they spend plenty of air time debating the purpose and usefulness of this form. Katie Kitamura waxes in her article “Literary Lists: Proof of our existence”:
Lists are used as a formally alienating device, a dehumanising agent, that is nonetheless entirely wrapped up in the question of human life.
How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty. In these circumstances, a certain kind of writer has, again and again, reverted to the list – perhaps as the simplest proof of existence in the first place. It’s no accident that these lists often delineate material objects, the physical evidence of a life.
…[Umberto] Eco is talking about what I can only describe as a big feeling, and one that requires all the support of its formal and literary scaffolding. He is not, in the main, talking about grocery lists or lists of books read. But as long as we’re keeping lists, no matter what those lists are, we’re keeping faith with some idea of perpetuity. We are making the assumption that the list will endure even when we do not.
Furthering the idea that lists endure, The Guardian enumerated English literature’s 50 key moments from Marlowe to JK Rowling, registering historical moments and literary milestones. Here’s a taste:
Note: what follows is not merely a book list, but an attempt to identify some of the hinge moments in our literature – a composite of significant events, notable poems, plays, and novels, plus influential deaths, starting with the violent death of Shakespeare’s one serious rival …
1. The death of Christopher Marlowe (1593)
2. William Shakespeare: The Sonnets (1609)
3. The King James Bible (1611)
4. William Shakespeare: The First Folio (1623)78)
In the spirit of Eco’s perpetuity, here’s a personal record–certainly not exhaustive nor complete–noting moments of self discovery, influential people, places, films, musicians, mentors, trailblazers to follow, and other artifacts that have shaped this literary self. The below register doesn’t follow chronological order nor an order of importance but is a haphazard attempt to pin down the brightest constellations that wheel over my literary skies. Like any piece of writing, it’s been revised nth times over, and these fidgety fingers are still tempted to make further emendations. It will be interesting to revisit ten and twenty years from now and discover how the skyscape has shifted.
1. Central Station
2. The City of Angels
3. My soul mate, PJS.
4. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
33. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
34. Mr. Thurston’s Honors English class at Monte Vista High School and his extra credit reading list
35. Mr. Tato, Avocado Elementary School
36. Libraries at Highland Elementary, MVHS, Avocado, and Spring Valley Middle School
37. Elementary School Bookfairs (Scholastic Catalogs–does anyone remember these?)
38. Laura Ingalls Wilder Series
39. The Romantics: Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, and the rest of the guys in the band
40. Charlotte Bronte
41. Emily Bronte & Wuthering Heights
Hopefully this inventory might give you pause to reflect over the personal and private moments that have shaped your art and passion. This could include lovers, would-be lovers, chance encounters, TV shows, songs, albums, poets, comediennes–whatever gets your engine revved. You’ll leave beloved people and places out that will make you cringe with regret, as I have, but that’s the nature of lists. As much as they stand as testament; they’re essentially ephemera like every other form we try and hold fast to. These watersheds don’t have to be explained but should mean everything to you.
Just got my signed copy of Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diegowritten by Dr. Rudy P Guevarra Jr. (Arizona State University) and published by Rutgers University Press. I remember when Dr. Guevarra and I first met at a FANHS (Filipino American National Historical Society) conference in San Diego years ago. We compared notes about being Mexipino or Chicapina, as my family calls us, and, later at UCLA, I would share my stories with him officially for the honor and privilege of being included in his book.
Here’s an excerpt:
Rashaan and other Mexipinos in San Diego are the bridges between both cultures because they live a multicultural existence. Multiethnic and multiracial people have already experienced an alternative worldview, which has positive implications. She described it in terms of the future of racial and ethnic mixing: ‘I think it is inevitable…Time magazine put up all the races of together to see what it [hypothetical person of the future] would look like, and it looked Filipino. You know, it’s like we’re already there, we’ve been there. We’re just bringing it to the forefront (158)
Becoming Mexipino is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino whose paths led both to San Diego, California. Using archival sources, oral histories, newspapers and personal collections and photographs, Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. traces the earliest interactions of both groups with Spanish colonialism to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth century San Diego as well as in other locales throughout California and the Pacific West Coast.
Educators, please consider using this text in your classroom. California history lovers, ethnic study researchers, and San Diego locals, why not pick up a copy for yourself? Please help spread the word to interested parties and consider having a go yourself!
Thanks to professor and poet Barbara Jane Reyes and the sponsorship of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program and Asian Studies Program, I was able to guest lecture for Reyes’ Spring 2012 course “YPSP 195-01/ANST 195-02: Filipina Lives and Voices in Literature” at the University of San Francisco on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. Before my presentation, sixteen savvy students read my short personal essay “Barbie’s Gotta Work,” published in Doveglion. The essay was included in the course’s unit on “Work and Domesticity.”
Reyes recently discussed this very same class and its inception in her recent post on the Poetry Foundation’sHarriet The Blog:
One day, I’d casually asked our program chair whether he was interested in an all Filipina/Pinay (Filipino women) literature course, and he said, yes, draft a syllabus, and we’ll get it approved by the curriculum committee. It was approved. It was quickly filled. This is the first semester I am teaching the course, and I’m still in disbelief. All Pinay Literature. I always think, wow, where was this class when I was young, and when I needed it most. It seems a lot of people have been asking this question too, as I have been asked by more people than I can count, for my syllabus and reading lists. So, in this space, I will be talking a bit about some of the items from my syllabus, in the hopes that it will prompt readers further.
For my guest lecture, after giving a brief power point presentation, featuring pictures of my family, my maternal and paternal grandparents at work and at play in their youth, the students asked challenging questions about the superficiality of Barbie and how that was complicated in the essay and what it was like to be a professor of color. Another student broached the gap between generations, wondering how to relate with family members who might not share the same educational experiences. This brought on the idea of exploring the roots that hold us together and the stories family members share no matter where their paths in life take them.
We discussed looking at life and literature through a prism of lenses, much like looking through a kaleidoscope; we can shift the angles. We also talked about family memories that shape who we are. Some of the students shared their own experiences, remembering the work of their mothers, fathers, and grandparents.
Below is a sneak peek at the writing exercise students worked on, sifting through their past and their parents’ and grandparents’ pasts to uncover half-forgotten memories concerning love and labor, two themes that I keep coming back to with my own writing.
Love & Labor Writing Exercise
How do your parents and/or grandparents use their body at work?
How did work define your parents and/or grandparents?
What sense of self and purpose did they find through their labor?
Describe one of your parents or grandparents at work: What is the setting? What are their hands doing? Explain the actions of the body and mind.
How are they interacting with their setting? With other people at work?
Professor Dawn Bohulano Mabalon from San Francisco State University shares family stories and a Visayan favorite, binangkal, which my grandma and grandpa loved to make and share for breakfast with a nice cup of coffee. Just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean we can’t keep sharing good times with family & food.
Several friends, many of them second and third generation with roots in the Visayas, reacted quickly and rapturously to my binangkal photo, thrilled that Facebook love had been given to an obscure regional treat beloved across the Visayas and wherever in the world Visayans settled. My writer friend Rashaan Alexis Meneses posted: “My grandpa used to make these! Sob.”…Binangkal is a sesame-covered baking powder donut, deep fried until crisp and brown on the outside and pillowy on the inside. When made well, its surface is craggy, brown and caramelized from the hot oil, its insides moist and fluffy. A popular snack in Cebu and the Visayas, it has look-alikes in Chinese dim sum restaurants and bakeries, which is a clue that binangkal may have some Chinese influence.
Read entire article here and have a go at the recipe to bring a taste of sweet memories into your kitchen.
On the summer solstice, June 21, 2010, among dear family and close friends, my partner of twelve years and myself jaunted over to San Francisco City Hall for a civil union. When we arrived, we had just missed a tour of elementary kids who were boarding their buses as we filed in for our appointment to be wed ’til death do us part. After our ceremony under the rotunda, we whisked up to the top floor for a photo shoot meanwhile SEIU members demonstrated, singing “We Shall Overcome.” We followed our civil union with a photo shoot at one of our favorite venues, the Legion of Honors. The day closed with an exchange of vows on Ocean Beach, and after ward we celebrated with dinner at the Cliff House.
We were lucky enough to have this magical day documented by our one of our nearest and dearest friends, who I’ve known since our salad days at UCLA. The photographer, artist, and educator Brenda Janairo captured the solstice’s events with her artistry. Here’s an excerpt of her website:
I’m a sucker for love. I’m the one who watches all the weepy love flicks and cries like a baby. Yes, I admit, I love to cry. It’s not the mere action of crying that I love, but more the ability to connect to characters that I watch. To me that is what creates a beautiful film, characters I can sympathize with.
Now, when I connect to people in real life…tears do flow. A few weekends ago I had the honor of shooting the wedding of 2 amazing individuals, Rashaan and Phil.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses 