For Consciousness

INTRODUCTION to Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines (USA: Gaudy Boy, forthcoming in March 2021)
By Tilde Acuña, John Bengan, Daryll Delgado, Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III, and Kristine Ong Muslim

Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines intends, at the very least, to change the way anthologies of Philippine writing are produced and presented to the rest of the world. This book seeks to offer up stories that embody the depth and range of contemporary Philippine fiction. To do this and still be able to claim representation of Philippine literature, we figure that it is imperative to represent, by way of translation, as many languages as possible from the over 150 languages in the Philippines. Previous efforts, though laudable, focus only on Anglophone literature, leaving out vigorous writing in local languages.

Ulirát is Tagalog for consciousness, and it speaks to one of our aims when we were making selections for the book. The anthology intends to forward a “consciousness” predicated on a more nuanced representation of English-language Filipino literature, a niche dominated internationally by the works of Filipinos who write in English. Our goal is to introduce Filipino writing to a wider audience without the shortsightedness of electing Philippine writing in English as wholly representative of the nation’s literature. 

Another of our aims is to have Ulirát serve as a tribute to story forms that have been historically left out in most national anthologies by major Philippine publishers. We want to use it to disrupt the homogenizing impulse of “national” literary anthologies coming out of the Philippines. Philippine languages for which short fiction is not an urgent form, however, need not be forced to conform to the literary conventions endorsed by this anthology.

Historical Background

The first year of the twenty-first century saw the release of the Isagani R. Cruz–edited The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology of Fiction in English (2000). The groundbreaking anthology contained fifty short stories, all originally written in English, the language first brought to the Philippines by the British when they invaded Manila from 1762 to 1764 [1, 2]. The English language, however, only gained widespread adoption in the Philippines during the forty-eight-year American colonial occupation—along with approximately three hundred thousand dead Filipino revolutionaries and civilians, including the fatalities during the 1880s to the early 1900s when American colonizers introduced epidemics to the indigenous population, the people of the Philippine archipelago also learned English [3, 4]. Among the selections in Isagani R. Cruz’s anthology were Paz Márquez-Benítez’s “Dead Stars”—the first successful (successful in the sense that it was the earliest known story to have met American short story conventions) piece of English-language short fiction written by a Filipino—and Manuel E. Arguilla’s “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife,” which was reputed to be the most famous Filipino short story in English.

The Filipino scholar and historian Resil B. Mojares, in his The Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel: A Generic Study of the Novel Until 1940 (1983), was able to locate the roots of the modern Filipino novel in traditional storytelling forms [5]. No similar attempt exists for contemporary writing practices across the country with respect to the short story form. Leopoldo Yabes’s Philippine Short Stories: 1925-1940 (1975) covered only short stories originally written in English [6]. Half a century later in 2010, Gémino H. Abad edited a series of short story anthologies: Upon Our Own Ground (Volume 1 [1956–1964], Volume 2 [1965–1972]), Underground Spirit (Volume 1 [1973–1982], Volume 2  [1983–1989]), and Hoard of Thunder (Volume 1 [1990–2000], Volume 2  [2001–2008]) [7]. Augmenting Yabes’s efforts, Abad’s anthologies continue to include only—despite institutional support from the country’s premier state university—the easiest to survey: Philippine short stories originally written in English.

The modern short story form [8] may have been formally introduced into the Filipino classroom by American colonialists in the early twentieth century, but the genre developed early on from religious texts such as sermons, novenas, and brief accounts of the lives of saints. A century before the Americans came, the short form found life not only in Spanish, but also in Bikol, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Tagalog, and other Philippine languages during the rise of the printing industry. The Tagalog had “maikling kuwento,” Ilokano “sarita,” Kapampangan “salita,” Hiligaynon “sugilanon,” Cebuano “mubong sugilanon,” and Waray “susumaton.”  Anecdotes and tales, such as the Tagalog “dagli” and the Visayan “binirisbiris,” were also precursors of the literary genre known today as the “maikling kuwento,” or the short story. These forms may be traced back to oral narratives that include ballads, folktales, and epic cycles that have long been widely practiced in the islands. 

Since English was the medium of instruction in universities, Americans and American-trained instructors turned to the short story form as handy material for teaching. Short stories comprised many of Filipino university students’ earliest attempts at literary writing in English. The University of the Philippines’s College Folio published imitations of Anglo-American adventure stories. Most of the first short stories published in local magazines were also riffs of the O. Henry story that usually ended with a surprise or twist. The formula also entailed the teaching of a lesson, melodrama, and sentimentality. In 1925, critics hailed Paz Márquez-Benítez’s “Dead Stars” as an exemplar of the short story form in English.

By the 1930s, the short story became a popular genre in magazines such as Liwayway, Sampaguita, Bannawag, Kasanag, Kapawa, Bag-ong Suga, and Bisaya. The Tagalog maikling kuwento found sophisticated expression in the works of Rosalia Aguinaldo, Deogracias Rosario, and Amado V. Hernandez. Vicente Sotto, Amado Osorio, and Vicente Rama were among the early practitioners of the Cebuano mubong sugilanon. The Hiligaynon sugilanon had no less than Magdalena Jalandoni as a leading practitioner, and later Ramon Muzones; both writers also wrote novels in serialized forms. Isabelo de los Reyes is considered to have written the first short story in Ilocano with “Ti Langit Ti Inanamatayo” (“Heaven Is Our Hope”). Writers such as David D. Campañano, Constante Casabar, and Benjamin Pascual followed de los Reyes’s lead. The short story in Bikol was likewise honed by Salvador Perfecto, Juan Nicolas, and Nany Calderon, Jr., among others. 

Though still influenced by their predecessors’ Romanticism, the next generation began to turn to Realism, since writers, particularly those writing in local languages, wanted to depict social reality in fiction. This turn can be attributed to two developments in the tumultuous 1930s that led to the weakening of the Commonwealth government: the emergence and steady rise of the Communist Party of the Philippines earlier in the decade and the establishment of the Philippine Writers League in 1939. By the 1940s, the preoccupations of Filipino writers in English and in the vernacular had evolved: the former grappled with the “social relevance” of their literary production (read: content), while the latter struggled with utilizing “modern techniques” and establishing “literary standards” (read: form) [9].

After Márquez-Benítez came Paz Latorena, Manuel Arguilla, Arturo B. Rotor, Loreto Paras-Sulit, Francisco Arcellana, N. V. M. González, and Bienvenido Santos, all of whom wrote early forays into the realist short story in English. Written by Serafin Guinigundo and Brigido Batumbakal, the best Tagalog stories in the realist mode depicted alienation and the harshness of urban living. Liwayway Arceo, Genoveva Edroza-Matute, Norma Miraflor, and Rogelio Sicat would carry on this illustrious tradition. Macario Pineda’s early innovations would anticipate the formal playfulness of short stories in Tagalog in the 1980s and 1990s. The localized short story form would also develop in Bikol, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, and Cebuano.

The arrival of New Criticism in the 1950s would change the course of the short story’s evolution. English-language writers grappled with the theme of Filipino identity while being attentive to universal concepts and sense of craft. Trends such as existentialism and modernism, including the stream-of-consciousness style, would also leave a mark even in writers of the sugilanon. Similarly, Ilocano writers such as Jose Bragado and Constante Casabar developed a heightened sense of craftsmanship.

In the late 1960s until the 1970s, many writers synthesized political commitment with modernist storytelling in the face of Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship. Ricky Lee’s “Si Tatang, Si Freddie, Si Tandang Senyong, at iba pang mga tauhan sa aking Kuwento” (“Tatang, Freddie, Old Man Senyong, and the Other Characters of my Story”), Wilfredo Virtusio’s “Maria, Ang Iyong Anak” (“Maria, Your Child”) [10], and Edel Garcellano’s oft-forgotten novel Ficcion (1972) [11] exemplified the said attempt to fashion a fictional form that negotiates both political commitment and aesthetic innovation. Soon, metafiction and postmodernism found their local iterations in Tagalog and Cebuano fiction. At present, short stories in various Philippine languages cover a gamut of contemporary themes, from trenchant histories, protracted people’s war, state-sanctioned violence, migration and the diaspora, to sexual politics and gender identities.

Substance and appearance are two sides of the same literary coin, hence the convergences, divergences, negotiations, and polemics among writers of this historical epoch—and of the periods to come. It should be noted, too, that most documented events in the emerging “national” literary scene occurred in urban centers such as Manila, Cebu, and Iloilo, since folk literature of the hinterlands was not considered literary due to its oral and communal characteristics.

Stories most certainly exist prior to the interruption of colonialism. They thrive outside twentieth century’s gatekeeping mechanisms of corporate and academic publishing that favors “realism” with “local color” or, by the twenty-first century, the “speculative” mode—either as spectacular embellishment (still “local color” but fantastic) to be interesting or as an indispensable component to confront pressing societal issues while exploring genre storytelling.

Of course, outside the political imagination of residents of the Philippine Republic are stories of the countryside engaged in the protracted people’s war—fictions of utmost relevance, wakefulness, and timeliness that problematize Philippine reality. Unfortunately, these stories are beyond the anthology’s scope, although we will discuss them briefly in another section.

Until Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines, there has never been an anthology as ambitious and sweeping in its scale. Ulirát represents the first broadstroke attempt to anthologize contemporary short story specimens translated from seven of the over 150 languages in the Philippines and to present the results of such an effort to English readers. The book’s relevance is also partly contingent on how and why it subverts present-day conditions and trends of literary productions in the Philippines.

Most anthologies and journals published by commercial and university presses in the Philippines feature literary works in English and Filipino. Recent exceptions include Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature (2013), Susumaton: Oral Narratives of Leyte ( 2016), and Tinalunay: Hinugpong nga Panurat nga Winaray (2017), all edited by Merlie M. Alunan [12]. These anthologies feature works originally written in various Visayan languages alongside English translations. Peñafrancia Raniela Barbaza’s Orosipon kan Bikolnon: Interrupting the Philippine Nation (2017) and Mga Osipon ni Ana T. Calixto : Paggigiit sa Sadiring Sanwa sa Osipon: Maikling Kathang Bikol, 1950-1956 (2018) translated selected Bikolnon prose: the former into both English and Filipino, the latter into Filipino; both books are also critical studies that conceptualize the old Bikol word for “story,” orosipon, and its intervention in nation-building [13].

“National” writing workshops, especially the oldest and most prestigious ones, Silliman University Writers Workshop (SUNWW) and University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop (UPNWW), have both been singularly instrumental in shaping the country’s existing literary landscape to value English and Filipino—in this order—over other languages. Unsurprisingly, both the SUNWW and UPNWW have unabashedly colonial roots. SUNWW was established by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, after being mentored by literary arbiters of taste at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an appendage of the CIA in influencing the creative writing scene in America as well as the rest of the world [14, 15, 16, 17]. UPNWW, on the other hand, was established after the American colonial period and has since been influential in affecting national policies, shaping public opinion, and enacting societal change—to and from regressive neocolonial sustenance and progressive anticolonial resistance.

Still under the clutches of imperialism, like Latin America [18] and other poorer nations of the “Global South” [19], the Philippines suffers not only from the widening gap between the rich and the poor but also between hegemonic languages and marginal ones—a crisis that can be traced as far back as the early twentieth century, when the country endured “benevolent assimilation” and seemingly prospered under American colonial rule. At that crucial period, Filipino nationality and symbols that represent our national identity were “invented” and established, including the national language and its Tagalog foundations [20] by bureaucrat capitalists in where else but the capital—which was once Quezon City but has most of the time been Manila.

It should be noted, however, that as shown in the classic Filipino novel Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag by Edgardo Reyes [21], the working class of Manila and other cities bear the brunt of the oppressive structures of Philippine society. This underrepresentation is eclipsed to some extent by what is considered the most prestigious of awards in Philippine letters: the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial awards, whose namesake was once president of La Tondeña Inc. distillery, where the first labor strike after Marcos’s declaration of martial law took place—and was later repressed. Ironically, the strike served as an enduring beacon of resistance, the literary award as a glossy artifice of conformity.

The selection of authors in this anthology also shows symptoms of disparity and signs of exclusion—most contributors are from the so-called middling middle classes, educated ones who are aspiring to be or are already professionals in their respective fields. The concluding story of this anthology, by Allan Derain, a standalone excerpt from a much longer work, zeroes in on the “literary scene,” regulated to a great extent by institutions, which include UP, where the main characters studied. Here, international readers will be made aware of the fact that beyond toxic Filipino pride, an anthology exhibiting the “best” Philippine literature can be self-reflexive at the same time.

Before World War II, the then–Philippine President Manuel Quezon urged Filipino writers to preserve the Spanish literary heritage, welcome the “modern” offering of Americans (which included the short story form), and develop a literature based on the national language [9]. After failing to teach Nihonggo during its occupation, Imperial Japan’s Asia for Asians campaign encouraged writing in Tagalog—not to foster anti-imperialist nationalism but to play the game of identity politics and exorcise American influence. Language policies—which affect literary production—aimed to reinforce colonial, imperial, and neocolonial interests pre-WWII, during WWII, and post-WWII, respectively.

To describe the national language situation in the Philippines as one of a yawning disparity between the languages of the “center” and of the “periphery” may sound rather simplistic. After all, Filipino politicians make extensive and effective use of vernacular languages to canvass for support during elections. However, we also remember that, more often than not, once installed in office, these politicians switch to using “official” languages, such as English. A hierarchy between the languages is thus maintained. It is also wise to bear in mind that although stories, whether written in “official” or “marginal” languages, have the power to raise the class consciousness of the reader, they may also be weaponized by the comprador and landlord classes to limit the reader’s vision.

In Isabelo’s Archive (2013), Resil B. Mojares discusses national literature in relation to the ideas of Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, and argues that inventing and developing a national literature requires three moves: 1) asserting difference (the distinction of one’s literary output) and contiguity (all literary output that claims to be part of the Philippine literary tradition is adjacent to each other); 2) internationalizing, which necessitates translation as a way to introduce extant national literatures to the “world republic of letters” [22, 23]; and 3) creating a strategic discursive community from within and outside national literary borders [24]. This anthology therefore is an attempt to demonstrate how unique the “major” Philippine languages are, how they represent Philippine literature despite their differences, and how from within the Philippines, we could create or develop a community, if not a network, of readers and writers.

In assessing the “quality” of the entries in this anthology, the discursive literary community must come to terms with uncomfortable truths. Such judgments are determined by conflicting structures of power and negotiated through different stages of the production, which temporarily culminate in anthologizing acts. Rather than assembling a “best of” anthology to end all “best of” anthologies as infallible dispensers of literary value [25], we share our work for scrutiny, which will lead, we hope, to developing better methods and conversations on inclusion, exclusion, and representation.

The Stories

To us, the editors, the best stories are the kind that burn in one’s memory long after the first reading. We are taken by stories that have a strong sense of place, a distinct viewpoint, and an unshakeable way with voice—an orality that persists in the written form. Stories we find memorable neither take themselves too seriously nor take for granted tradition and possibilities in the art of fiction writing. It is unfortunate that we are proficient in certain languages only; hence, like most readers throughout the archipelago, we can only access particular vernacular languages in translation. Considering our limitations as readers and translators, we asked ourselves what stories could best show the range of styles and concerns, as well as a sense of our storytelling traditions. The stories in this anthology were sequenced in an order that best shows the scope of topics and themes the writers pursued; we also considered the overall tonality and narrative flow when deciding the ordering.

Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines opens with an arthouse-horror nod to a monumental twentieth-century work of fiction. Through a setup eerily reminiscent of the nuclear family in Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, Soleil Davíd’s crisp translation of Carlo Paulo Pacolor’s “Ang Batang Gustong Maging Ipis” (“The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Cockroach”) expands not only the notion of body horror literature but also raises important ideas about human beings’ treatment of nonhuman animals. Is the titular boy changing in response to his material conditions, or is it the people around him who are changing? Can an individual ever truly be free if the trigger and extent of his transformation—no matter how consensual he sees his transformation to be—are still influenced by societal codes? Pacolor is the sole writer from whom we selected two very short works for this anthology, representing both flash fiction and children’s stories.

On the surface, Kristian Sendon Cordero’s “Kulto ni Santiago” (“Santiago’s Cult”), translated from Filipino by Bernard Capinpin, is quintessential urban fantasy. There is the telltale first-person viewpoint to narrate the transplanting of colonial-era supernatural elements into modern times. Its compatibility with the familiar mainstream mold stops there, though. Cordero’s short story is a layered, multigenerational narrative steeped in themes of religious mania and violence enacted in various forms—physical, emotional, and sexual.

Isabel Sebullen’s “Aswang” reads at first like a story about the flesh-eating shape-shifters that populate the folk imagination. However, the “aswang” in the story represents horror that can happen anywhere. Sebullen’s narrator, in avenging his family on a monster, cannot evade doing something monstrous himself. “Aswang” updates the grisly horror genre and offers an indictment of a macho-feudal Hiligaynon society.

Corazon Almerino’s “Sugmat” (“Relapse”), about a Filipino migrant couple who go through so much in their effort to build a life in California, is harrowing and, in its own way, stubbornly hopeful. The story stands out for its compelling narration of a family assailed by misfortune. It is also a story about immigration to the US that powerfully asserts a Visayan perspective, as the female narrator swings between fear, grief, rage, and belief.

“Ang Tulo Ka Mayor sa Hinablayan” (“The Three Mayors of Hinablayan”), written by Omar Khalid and translated from Cebuano, is studded with remarkable details as it retells infamous and very real power struggles in a certain town in the Visayas. Apart from the story’s humor, the translation reconstructs the allegory of a town pulled apart by politicians. With a first-person-plural narrator who seems to be spinning fact into absurdity, Khalid demonstrates a propulsive rendering of oral storytelling in the written form. 

Ariel Sotelo Tabág’s “Voice Tape,” while on the surface is an “Araby”-esque coming-of-age story, presents a subtle critique of Marcosian economics, which focused on labor export and foreign remittances in order to sustain an already ailing Philippine economy saddled with debt and  gross mismanagement. Narrated in an overwhelmingly nostalgic tone, the story is a paean to the fiction-writing tradition that preceded Tabág’s while also confronting exigent problems of his generation.

Roy Vadil Aragon’s “Siak ni Kafka, Pusa” (“I am Kafka, a Cat”), on the other hand, while an obvious nod to Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, Samuel Beckett, and all the other purveyors of the absurd, is a deliriously and fiendishly entertaining exploration of the frontiers that separate humanity and animality. Although a bit indulgent at times, Aragon’s prose is reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard’s rambling and sometimes odious style.

While both stories are situated in Ilocano-speaking provinces, it is not a stretch to say that the issues, experiences, and realities they bring forward are also present in works from the other regions. This just shows the contingent and contiguous nature of “regional literature”—what with its ceaseless attempt to assert difference, to carve out a space of its own, while on other hand finding itself simultaneously belonging to a larger collection of works that imagine and narrate the nation.

Genevieve L. Asenjo’s “Turagsoy” (“Mudfish Lady”), translated from Hiligaynon by Eric Gerard H. Nebran and Eliodora L. Dimzon, exemplifies the quintessential Eastern and Western Visayan narrative shift where the notions of movement and leaving—being elsewhere, closer to, or farther from the center—hover over the story as either a prospect or a threat. There is always that tension between keeping things as they are and giving in to change, between extolling tradition and simple living and candidly acknowledging the poverty and want, even the violent histories and gender inequalities.

Merlie M. Alunan’s “Pamato,” translated from Cebuano by Shane Carreon, is a lush and tactile fever-dream, where the implements and mechanics of a game played by Filipino children are used as launching points for rehearsing the narrator’s past mentally. Both painful and reaffirming memories are brought to the fore, unfolding in a sequence of vignettes and nostalgic episodes.

Meanwhile, Doms Pagliawan’s “Tipa-Manila” (“Manila-bound”) is a seemingly simple story of an elderly couple setting off for the first time from a quiet town in Samar to Metro Manila. It exploits all the conventions of a classic journey story (as not so much about the destination as the journey itself), but takes it so much further, as it becomes a narrative of survival and return.

“Pagkagising, Natuklasan Niyang May Tumutubong Kabute sa Butas ng Kanyang Ilong” (“When He Wakes Up, Mushrooms Are Sprouting from His Nose”) is another Carlo Paulo Pacolor story, this time a rambunctious piece of flash fiction translated from Filipino by Erika M. Carreon. It pursues a similarly fraught, at some points dangerous, line of inquiry on physical transformations as the other translated Pacolor story that kicks off this anthology.

Zosimo Quibilan, Jr.’s “Gel” offers a tender look into the fragile, sometimes unsettling, ever-changing dynamic of romantic relationships. Sunantha Mendoza-Quibilan’s translation from Filipino captures the fitful silences of interrupted intimacies, genuine or mimed.

Early Sol Gadong’s “Sa Lum-ok Sang Imo Suso” (“In the Softness of Your Breasts”), about two women who see each other for the first time after ending their relationship, represents the penchant for eroticism in short stories written in local languages. However, more than titillation, Gadong immerses these women in contemporary concerns, such as rapid urbanization and the war on drugs, without losing the story’s sensuousness.

Elizabeth Joy Serrano-Quijano’s “Dili Pwede Mogawas” (“Can’t Go Out”) combines the young narrator’s innocence and urgency of circumstance to take hold of the reader from the opening lines, inviting them to assess their own role in the reality the story represents. Serrano-Quijano never glosses over the locality she is describing: a Blaan village in Southern Mindanao, whose people are involved in the war between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the New People’s Army.

John E. Barrios’s triptych “Relationship,” translated from Akeanon by Merlie M. Alunan, offers an ironic view of lack, a bubbling resistance to, but never wide-eyed acceptance of, the situation. Its sensitive and poignant handling of tensions, given the strong temptation to romanticize life in the countryside and life outside the National Capital Region (NCR), is one of reasons we chose it for this anthology. 

Jay Jomar F. Quintos’s “Ilang Tala at Talababa Hinggil sa Pangungulila” (“Some Notes and Footnotes on Loneliness”) gives shape to what many Filipinos experience: the contact of two or more languages. In telling the story of two colleagues coming from different linguistic backgrounds, the work calls attention to the rubbing together of Tagalog and Cebuano, like bodies generating heat.

Currently in exile in London, where he sought and received refuge from the harassment and death threats of the Duterte regime, Rogelio Braga wrote “Fungi” as part of his short-story collection Is There Rush Hour in a Third World Country. The story’s main characters—two kids who we are made to believe have found a “magical” object in a dumpsite where they scavenge for fabric scraps and other discarded items for a living—follow Joseph Campbell’s archetypal “hero’s journey” monomyth down to the finale. We chose “Fungi” for its empathy and its staunch refusal to go for cheap shots and poverty porn in its harrowing depiction of the lives of the Filipino urban poor. A “best of” short story anthology using the Philippines as a thematic pivot is not complete without a narrative that aims to capture and question Filipino consumerism, the absence of national industries, and the lives of people in the slums of Manila.

We like Perry C. Mangilaya’s “Ahas” (“Snake”) mainly for its unique charm and ambition. The story encourages the reader to empathize with a man, a construction worker rushing home from Manila to his rural hometown, in denial about his wife’s cheating. Even in the face of mounting circumstantial evidence, the man is unwavering in his belief that an engkanto, a supernatural being, has impregnated his wife. It would be interesting to read feminist interpretations of “Snake” vis-à-vis Philippine society’s patriarchal and feudal culture.

Timothy Montes’s laugh-out-loud but moving love story “Kanan Lab-asero Gugma” (The Fishmonger’s Love Story”) is translated from Waray by Merlie M. Alunan. With its theme of a beloved’s return that turned bitter, the story reflects popular concerns in poor rural communities where characters look forward to reuniting with former friends and acquaintances at a town dance. 

Januar Yap’s seamless interspersing of the spectacular and the historic make “Ang Suhito” (“The Savant”) a heady read. Part of the task in translating this story into English is conveying the narrative games and the folk and pop references from Yap’s colloquial Cebuano. The story is proof that although a  translator writes for a reader who only reads English, the reader must also somehow grasp the Cebuano in the translation.

“The Breakup” by Firie Jill T. Ramos, translated from Waray by Merlie M. Alunan, unfolds with the similar Eastern and Western Visayan narrative drive as Genevieve L. Asenjo’s story. It charts the inescapable Filipino filial entanglements whose burdens women are forced to carry.  

Translated from Kinaray-a by Merlie M. Alunan, John Iremil Teodoro’s buoyant and hearty “Why Berting Agî Never Smiles” shares the Timothy Montes story’s poor rural community and reunion of former friends as a setting—though this time the meeting place is at a wake instead of a town dance.

Throughout this introduction, we have highlighted the serious imbalance in the distribution of literary, cultural, political, and economic influences, capacities, and resources in the Philippines. This anthology is a humble intervention in this disproportionate order of things. As centers of neocolonial commerce and un/witting beneficiaries of semi-feudal oppression, the cities of the Philippines concentrate in themselves literal and figurative traffic, especially the Filipino- and English-speaking National Capital Region (NCR), or Metropolitan Manila, where the last story of this anthology, Allan Derain’s “The Next Great Tagalog Novel,” takes place. The story, evocative of neo-futurism in its piquant imaginings, gives much-needed context to the state of Philippine literature in general and Filipino fictionists in particular.

Challenges and Future Work

There are more than 150 languages in the Philippines, and yet, despite our bold claims and aims, we have only managed to translate (or find translations for) and anthologize stories from seven languages. Although our attempt to gather translated stories in one volume remains unprecedented in history, there have been setbacks, a rundown of which you will find below. These setbacks have limited Ulirát’s linguistic diversity, geographical representation, and, ultimately, claims of improving existing anthologizing practices in the Philippines.

One, when we were gathering short stories for Ulirát, we were guided by the working subtitle “The Best of Twenty-First Century Filipino Short Fiction in Translation”; hence, the exclusion of excellent works published before the year 2000.  We also wanted to include writers who have only started to publish in the last two decades. The latter gatekeeping ruled out works by several “titans of letters” associated with the various regions in the Philippines, with one exception. We included Merlie M. Alunan, a writer of an imposing stature, to represent writers who began their literary practices in English and then later contributed significantly to the manifold growth of writing in other Philippine languages. Alunan is an accomplished anthologist herself, translating and compiling stories across the Visayan islands through Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature (University of the Philippines Press, 2015) [13].

Two, copyright issues hounded us, as expected. We managed, for example, to make an arrangement with an author who writes in Ibaloi, a dying language of the indigenous peoples in the mountainous Benguet Province of northern Philippines, a story that would have greatly enriched the depth of selections in Ulirát, but our efforts to obtain permission from the publisher of the author’s short-story collection have been unsuccessful.  A similar problem cropped up involving a Kapampangan short story, whose English translation we had commissioned for the anthology. We regret not being able to include this major language of the Philippines.

Three, we decided against the convenience of publicizing a call for open submissions, a move we knew would be viewed by some as a deterrent to impartiality and inclusivity, although that was far from our intention. We read books, magazines, and journals that published fiction, and then drew up shortlists from our reading. The stories we read numbered in excess of one thousand pieces, some of which were included in our other Philippine fiction anthologies assembled concurrently with Ulirát but with none of Ulirát’s bare-faced ambition and best-of aspiration. Our readings yielded many strong contenders, including two Carlo Paulo Pacolor stories whose English translations were readily available. We also relied on our personal contacts and their networks in soliciting prospective materials. We figured that by finding the materials ourselves, instead of passively waiting for them to come to us via an open-submission system, we could arrive at the best possible and most organic formulation. The mere posting of an open-submission call would have tipped off potential submitters to write the kind of stories they believe would appeal to us or would “survive” translation. We could then end up with a crop of stories that do not accurately represent the kind of writing being done at the moment but writing that is crafted in a tempting translation-friendly form or in an appeal to what is perceived as our aesthetic sensibilities.

Four, the nature of the form and genre is in itself restrictive. The staggering linguistic diversity in the Philippines does not immediately correspond to extant literary practices in these languages producing short fiction. Many ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines, for instance, have relied since prehistoric times on oral narratives for storytelling and propagating their culture. Short fiction, both its form and conventions, remains a staunchly American invention; we simply imported it. Naturally, the practitioners of the written form tend to be those who have been formally educated in the Western literary tradition or who at least have had a brush with it.

Five, it is not surprising that Filipino-Tagalog, Cebuano, and Hiligaynon have more entries compared to other languages among the selections. These languages have either had strong institutional support or a long-established publishing industry since the early twentieth century, especially Filipino, which is largely based on Tagalog, as the legislated national language. Prestigious universities in the Philippines publish journals that accept prose submissions in Filipino. In the past decades, popular magazines, such as Liwayway, have also served as reliable venues for short-story writers and novelists in Filipino. Furthermore, short stories in Filipino-Tagalog are required reading in high school and elementary language classes. Though not as widely read as its Tagalog counterpart, the Cebuano short story has a vibrant tradition, and it has been in circulation through periodicals and magazines such as Ang Suga (1901–1911), Alimyon (1952–1963), and Bisaya (1930–present), among others. Hiligaynon has had Almanake Panayanhon, as well as Yuhum and Hiligaynon magazines, that continue to publish short stories to this day. It would be much, much harder to find venues that publish Akeanon, Karay-a, Waray, Surigaonon, Chavacano, Meranaw, Maguindanao, Tausug, and many other languages. Academia’s renewed interest in what is called “regional literature” in the 1990s led state-funded writing workshops to accept works in languages other than Filipino-Tagalog, and these workshops subsequently encouraged university and independent presses to publish writing in “regional” languages.

And six, we started with the assumption that we could do all the translations ourselves and would authoritatively insert “edited and translated by” next to our names on the book cover. In the end, we had to ask for help from other translators. Our material circumstances were critical determining factors that sorely limited the breadth of selections in this volume. Literary translation is laborious and time-consuming; securing the necessary skill sets to produce high-quality literary translations for an international audience is prohibitively expensive, too.

Thus, we welcome the recognition of our sustained push for Ulirát, despite said material limitations that tempered our ragtag idealism, as a rejoinder against what we lament and, most importantly, criticize: the Philippine government—through the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language) as well as the six agencies attached to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts—cannot seem to come up with enough funding to support literary translators, who are responsible for much of our understanding of world literature, and to sustain the production of high-quality translations. While the Bicol region has enjoyed a spate of well-funded translation projects in the past few years, it is only because of foreign support for the Ateneo de Naga University Press by the embassies of the Czech Republic and Hungary. As for the book you are now holding, it is only possible because of Gaudy Boy, an international publishing imprint.

The same material conditions stated above were also behind our inability to translate and anthologize in Ulirát numerous complex works of art written in recent years. Such innovative works included Chuckberry J. Pascual’s linked stories in Ang Nawawala (The Missing) (Visprint, 2017), U. Z. Eliserio’s politically incorrect irreverences in Apat na Putok (Four Bangs) (Polytechnic University of the Philippines Press, 2018), Mayette Bayuga’s dizzyingly inventive “Ang Heredero ng Tribo Hubad sa Isla Real” (“The Heir to Isla Real’s Tribe of the Naked”), Luna Sicat-Cleto’s “Ang Lohika ng mga Bula ng Sabon” (“The Logic of Soap Bubbles”) told through Sandali’s (literally, “Moment”) stream-of-consciousness, and Roland Tolentino’s Fastfood, Megamall at iba pang kuwento sa pagsasara ng ikalawang milenyum (De La Salle University Publishing House, 1999), stories that use various storytelling modes. For instance, Tolentino’s “Palabok,” “Sa Kanto ng  Annapolis at Aurora” (“In the Corner of Annapolis and Aurora”), and “Fastfood” respectively appropriate the titular recipe, multiple points of view, and annotated vocabulary and grammar books.

Regretfully, we were also unable to cover in Ulirát other notable collections of short fiction in Filipino published by the University of the Philippines Press, including the new edition of Utos ng Hari at Iba Pang Kuwento (King’s Decree and Other Stories) (2002) by Jun Cruz Reyes, who has a cameo as a character in Allan N. Derain’s story in Ulirát; Pamilya: Mga Katha (Family: Stories) (2003) by Eli Rueda Guieb III; and Barriotic Punk: Mga Kuwento sa Baryo at Kanto (Barriotic Punk: Stories in the Barrio and Street Corners) (2002) by Mes De Guzman.

In the nineties, a group of Filipino short-fiction writers, which included Luna Sicat-Cleto, Roland Tolentino, Eli Rueda Guieb III, and Mes De Guzman, released five anthologies: Engkwentro (1990), Impetu (1991),  Habilin (1991), Alagwa (1997), and Relasyon (1999). Then in 2014, Jun Cruz Reyes anthologized in Labintatlong Pasaway (Thirteen Deviants) Filipino-language stories he characterized as “transgressive” and “postmodern.” These efforts are part of the long tradition of short fiction in Filipino, from Marcos’s martial law–era Mga Agos sa Disyerto (Counterflows in the Desert) (1964), which features stalwarts of short-form fiction (Efren Abueg, Dominador Mirasol, Rogelio Ordoñez, Edgardo Reyes, and Rogelio Sicat), to contemporary successors of de facto martial law–period that Mga Gago sa Disyerto (Assholes in the Desert) and similar zine collectives dissect and problematize. Agos may approximately be transliterated as  “counterflow” in the disyerto (“desert”), referring to unproductive land, whereas gago (“assholes”) may be associated with the aforementioned “transgression.” Unfortunately, Ulirát cannot cover this historically important period.

Also out of our reach are short stories written in so-called “red areas,” where communist “organs of political power” practice an alternative way of life, because beyond textual transgressions are actual revolutionary short fictions. Among the most noteworthy of these works are Gelacio Guillermo’s collection Kabanbanuagan: Mga Kuwento ng Sonang Gerilya (Kabanbanuagan: Stories in the Guerilla Zone) (1987) and Muog: Mga Naratibo ng Kanayunan sa Matagalang Digmang Bayan sa Pilipinas, 1972–1997 (Fortress: Narratives of the Countryside in the Protracted People’s War in the Philippines) (1998), an anthology of literary works that includes short stories.

Meanwhile, Bikol-language fiction, one of most advanced and developed in the country, is unjustly underrepresented in Ulirát. Save for Kristian Sendon Cordero’s story, originally written in Filipino and not in Bikol, we were not able to include fiction written in Bikol. Aside from the abovementioned reasons, this is because of the period we initially selected and the choice of some writers from the region who write in English or Filipino. Had our scope included twentieth-century fiction, one of scholar Peñafrancia Raniela Barbaza’s English translations of a Bikolnon story would have been a valuable addition to our selection. The region’s veteran writers such as Niles Jordan Breis, Romulo Baquiran Jr., and Merlinda Bobis are known more for their works in Filipino and English. The same can be said for writers from other regions, such as Leoncio P. Deriada, who had a prodigious output. Additionally, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, with her wide range of scholarly interests in the broad discipline of Philippine studies, has written short fiction in English that integrates folk beliefs with modern sensibilities.

Given the long litany of challenges detailed above, the perception of Ulirát as a self-flagellating mechanism of what-could-have-beens disguised as trailblazing in its protestations would have been understandable, even expected. It is in this spirit of self-critique that we hope to influence and refine future work.

Conclusion

All in all, as a representative sample of the diversity of languages and the rich ethnolinguistic heritage of the Philippines, Ulirát quivers on shaky footing with its relatively paltry scope. But, as a selection of Philippine short fiction in any language, few recent books—or perhaps none at all—can match the incredible breadth of the stories collected here.

We are grateful to every reader who will give this book a chance, most especially because the challenges we have detailed here, among them language barriers and geographical boundaries, can be overcome by establishing a literary network, if not a discursive community. Rather than a singular monolithic effort at gatekeeping or representing the Philippine islands, may our work be a call to let a hundred stories bloom and let a hundred anthologies contend.

Tilde Acuña
John Bengan
Daryll Delgado
Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III
Kristine Ong Muslim

August 11–October 2, 2020
Philippines


Endnotes

[1] Cruz, Isagani R., ed. 2000. The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century. Makati City: Tahanan Books.

[2] Malacañan Palace. n.d. “The British Conquest of Manila,” Presidential Museum and Library. Republic of the Philippines, http://malacanang.gov.ph/the-british-conquest-of-manila/ . Accessed  October 2, 2020.

[3] United States House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives. n.d.  “The Philippines, 1898–1946,” https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/APA/Historical-Essays/Exclusion-and-Empire/The-Philippines/ Accessed  October 2, 2020.

[4] De Bevoise, Ken. 1995. Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ix.

[5] Mojares, Resil B. 1983. The Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel: A Generic Study of the Novel Until 1940. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

[6] Yabes, Leopoldo., ed. 1975. Philippine Short Stories: 1925-1940. Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press.

[7] Abad, Gemino H., ed. 2010. Upon Our Own Ground (Volume 1 [1956-1964], Volume 2 [1965-1972]) & Underground Spirit (Volume 1 [1973-1982], Volume 2 [1983-1989]), & Hoard of Thunder (Volume 1 [1990-2000], Volume 2  [2001-2008]). Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

[8] Most data from this point until the end of the section are from Cruz-Lucero, Rosario, ed. 2018. “The Short Story.” Encyclopedia of Philippine Arts Literature Volume, 2nd edition ed., vol. XI, Pasay City: Cultural Center of the Philippines.

[9] Arguilla, Manuel & Eduardo Nedruda & Teodoro Agoncillo, eds. 1940. Literature under the Commonwealth. Manila: Philippine Writers' League.

[10] Lee's and Virtusio's stories were later anthologized in Sigwa: Isang Antolohiya ng Maiikling Kwento (1992/2007, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press).

[11] Garcellano, Edel. 1972. Ficcion. Quezon City: Kalikasan Press.

[12] Alunan, Merlie, ed.. 2013. Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

---ed. 2016. Susumaton: Oral Narratives of Leyte. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press

---ed. 2017. Tinalunay: Hinugpong nga Panurat nga Winaray. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

[13] Barbaza, Peñafrancia Raniela. 2017. Orosipon kan Bikolnon: Interrupting the Philippine Nation. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

---. 2018. Mga Osipon ni Ana T. Calixto: Paggigiit sa Sadiring Sanwa sa Osipon: Maikling Kathang Bikol, 1950-1956. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

[14] Cruz, Conchitina. 2017. “The (Mis)Education of the Filipino Writer: The Tiempo Age and Institutionalized Creative Writing in the Philippines,” Kritika Kultura No. 28, February 2017, https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/kk/article/view/KK2017.02802/2406 . Accessed  October 2, 2020.

[15] Jones, Josh, “How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America,” Open Culture, December 14, 2018, http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-american-creative-writing-famous-iowa-writers-workshop.html. Accessed October 2, 2020.

[16] Nguyen, Viet Thanh. 2017. “How Writers' Workshops Can Be Hostile.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/review/viet-thanh-nguyen-writers-workshops.html. Accessed October 2, 2020.

[17] Bennett, Eric. 2015. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing during the Cold War. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

---. 2014. “How America Flattened Literature”. The Chronicle. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-iowa-flattened-literature/. Accessed October 2, 2020.

---. 2020. “How America Taught the World to Write Small”. The Chronicle. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-america-taught-the-world-to-write-small. Accessed October 2, 2020.

[18] Galeano, Eduardo. 1973. Open Veins of Latin America : Five Centuries or the Pillage of a Continent. Translated by Cedric Belfrage, New York: Monthly Review Press.

[19] Prashad, Vijay. 2013. The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. London: Verso.

[20] Mojares, Resil. 2006. “The Formation of Philippine National Identity under U.S. Colonial Rule.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 11-32.

[21] Reyes, Edgardo. 1986. Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag. Manila: De La Salle University Press.

[22] Beecroft, Alexander. 2015. An Ecology of World Literature From Antiquity to the Present Day. London: Verso.

[23] Casanova, Pascale. 2000. The World Republic of Letters. Translated by M. B. Debevoise, Harvard University Press.

[24] Mojares, Resil B. 2013. Isabelo’s Archive. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc.

[25] Cf. Braga, Rogelio  “Philippine Literary Mafia” https://rogeliobraga.com/2020/02/24/philippine-literary-mafia/ (2020) and De La Cerna, Julian “What Is an Editor?: Ricardo de Ungria as Producer of Knowledge” in Philippine Humanities Review https://www.journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/phr/article/view/7226/6293 (2019); both, accessed  October 2, 2020.