RE: Recollections, Reviews, Reflections by Luis H. Francia (review)

Multi-genre writer Luis H. Francia understands that compiling already-published works into a book may seem selfish. He had published an earlier collection, Memories of Overdevelopment (Anvil, 1998), which contained two decades' worth of work. However, the reason he does it again is that he also understands its aesthetic value. RE allows readers who have followed Francia's essays in various local and foreign as well as print and online publications throughout the years to "follow the arc of [his] writing" (ix). Even for these accustomed readers, but more so for new readers, that arc is surprising in its range and insight. Although the book conveniently and alliteratively classifies its contents into recollections, reviews, and reflections, the topics and treatment of the essays exceed the convention of these categories.

The collection starts with a brief interview with Salman Rushdie, who was supposedly hiding from Khomeini's fatwa and Shiv Sena's wrath. It is a revealing start since the book is full of those who have made indelible legacies in the arts, such as V. C. Igarte, Doreen Fernandez, Santiago Bose, and Nonoy Marcelo. To an extent, such legacies are built on the courage to represent truth as it is. Central among these personalities is Jose Garcia Villa, whom Francia considers to be a mentor and whose idiosyncrasies are well known. "Villanelles," the essay about Villa originally published in The Anchored Angel (Kaya Press, 1999), presents an intimate but frank portrait of the poet: his dislike for Scotch, French food, and New Yorker poetry; his friendship with E. E. Cummings and Allen Ginsberg; and his New School workshop. The essay however ends not with the poet's tastes but with questions, like afterthoughts after his death, about his relationship with exile and, à la Carlos Bulosan, America.

Because many of the essays come from Francia's regular column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Artist Abroad, a common theme in the book is the Filipino diaspora. Reading the book can feel like reading a travel journal (without the bland language of a guidebook) told from different personas: Filipinos in Manhattan, Madrid, Paris, and Hong Kong. These personas are set against contrapuntal narratives and surprising situations. For example, post-1986 Pinays in Hong Kong are set side-by-side with the ritual of the Tadtarin and Lino Brocka; and the Beatles beside Pete Lacaba watching a Pilita Corrales concert. These intertextual weavings are to be expected anyway given the historical provenance and social situation of the Filipino diaspora. But more than this, Francia not only reports scene and situation, a reportage whose perspective self-consciously comes from a writer in the diaspora himself, but also comments on their implications. In other words, Francia shows and tells. Endearing details, such as a Myanmar tour guide who eyes a Lonely Planet book and Atenistas visiting colegialas in Diliman, delight readers. However, the wonder of his essays is how they make every subject compelling and how they extend almost everything to a social critique.

The American empire is a frequent object of his critiques. Included in this volume are important essays from Vestiges of War, which Francia coedited with Angel Velasco Shaw (NYU Press, 2002), and Topography of War (Asian American Writers Workshop, 2006). Especially because the context of most of these essays is the post-9/11 world order, the ironies of empire and the pathos of the Philippine neocolonial republic are exposed. Francia reflects if, in the rhetoric and posturing in the "war on terror," the aggressor has not in fact become what it seeks to defeat and whether the world has indeed become a safer place. Filipinos, especially seen in the sequence of neocolonial administrations in the Philippines, are complicit in this condition. The subtext of historical, economic, and political ties is too blatant not to be mentioned in the cases of Hacienda Luisita, the hunt for "terrorists," and the elusive peace in Mindanao. Filipinos in the diaspora, therefore, are caught in a double-bind. Not only are...