In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

15The Philippine short story in English: An overview Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo Introduction Any account of the development of the Philippine short story in English has to begin with the fact that it is in English. In short, Philippine literature in English is tied up with the experience of colonialism, an essential truth that all serious Filipino writers in English must address at some point in their careers. National Artist for Literature Francisco Arcellana, describing the ‘period of emergence’ of literature in English, wrote: There is something uncommon in the not enviable situation of the Filipino writer in English and this is the insuperable problem of language. The life from which he draws substance is lived in a language different from the language he uses. He is therefore twice removed: by the language and by the work of art. (1967: 607) Writing of his own early work, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Arcellana’s contemporary and also a National Artist for Literature, went over the same ground. The life I described quite literally spoke a different language — and became a different life. Rendered in an alien tongue, that life attained the distinction of a translation even before it had been made into a representation of reality, and then even before becoming a reality of its own. (1995b: 62) The passage is from ‘Kalutang: A Filipino in the world’ (Gonzalez, 1995a). This is the narrative of the writer’s odyssey — from the small, southern harbor town in Romblon, to Manila, the capital city, where he worked as a journalist and teacher, to Hayward State College, where he was finally appointed Professor and director of the Creative Writing Program, back to the Philippines to receive an honorary PhD and the title International Writer-in-Residence from the University of the Philippines (UP), and to be named National Artist for 300 Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo Literature by the government. It is a parable of the life of the successful writer of his generation. Jose Garcia Villa was to do his contemporaries one better by flying to New York City (in 1929 or 1930), settling there, and being praised by no less than Edith Sitwell. Carlos Bulosan was to make the same journey at about the same time, but on ‘a ship jammed with steerage passengers bound for Seattle’ (Feria, 1991: 182). There was no sophisticated literary coterie to welcome him. He took on menial jobs and slept on park benches, became an alcoholic and fell seriously ill, but the Pacific War made the Philippines interesting to Americans, and The Laughter of My Father, a short story collection, was published in 1944 to critical acclaim. As Gonzalez put it, ‘the City’s abundant dreams had begun to find an embodiment’ (1995b: 67). But there was a price to pay. Borrowing from Frantz Fanon, he described that price as no less than ‘a definite restructuring of the self and of the world’, dictated by American editors, teachers, and critics, final arbiters of taste, a restructuring that isolated the Filipino writer in English from most of his countrymen. Realizing that the language he had chosen severely limited the size of his audience, Gonzalez decided to write his third novel, The Bamboo Dancers, in Tagalog, despite the lack of a good Tagalog dictionary.1 However, his friends, themselves editors of Tagalog magazines, discouraged him from persevering in this direction; writing in Tagalog was writing for the masses, and therefore ‘lowbrow’. Only writing in English was respected by the Americanized elite. So Gonzalez returned to English and wrote in that language the rest of his life, as did many of his contemporaries, and as do many writers today. Why do we do it? Perhaps for the same reasons that convinced N. V. M. Gonzalez and his generation of Filipino writers in English: because they learned to write in it and therefore worked best in it; because there were more opportunities for publication open to the writer in English, including the possibility of becoming part of the larger body of world literature; and because there is a rich tradition of English literature, a body of critical theory, authoritative dictionaries, academic courses, etc. As Lumbera and Lumbera have amply demonstrated in Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology (2000), the history of Philippine literature is inextricable from the history of the country itself, which is a history of repeated colonization.2 The Hispanic period (1565–1897) In his pioneering study of the novel in the Philippines, Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel (1983...

Share