I do feel like I am repeating myself on this here blog, and I suppose it’s unavoidable. Archives being what they are, that is, the past, we all forget what has been said before.
Here is one of my recent posts, “Deciding (How) To Publish,” an explanation of my belief system about the publishing industry for poets in the USA. I will reiterate this point: I am most dissuasive specifically with Filipino American poets and writers about self-publishing. Other communities of writers can do whatever they want with their written work; it’s not for me to say. But as a leader in the Filipino American writing community, that is, someone so many people come to for advice, concrete support and opportunity, I am most dissuasive specifically with Filipino American poets and writers about self-publishing.
I’ve noted in the past that at our local indie Asian American bookstore, Eastwind Books of Berkeley, where the literature shelves are organized by ethnicity, Filipino Americans have more self-published and vanity press publications than any other APIA group. What this means is that the books by our community of writers are individually distributed, and much harder to find in physical and internet bookstores. So when Filipino Americans who are not tapped into literary or arts scenes walk into bookstores, less Filipino American authored titles can be found there. When they get online and order at Amazon, less Filipino American authored titles can be found. All of this perpetuates our invisibility, which is the same invisibility against which we’re constantly fighting.
Still, I do not think that pushing Filipino American authors into mainstream, big time publishing houses is the best or only solution to the above problem of invisibility. As an author, I have so much more regard for the independent publishing industry for its ability to risk, and I support it as best I can. There are Filipino American authors published by the big houses and that’s great; they should be there. I just don’t know how to direct our community’s attention towards independent publishing, where Filipino American literature is indeed thriving, though not as a centralized body. Perhaps if we could build up Filipino American publishers to the stature of Arte Publico Press, or Bilingual Review Press, or University of Arizona’s Camino del Sol series, which specialize in Latino authored literature, then we will have a more centralized base or scene.
Having a centralized base or scene certainly does not alleviate all of our concerns; this also can lead to questions of standards, aesthetic preferences, and — heaven forbid — elitism. So here is where I get into my other problem with the volume of self-published and self-distributed Filipino American authors: the perceived lack of editorial rigor. I have met so many Filipino American writers who simply believe their work will not stand up to professional editorial standards. I can’t help but perceive this as a kind of colonial mentality hiya, and to me, nothing about colonial mentality hiya is good.
Our work should be competitive and visible among the work of other American writing communities; our work should be worthy of praise and critical acclaim, even on a national level. And we should, rather than retreating into the silence and self-effacement of the margins as we historically do, embrace the rigor, challenge ourselves, work as hard as we can to get our work to the level of praise and critical acclaim, all the while addressing our concerns and speaking in our own voices, challenging our own community’s safety zones and notions of propriety, not bending to anyone else’s expectations of what a well-behaved ethnic is supposed to write about and sound like. I am asking for a lot from my community. And there are people who step up and rise to the challenge.
hear hear, bj. i love your term “colonial mentality hiya.” there’s hiya, and then there’s the “colonial mentality” version. based on what comes to mind when i think of these two terms, they are indeed different, if related, structures of feeling.
hey Gladys, as ever, it’s good to hear from you. Yes on differentiating between hiya and “colonial mentality hiya.” In the past I conflated the two, but am learning why it is valuable. I think maybe the things I’ve written about we poetics (versus I poetics) may fall into the category of hiya.
yes, i would agree that the we poetics as you’ve described it in this space is hiya, and not part of a colonial mentality. it’s an interesting claim, though, b/c i think that some would say that attempting to produce work that withstands mainstream editorial standards is an act conditioned by a colonial/colonized mentality, the wanting to be white. (sorry for the simplistic rendering of this argument.) but i agree with you that there is something wrong when people go the other direction because it looks like “self-effacement” and “retreat.” i like your idea of a strong, well-respected network of fil am presses/publishers. meritage, for example, shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Hi Gladys, I agree that in the most extreme terms, abiding by editorial standards can also be read as some kind of colonial mentality. You know how I wrote — someone else’s expectations of hos a well-behaved ethnic is supposed to write and sound. I have experienced how it becomes this totally polarized argument about academic/colonized versus anti-intellectual/revolutionary. Getting stuck in between where I believe most of us are, I am interested in how we enlarge this in between space by bringing our values to the center, and producing well-written work, and supporting, finding or creating presses that also support this.