I’ve used SPIC to refer to my best friends, my compas. Then they’re like, “I know you just didn’t call me a spic.” Then I’m like, “that means you’re my Special Partna in Crime.” And then we pound fists y nos abrazamos.

I’m thinking of using SPIC in that way in a comedy routine I’ve been working on called, “The Last of the Mejeekans.”

i’ll be sending enrollment energy your way, in hopes that the requisite number of students sign up. they’ll never regret it!

1) why place genre labels on fiction? isn’t all fiction speculative? or on the opposite end, there’s nothing fantastical about meeting a manananggal as it’s part of daily life.

2) why borrow a term from “colonialists”? do we not have an appropriate term for the genre? (just as magic-realism was imposed on Marquez and other Latin American writers instead of coming from them).

I would love to do an event out here …. Ideas, ideas….

Haven’t been by in a while. Just wanted to say you got mentioned on io9, a pretty popular science fiction blog. Had already read your words here, but came across them again while geeking out.

I just want to mention that “speculative fiction” is only culturally neutral depending on whose perspective. The other, more conservative Filipino literati here don’t like term for example, and was a big point of debate during the Taboan Writing Conference earlier this year. It also ties to Dean pushing for the term.

Jean

Yes. I’ve said in the past, and I continue to believe this very much; the work we do as artists is crucial to the community. But there has to be a way to communicate this value to the community in its various aspects. It’s no good to chide or scold or take a position of righteousness or superiority about it. NOT SAYING YOU DO THIS! This is just some current conversations I’ve been having with other artists and community arts org leaders in my community about how to bridge.

It’s challenging work. Your last example of that double standard – that totally sucks. That’s the kind of stuff we need to be calling our communities out on. Again, it’s a matter of how we say it.

Also I just realized recently that when it’s mainly perceived that the heart and soul of my work is fostering multiculturalism or celebrating diversity that makes me bristle because there’s no political and historical analysis there. It defangs the resistance.

One of our big challenges in the Lao community has been overcoming perceptions of artists’ charity work as ’self-serving’ because ‘oh, we gave you a chance to promote your work and help our cause du jour,’ when in fact, many of those events don’t actually translate into sales, into paying gigs, or even into opportunities that allow us to push ourselves artistically.

‘We gave you time onstage’ CAN be meaningful and could build community, but all too often it’s just seconds later the writers in particular get shoved off with shouts of ‘bring on the dancin’ girls! bring on the sexy singer!’ or something like that.

It was a little irritating this year when, given a chance, certain festival organizers chose to pay the white practitioner of a khaeng, fly him in, pay for his hotel and meals, and on the other hand, I and other writers and artists had to pay our own tickets, hotels and meals and didn’t even get an honorarium. There’s just something wrong with that.

But, it’s an amazing world.