Being a Filipino in the world in ‘Awaiting Trespass’

Part of the rules for this contest states that a person can only publish an article about a favorite book once, thus it is almost like asking what is that one book that he will bring on a deserted island. That is hard. Now if there is one book we should require via legislation to Filipinos, it is likely to be by someone like Reynaldo C. Ileto, which offers a perspective on Philippine history that is imaginative, liberating and well-written. Maybe, but legislating a book to force our students to read it is a sure death for the book. I am not a politician, so I will not even presume to be addressing the Filipino people. In deciding to recommend a book, I will approach it the way we all probably do when we have read something good and would like to tell a friend, a lover, or a daughter: "You must read this!"

I am a partisan for fiction, simply because fiction is something enjoyable, yet nothing else will show us the complexity of life, our need to understand and be understood. If there were more space, I would also like to recommend books about the power of fiction. But then I have to focus, so I will just give some of this precious space to sneak in a quote from Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa:

Some critics and theorists would even like to change literature into a science. But this will never happen, because fiction does not exist to investigate only a single precinct of experience. It exists to enrich through the imagination, the entirety of human life, which cannot be dismembered, disarticulated, or reduced to a series of schemas or formulas without disappearing. This is the meaning of Proust’s observation that "real life, at last enlightened and revealed, the only life fully lived, is literature." He was not exaggerating, nor was he expressing only his love for his own vocation. He was advancing the particular proposition that as a result of literature life is better understood and better lived; and that living life more fully necessitates living it and sharing it with others.

To narrow my choices down, I had to look back at my experience of teaching for a semester in an English department of a Quezon City university. Over all I gave my former students more Filipino than foreign writers to read, since it was against all odds that many of them would ever do so again, even if they had turned out to be great readers that had the interest and economic power to raid stores like Powerbooks. I even required students to buy the book of the Filipino author assigned to him or her. Xerox copies were not allowed. This was not only to help the Philippine book industry, but I thought it a rare experience for students to handle and own a book by a Filipino author.

If you were to look at the usual article about what this or that prominent personality would list as must-read books that newspapers have published occasionally, one would think we were living in the United States. No wonder we are losing so many of our best minds to the First World, it is not just about money. It is about sensibility, it is about imagination, it is about compassion and the ability to relate to one’s surroundings. How can they understand the highs and lows of their journey as Filipinos when they don’t read literature written by Filipinos? Life in the Philippines does not resemble the sitcoms on cable television, and cable is almost everywhere in this country.

For this one shot affair, I recommend Linda Ty-Casper’s novel, Awaiting Trespass, originally published in the United States by Reader’s International, and reprinted in the Philippines by New Day Publishers. I like this book, and those students who read (and later re-read) it with much earnest anticipation have also enjoyed it. There is a hint of mystery, sex, religion and politics in this novel.

The author uses the wake of playboy Don Severino Gil to ridicule the elite of Manila, and salute those who "stand up to be counted by trying to be reasonable and noble during irrational and ignoble times." Nevertheless, it is those who seem too safe and far from dangers of daily concerns that the book is all about.

From a list of books written by Filipino writers like Nick Joaquin, Carlos Ojeda Aureus, Gregorio C. Brillantes, Gina Apostol, Kerima Polotan, Ninotchka Rosca, etc. (I am trying very hard to impress with all these names to show that there are many of them out there that you just have to try out), why this book? Without a doubt, more and more the world’s media conglomerates are already controlling the tempo of what issues we discuss, what images we retain, and what thoughts we bring to bed with us. This small book tells us there is a lot more to headlines, and that probing into the experiences that we have as a nation will not do without literature as a part of our lives. It is simply impossible.

Awaiting Trespass was part of the college course called "Third World Literature" taught by the late National Artist N.V.M. Gonzalez. We read books from many countries, from India to Nigeria to Australia, from V. S. Naipaul to Rajo Rao, and the approach of the authors to their very different stories were amazing, and mind-boggling. Linda Ty-Casper’s novel stood out because it spoke to us about being a Filipino in the world.

One reads partly to enjoy, but also to understand. To be a Filipino at that time when I was a student in the 1980s, just like now, is to be assaulted almost daily by news that tell us of an almost hopeless country. In the mid-1990s, when I used this book as the assigned novel for the whole freshman class I had, the Philippine stock market was said to be the best performing in the world, and there was a sense of optimism in the country I had never seen in my life, yet it was also a time when the son of the deposed kleptomaniac dictator was mobbed at the State University for autographs. This book spoke to many students again, making them understand better the rot all around them. Now, in the 21st century, when the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs temporarily ran out of passports because too many want to get out of what seems like a sinking ship, I am confident this book still has a lot to offer.

It is difficult to explain, even to myself sometimes, why I will not migrate to the United States, being a Filipino who has spent some time there, and being married to a doctor who has passed the United States Medical Licensure Exam (all her best friends from the State University are now in the US.). But of the reasons I can cite for staying in the Philippines, like family and sense of responsibility, this book is certainly one of them.

I hope this good read, which takes the problems of our country head on, will push the reader to other works of fiction by other Filipino authors. Not all of them are good, some of them are, and a few are even giants. And it is for this reason that I have devoted a good part of this essay to talking about the importance of fiction in our lives as individuals, and as members of a larger community. Awaiting Trespass manages to have the size that will not intimidate (180 short pages), it is written well, and the images employed are potent to making us understand ourselves as Filipinos in a world of contradictions and conflagrations. In an atmosphere of helplessness and hopelessness, in a country of grinding poverty, where most political leaders appear like shady characters that should be in the national penitentiary, it may seem unlikely, but it is true: a good book, like Awaiting Trespass, is the only refuge we have to save the day for us. You must read this! Better yet, you must read!