Novelists From The Philippines

"Only frustrated people smoke too much and only lonely people are frustrated."

"They ain’t been here long ’nough. They just barely human. Maybe not even. They suck up the world, don’t taste it."

"I can never get a zipper to close."

"I didn't think I'd be true to a man again as long as I lived..."

"The intimacy of her mother’s hands and the warmth of the water lulled the Girl into a trance of sensuality she never forgot. Now the blood washing slowly down her breastbone and soaking into the floor below was like that bath—a cleansing."

"Literature is an affair of letters."

"There is no such thing as children’s literature."

"There was an ounce of mystery in his voice, something secretive, dark, almost as if the proverbial can of worms was about to be smashed open."

"I don’t need to be motivated to write; it’s always there waiting to get out. Published or not."

"Families don’t follow tradition as much as they used to. Family is still important, but many of the customs have fallen to the wayside. Some families, though, still hold onto tradition. Good, bad, or ugly."

"Like many American born Asian-Americans, I wanted to assimilate as a child. I wanted to fit in. As I grew older, I realized that instead of fitting in, why not stand out?"

"Make believe is much more entertaining and enjoyable than real life. More fantastical things can happen in make believe."

"The stories, they get misconstrued as the facts aren’t really facts and the fictions aren’t really fictions. Sometimes, the people telling the stories aren’t who they appear to be. Sometimes, the voices sound the same and you never really know where they’re coming from. And sometimes, the same person just keeps telling the same story, over and over until he’s sick in the head."

"Salem was beautiful and historical, but something about being continually reminded of the witch trials didn’t sit well with her. She’d fight a man wielding a machete way before fighting witch hunters."

"Regular people joined by a common link. Death, it affected all people, all occupations. Accountants, cooks, realtors, secretaries. A support group for all to grieve. Doctors, the unemployed, teenagers. Dying could happen to anyone."

"When you’re hiding out in bushes to meet your favorite celebrity, well, that’s just pathetic. When you’re designing an elaborate plan to get laid, that’s just creepy."

"The most Filipino thing about me is the way I look. Having grown up essentially in American culture, for the longest time I’d identified first as an American and second as a Filipino."

"So the biggest lesson for me was to write what you want. People are going to have their opinions—good and bad. The reality is you’re not going to please everyone, and if you attempt to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. If anything, you can have fun doing it."

"If we can get more stories and people who can make differences, such as authors writing OwnVoices stories, I think we’ll begin to see a shift in industries that can depict people of color in a more positive light."

"The voice of scared shitless reason said, "Oh my God, oh my God! She's got a gun. She's got a gun!""

"I always wanted to be an author. I thought it was the coolest job. As a child of immigrant parents, it wasn't ever something that they promoted. They always wanted me to do something practical."

"People aren’t stupid. They just want to believe in others. They just want to believe that the world isn’t coming to an end. And more importantly, they just want to believe in themselves. They want to believe that they can still trust their fellow human being to do the right thing."

"I’ve always looked at life through the lens of a non-Filipino."

"I considered myself white, having grown up essentially American but with Filipino parents. I don’t speak with an accent and I barely speak Tagalog. So, for most of my life, I looked at the world as a ‘white’ person."

"...There is a lack of diversity in publishing—authors and books—so if you want to write that book about growing up as a Filipino in the States, or a culture that you find interesting, do it now. Publishing is hard enough, and we need to take advantage of opportunities when we can."

"I try not to look up to people who are Filipino for the sake of their nationality. There seems to be a shortage of diversity in the arts in general, including publishing, so whenever I see a person of color doing something to further their culture or cause I tend to root for them."

"My favorite author is Chuck Palahniuk. I’d never been a big reader, often going long stretches without reading. Then I read Fight Club (novel)."

"Swingers are gross, they’re always ugly people. But the idea of sleeping with a married man, she says, that’s so trendy. You are so hip."

"I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that overused term "magical realism." It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much we don't know what it means anymore. But the way they can use language and visions and surrealism without being corny, and the humor that's always there, is very close to a Filipino sensibility. More so than-now this is a completely personal perception-other writers from Southeast Asia."

"I'm not a writer who works off an outline. I don't do file cards. Some writers know where they're going when they sit down to write a novel. I know there are certain things I want to include, but I'm character driven and if the characters keep moving and living and growing on me, the story unfolds. It's like a puzzle which starts falling into place. But I never know where I'm going when I start."

"What made me want to write a novel was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez. I was turned on to that by a friend from Mexico who gave me the book. It was like Holy Communion or something. I said, "Yes!" Here is a novel that reads so lyrically and so poetically, and yet is a novel. It's a wonderful story. You want to know what happens to these people. And at the same time I saw the connection for me. It was like the Philippines was something I was carrying around and I didn't know what art form it would take to convey the story I wanted to tell, and I read that book and said, "That's it. One day I'm gonna do it.""

"(KASJ: What kinds of real-life events are useful for fiction?) JH: All of it is useful. It's very personal what will move one artist and what will move another. I think you can find [art] in both the smallest thing and in the most horrific catastrophe. It could be something as simple as the mystery of seeing someone enter a room, down to a major historical event like the Tasaday controversy or the Vietnam War. Everything is fodder. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"I usually start with a character that interests me, or with some event that haunts me. I ask myself, "From whose point of view I am telling this story?" Some voice starts taking shape in my head, a certain way of talking, a tone. At its best the process is instinctive, organic, and musical. The story starts writing itself. (Callaloo, Fall 2008)"

"I always had dreamed of writing a novel set in the Philippines—what I knew of it. I struggled for years while I was writing poetry, thinking, one day I’m going to write this book. But in what voice? I read Malaysian writers and Chinese writers and Indian writers until I stumbled upon the Latin American writers and I realized that that was it: the humor, the fatalism, the passion and irony (1991)"

"For other people perhaps it was something else that brought them to certain conclusions about their lives and their identities. But, for me, film was truly one of the more powerful sources of entertainment, enlightenment, disillusionment. So, I use it a lot. In the writing of Dogeaters, especially, the movies were there because they were absolutely part of the fabric of my memory. Once I found that key, all the doors started swinging open in my imagination."

"What I try to share with younger artists, not just writers, is you have to not be afraid. You have to try it. It’s our job. And do your homework while you’re at it. But don’t squash your imagination. I mean, my imagination is all I have. I mean, it’s unique to me, unique to you, unique to my students. They have their own, and they have to learn to trust it. (2019)"

"Philippine literature—just like the Philippines itself—is complicated, and can’t be easily described or pinned down. Over 7000 islands make up the Philippines, and over a hundred languages and dialects are spoken!...(What common elements and themes do you see in Philippine writing? And what do you see in the pieces here?) JH: Yearning, and melancholy. Mordant humor, a certain kind of fatalism, love of the macabre and supernatural. A love of puns and a sense of irony. A reckoning with history and the colonial past. (2019)"

"…Research is always involved, to make sure details, language and atmosphere feel right. Then comes the hard work of a writer, which is the writing itself. One sentence leads to another and then another… You try to maintain focus and discipline, writing for as long as you can, everyday until you’re done with a draft. Then you go back and start revising and the mysterious creative process begins all over again. Each time you begin, you hopefully go deeper into your story and your characters and end up surprising yourself."

"The work involved in writing a novel is completely solitary, unlike playwriting. And the struggle is often painful. There is no one to turn to but yourself. You confront your own demons in order to dig deep and come up with something risky and powerful. Playwriting is the exact opposite process for me because it's so collaborative. If you're blessed with a terrific cast, a visionary director, an innovative sound and design team, then your play has a ninety-nine percent chance of being realized in the best possible way. I think people forget -- even some of my most aware graduate students! -- that writing is hard work. Period."

"you can never see any of your characters as monsters; I think then you'd write a really terrible book. Everyone is a complicated and flawed human being (Callaloo, Fall 2008)"

"(KASJ: Could you have written this book in any other place? The whole thing is about the Philippines.) JH: Maybe the question is really: Why does a certain place have a pull on a writer? People probably do wonder that about me. I've lived in the US for over 30 years. Why do I keep writing stories that are largely set in the Philippines? C'mon! The culture is just so rich and has so much happening in it. To me it's a treasure trove. Lush, stark, abundant, untainted, polluted. The whole world has gone through there: Arabs, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, Americans. The Philippines has everything. The supernatural, the superreal, and the surreal. It's about grim reality, too. It's about faith in a larger being, a deep, ingrained spiritual faith. It's about strength and courage, but also about corruption, humor and generosity. I mean, God! You almost don't have to make anything up...Everything there is rife with, you know, dramatic conflict, tension, and romance. It's an extravagant culture bursting with extravagant emotions. It also is the place where I grew up, so it will always have real and lasting meaning for me. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"I don't write with "lessons" in mind. I just hope my readers are absorbed by the story, that they enjoy the read, and that the novel raises some provocative questions. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"if you get too specific the timelessness is lost. (1991)"

"It’s best if you go out in the world knowing more than one language, I don’t care what the language is. It’s good for your brain to dream in another language. It gives you a clue, another perspective, a way of understanding, some compassion for other people—even if it’s just because you know how to joke in another language. (1991)"

"If I were to write with that agenda in mind, then I'd destroy the writing. No, I write really because I have to and if the writing also destroys some of those myths and subverts forms and makes people question the very idea of the writer, the woman, the Filipino American, the whatever, great! (INTERVIEWER: Where does art have to come from to accomplish those kinds of ends? If you set out directly to accomplish them, you probably wouldn't have writing that is, in your opinion, worth reading? So, where does it have to come from?) JH: It has to come from the deepest, deepest, deepest insides of your soul. And it's got to be brutally honest. It's like pornography. You know it when you are doing it and you know when you're bullshitting. You know when you're being self-conscious and contrived and forcing something to be there because you want to make sure that people get the point. You know when that's happening. But if you just really listen to yourself and to your characters, you don't go for the easy stuff."

"A lot of novels about the Philippines or set in the Philippines don't cut it at all because they don't capture the crazy quilt atmosphere and the hybrid ambiance that occurs twenty-four hours a day. Things happening all the time, and noise and crowds and beautiful animals and amazing flora. At the same time, pollution and urbanization and sophistication and, you know, the jungle. How do you do all that? You can't tell it in a traditional way because the language dies. And also the music of the language itself, the music of the streets. How do convey that chaos? So, once I decided to go with it as I found it, I relaxed because at the risk of alienating some readers, this was the way the novel had to be presented."

"My leaving was not of my doing; that was because of my parents’ breakup. But I was fortunate to be living in San Francisco. There was so much activity, so many activists, so many Filipinos fleeing, coming over. It was the perfect time for me to grow as an artist. I mean, we came in the ’60s—can you imagine? We hit the Summer of Love. There were all these political movements that opened my eyes. I met all these amazing young Filipino American poets who became my teachers. They were going to demonstrations, and I got involved. I was reading up on it, making connections. My God, my brain was vibrating! There was a coup d’état in Chile. There was war in El Salvador. People were making alliances, making connections, and I came to understand: It wasn’t just about us. It was about all these colonies—former colonies—that had the same people running shit, who were probably engineering all these coups. It was a harsh awakening for me and a lot of people like me. (2020)"

"When I was a young activist writer in the Bay Area, I thought I had all the answers. Sometimes I was right, and a lot of times I was just plain ignorant and wrong. There were a few positive things that came from my impatience, energy and anger: I dared to do things with my artistic comrades that hadn’t been done before. We came together in writing collectives to make books because most writers of color were not being published at the time. We didn’t know how to publish, but we learned how to do it guerrilla-style. We organized readings, performances and concerts, made posters and came out to support each other big-time. We brought the noise. And got it done. It all boils down to that old cliche: believe in yourself. Trust in your creative vision and the power of your distinct writer’s voice. (2022)"

"Having access to all these languages and dialects enriched my already wild imagination and made me curious—about who I was, about the world, about the Philippines I knew and the many different ways I could tell a story. (2019)"

"By saying that all my characters have a little bit of me in them, I mean that I try to be invested and empathetic in all my characters—whether they are principal or secondary, deeply flawed and not very “nice.” If you’re in tune with your story then the characters do come at you organically. There isn’t an order to how they might appear."