Philippine Embassy U.S. Press Release Panel Discussion of Filipino & Fil-Am Women Writers

Here’s the YouTube link of the March 8, 2021 Pan­el Dis­cus­sion of Fil­ipino & Fil-Am Women Writ­ers, host­ed by the Philip­pine Embassy of the US.

Mod­er­a­tor is Aileen Cassinet­to; pan­elists are: Cecil­ia Brainard, Miggs Bra­vo Dutt, Luisa A. Iglo­ria and Gayle Romas­an­ta. Deputy Chief of Mis­sion Rena­to Vil­la gave the Open­ing Remarks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eQNIenrhXc

PRESS RELEASE from the Philip­pine Embassy in the Unit­ed States, Wash­ing­ton D.C. 
WDC-10–2021
9 MARCH 2021

WASHINGTON, D.C. –

The Philip­pine Embassy in the Unit­ed States marked Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day on 8 March 2021 with a vir­tu­al pro­gram enti­tled, “A Pan­el Dis­cus­sion with Fil­ipino and Fil-Am Women Writ­ers” fea­tur­ing Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, Luisa A. Iglo­ria, Migs Bra­vo Dutt, and Gayle Romas­an­ta. The poet lau­re­ate of San Mateo Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia, Aileen Cassinet­to, mod­er­at­ed the event.

“It is the first time that the Philip­pine Embassy is putting the spot­light on women writers

and today’s event proves to be more excit­ing as we will hear and learn from the stories

of the sto­ry­tellers. We have been more famil­iar with for­eign authors, for­eign books, writ­ings, and lit­er­a­ture for far too long, espe­cial­ly in a for­eign coun­try where knowl­edge and access about the works of Fil­ipino authors are nei­ther pop­u­lar nor acces­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly, we have been see­ing an increas­ing num­ber of Fil­ipinos mak­ing a name for them­selves in the glob­al pub­lish­ing scene and mak­ing their mark on the print­ed page around the world,” said the Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mis­sion Rena­to Pedro O. Vil­la in his open­ing remarks.

The speak­ers read excerpts from their pub­lished works and shared their respec­tive jour­neys as Fil­ipino migrant women, includ­ing their influ­ences, sources of inspi­ra­tion, and chal­lenges. They spoke about how being Fil­ipino or Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can played a role in their writ­ing and how they nav­i­gat­ed var­i­ous social issues that the Fil­ipino dias­po­ra has faced over the years.

 

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is a fic­tion writer whose three nov­els — When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, Mag­dale­na, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow, are set in Ubec, which is based on Cebu, her home­town in the Philippines.

She said, “I have many homes. I have a home in Cebu. I have a home in Mani­la. I have a home in Cal­i­for­nia, and some­times I don’t feel like I real­ly belong in one place because I’m a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent in each place so I’m kind of a mis­fit. But that’s also okay because I’ve dis­cov­ered that as a mis­fit, I can have an objec­tive eye and I can look at Cebuanos and say this and I can look at Amer­i­cans and I can say this because I’ve got this per­spec­tive that’s broad.”

Brainard also high­light­ed her focus on char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, say­ing that “What car­ries the weight of the sto­ry would be the char­ac­ters and what hap­pens to them.”

 

Migs Bra­vo Dutt, author of the con­tem­po­rary nov­el, The Ros­ales House, has like­wise con­tributed poet­ry to var­i­ous antholo­gies and jour­nals in Asia, Croa­t­ia, and the Unit­ed States. She described her writ­ing process as an exer­cise in consistency.

“I try to be con­sis­tent in my writ­ing. So I think one of the things I tried to estab­lish is to write daily….But when­ev­er I know that I’m going to write for a cou­ple of hours, I pre­pare a playlist and so on the day that I write longer, I play that on and on repeat­ed­ly…. I also get inspired by nature so when­ev­er I go out for a walk, I try to be present. I try to observe what is hap­pen­ing around me, tiny things, tiny flow­ers, what’s the col­or of the bird, what kind of trees, just basi­cal­ly I try to be present and observe those details,” Dutt shared.

 

Luisa A. Iglo­ria was appoint­ed as the Poet Lau­re­ate of the Com­mon­wealth of Vir­ginia (2020–2022) in July and is one of 2 co-win­ners of the 2019 Crab Orchard Poet­ry Prize for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Fall 2020).

“I don’t think it’s pos­si­ble to sep­a­rate life from art, and vice ver­sa. So the idea of equi­lib­ri­um or bal­ance and the idea of suc­cess­ful blend­ing is beguil­ing, very attrac­tive but this also seems to be premised on the thought that there’s some­thing inher­ent­ly wrong and may be dis­turb­ing about things that don’t show sym­me­try…. I think there’s more val­ue in embrac­ing and cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ence, or unblend­abil­i­ty. We’re able to cre­ate more pow­er­ful con­nec­tions when we tell our very spe­cif­ic sto­ries and his­to­ries which are of course com­plex and messy, as well as pro­found and also ordi­nary”, said Iglo­ria when asked about her thoughts on achiev­ing equi­lib­ri­um in writ­ing by blend­ing dis­tinct experiences.

 

Gayle Romas­an­ta, a writer and artist whose work focused on social issues, under­scored the still rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of authors of col­or being pub­lished in the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, she remains hope­ful with what the com­mu­ni­ty is cre­at­ing, espe­cial­ly through the advance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy. Romansan­ta co-authored the first book about Fil­ipino labor leader Lar­ry Itliong enti­tled, Jour­ney for Jus­tice: The Life of Lar­ry Itliong, with the late and great his­to­ri­an Dr. Dawn Mabalon.

“He [Lar­ry Itliong] said that the down­fall of the Fil­ipino is the tribalism….The only way that we can actu­al­ly uni­fy in the Unit­ed States is to come together…to fight togeth­er,” Romas­an­ta said as she shared her per­son­al jour­ney of let­ting go of the clas­sism typ­i­cal­ly embraced by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of Fil­ipino-Amer­i­cans and advo­cat­ing for racial equi­ty and justice.

You may con­nect with the speak­ers and mod­er­a­tor by vis­it­ing their web­sites and social media pages below:

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

home­page

Insta­gram: @ceciliabrainard

Migs Bra­vo Dutt

Mignon Bra­vo Dutt

Insta­gram: @migs_dutt

Dr. Luisa A. Igloria
http://www.luisaigloria.com
Insta­gram: @poetslizard

Gayle Romas­an­ta
https://www.bridgedelta.com/gayle-romasanta
Insta­gram: @grromasanta

Aileen Cassinet­to
https://aileencassinetto.com
Insta­gram: @smcountypl

“A Pan­el Dis­cus­sion with Fil­ipino and Fil-Am Women Writ­ers” may be viewed on the Embassy’s Face­book page.

tags: #Philip­pineAm­er­i­can­books #Philip­pineAm­er­i­can­writ­ers #philip­pineam­er­i­can­lit­er­a­ture #philip­pine­books