This week, one of our editors-at-large reports from Palestine, amidst the outbreak of war. Our editors also report on new publications from the Philippines and literary festivals in New York.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
In a normal world, you would expect me to write my dispatch this week about the latest version of Palestine International Book Fair, or about Raja Shehadeh making the 2023 National Book Awards finalists list, or the just-concluded Palestine Writes Festival. But this week, Palestine is far from normal, although what we are living now is also déjà vu.
My last dispatch was about Gaza, but it was pleasant news. Little did I know what the following month would hold when I wrote “Each morning, as the sun timidly broke through the horizon, Mosab Abu Toha’s words flowed like a river, weaving tales of resilience and hope from the depths of despair.”
I will give the floor to Mosab this dispatch too:
Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the United States
Last month, Hispanic literary communities in New York City celebrated the 5th edition of the Feria Internacional del Libro de Nueva York, FILNYC. From September 21 to 24, writers, editors, scholars, and cultural promoters participated in one of the largest literary events in Spanish in the United States. The fair included panels, book presentations, and workshops around the main theme “Spanish, Between Resistance and Memory,” aimed at highlighting the historical role of Spanish as an imperialist language, and its current role as one of the main languages of marginalized migrants in the United States. This emphasis on language and identity informed all events at the book fair. In the opening ceremony, on Thursday, September 21, representatives from nine independent literary publishers from the Spanish-speaking world announced a new literary fiction award, “Las Yubartas,” named after the hunchback whale (one of nature’s most well-known migrant animals) to reflect the prize’s transnational spirit. The winner will be announced in the next edition of the FILNYC and they will have their work published in each of the participating publishers’ countries.
The opening ceremony was followed by a panel on the connection between activism and literature. The speakers were Peruvian writer and Asymptote collaborator, Gabriela Wiener, and Argentinian writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara. They talked about the political significance of their writing, which centers critiques of colonialism, government violence, misogyny, homophobia, and neo-imperialism. They also talked about their own involvement in protests against extractivism in Latin America. Highlighting the stakes of her political engagement, Cabezón Cámara remarked that opposing extractivism in Argentina is equated to opposing the Argentinian state itself. Similarly, Wiener also remarked that living abroad, thanks in part to her writing, has allowed her some safety and distance from which to criticize government violence in Peru. Both writers agreed on the power of literature to present counter-narratives that resist and challenge oppressive ideologies.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
Filipino trauma journalist and documentary filmmaker Patricia Evangelista’s latest book under Random House in New York, Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, comes out next Tuesday, October 17. Evangelista’s memoir takes a deep dive into the extrajudicial killings in the inhuman war on drugs sanctioned by former Philippine president Rodrigo R Duterte—an on-the-ground investigation of the country’s “careening towards violent autocracy” and right-wing extremism since 2016. Pulitzer Prize laureate and journalist Anne Applebaum, whose work on historicising disinformation campaigns and anti-democratic movements in Central Europe and the Middle East is astounding, describes Evangelista’s book as a “haunting work of memoir and reportage.”
Evangelista has recently represented the Philippines as a writing fellow to this year’s Civitella Ranieri, an international artists residency in the central Italian region of Umbria—joined by other fellows from Sudan, Australia, Gambia, United States, Cuba, Belarus, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Jamaica, and Chile. With three medals from the New York Festivals Television & Film Awards, Evangelista is known for producing documentaries for the ABS-CBN News Channel, as writer-at-large of Esquire Philippines, and as recipient of a Titus Brandsma Award for emergent journalism, a Kate Webb Prize for frontline journalism, and a Logan Nonfiction programme fellowship. Among other Civitella Ranieri alumni from the Philippines were poet Mark Anthony Cayanan (2013), novelists Gina Apostol (2009) and Miguel Syjuco (2013), artists Lan Tuazon (2012) and Lobregat Balaguer (2017), and musician Ramon Santos (1999) who also served as a juror.
In other news, the feature film adaptation of Marivi Soliven’s novel The Mango Bride, which is top-billed by the acclaimed singer and actor Sharon Cuneta, is coming out in theatres soon. Soliven’s novel was published in 2013 by Penguin imprint Berkley Books. In 2014, Madrid-based Planeta’s Booket published a Spanish translation by María Enguix Tercero, Hace una eternidad, en Manila. The following year, the National Book Store released a Philippine edition of the same title in Danton Remoto’s translation into the Filipino. In an interview with Los Angeles magazine Variety, Cuneta, who is dubbed as the Philippine entertainment industry’s “Megastar,” said, “I have long been a fan of Marivi Soliven’s writing, from Suddenly Stateside, her collection of light essays about living in the US . . . she captures the Filipino migrant and Filipino American experience skillfully.” The Mango Bride, initially titled “In the Service of Secrets,” earned Soliven a grand prize for the novel in English category at the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2011 and a residency at Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers in Washington State, in 2012. Soliven has authored more than a dozen other books and taught creative writing at Philippine and US universities.
Another Palanca award-winning work, a screenplay by Patrick John Valencia, will come alive in cinemas next year. Based on Valencia’s “The Revenge of the Comfort Woman” (winner of the dulang pampelikula, screenplay in Filipino category), Elena 1994 is a historical period drama about “comfort women”—Filipino women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1942–1945) in the Second World War. Olivia M Lamasan is set to direct the film which will star Kathryn Bernardo and be produced by Black Sheep Productions. Other artists from talent agency Star Magic also performed at the Philippine Educational Theatre Association’s staging of Walang Aray (Without Pain), a romantic-comedy musical which is both a parody and pastiche of Walang Sugat (Without Wound), a Severino Reyes zarzuela—a lyric-dramatic genre that is sung, danced, and recited, and was popularised during the Spanish Colonial Period. Thematically touching on romance, patriotism, and courage, Walang Aray enmeshes pop, rap, novelty, and power ballad.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: