Diary of a New Novel: Re-examining the European and American Underpinnings of My Identity and Consciousness as a Filipino-American Writer

By: Victoria Smith

 

I’m dreaming a new dream. Its passage is through a novel. This novel is a passage, because I’m hoping it will pave the way to realizing my ultimate new dream. I’m dreaming this new dream because I can, and because I reject the notion that past a certain age, one should be content with whatever she or he has achieved in life.

I do not know this word, contentment. I guess I never have—specifically as it pertains to the way most people inaccurately associate or even confuse it with being peaceful. I don’t accept that absence of one necessarily excludes the other. One can still be peaceful while continuing to dream new dreams. It’s a peaceful restlessness I have. A sublime and necessary restlessness. Necessary, because once a person ceases to dream, he or she ceases to hope. And the loss of hope, I believe, is tantamount to losing one’s life. I refuse to die while I still live.

One can’t be a writer—not a good one, at least, unless one has a genuine understanding of the world, human nature, and, most of all, one’s self. In order for the world created by the writer to come off as true, the writer first of all has to be true to himself or herself. And to be true to one’s self requires self-knowledge. That’s the hardest part. As a writer, I’m confronted in every step of my writing process by the question, “Is this really true, or am I only BS-ing the reader? Is this what I really mean, or am I just resorting to convenient stereotypes?” Good writing demands that I mean what I say and say what I mean. To do so, I have to examine the rationality of my thoughts and the authenticity of my feelings about what I’m writing—which, in the end, can’t be done unless I answer the bigger question, “Who am I?” Ha! There’s the rub. For it’s the ultimate question asked by all philosophers, religious thinkers, poets, and artists from the beginning of time—that is, from the first time a human being glanced up at the night sky and saw its myriad stars, felt the consequent smallness of himself or herself, and thereupon generated the first conscious human thought which was birthed by the question, “Who am I in relation with all of these?”

Our understanding of ourselves is almost always relational— whether it be in connection with other human beings or the universe around us. It’s as if we cannot conceive of ourselves outside of a relationship with something else. We define ourselves in relatedness with others because the ego could only perceive itself as an entity separate from the other. Therefore, in order to establish the delineation between our self and others, we need an understanding of the world, of which we’re both an integral part and an individuation of, at the same time. Our understanding of the world thus becomes our reference point, our basis for understanding ourselves.

In embarking upon my new writing project, I discovered a basic gap in my understanding of the world and, therefore, likewise, of my self. It has something to do with my Philippine heritage. I’ve always prided myself in being a Filipino-American writer, in creating characters and worlds inspired by the land, history, and culture of my native country and people. After much study and reflection, however, I’ve concluded that my understanding of my native country’s and people’s history and culture is sadly at best, incomplete; at the worst, tainted.

I realized this in the process of confronting the demon of writer’s block that besieged me for a time. It wasn’t so much a blockage of creative ideas and energy; rather, it was fear. And this fear prevented me from mining what otherwise was a rich source of ideas for new works and useful tools for creating more nuanced characters. In order to overcome this fear, I had to name it, and to name it, I had to go all the way back to its source: my education. While I am thankful for the excellent world-class education I was privileged to enjoy, I also have to humbly acknowledge that such education was flawed by a lack of balance as regards examining my native country’s colonial history and culture.

In the university environment of the late 70’s where my formation into an educated human being progressed, we were still riding the wave that gave rise to an acute nationalism made necessary by the need to develop and promote a national identity and consciousness to unite hundreds of separate tribes and cultures in the more than seven thousand two hundred islands that were artificially and arbitrarily imagined by the Spaniards as Las Islas Filipinas, and then by the Americans, after granting it political independence post World War II, as the Republic of the Philippines. The aftermath of political independence however saw the separate tribes and micro-nations—which, till then, peacefully co-existed largely due to the singular unifying force of one colonial master—reignite their basic lack of trust, jealousies, and power struggles against each other. The need to unify under one national identity to prevent failure of statehood was so great that we tried to achieve it essentially by two means: first, we ignored the underlying fragmented nature of our proposed nation, especially the distinct cultural identity of the Muslim south. We chose to believe in the fiction imposed upon us by our former colonial masters—that we were one, inseparable, integrated nation. Secondly, we conveniently re-united under the banner of the battle against our common historical enemy—our former colonial masters.

This nationalist drive saw itself planted in an educational program that demanded rightful skepticism in how we viewed our colonial history with the Spaniards and Americans; indeed, our relationships with all foreign powers and entities. However, this skepticism evolved into an almost mandatory derision of anything and everything that could be traced to our colonial masters and to only uplift and promote what was proposed as indigenous to our culture, ignoring that there was not one cultural trait or practice that could be identified as truly indigenous to the country as a whole. Where any were cited as indigenous to the Filipino, they really were only indigenous to specific tribes, regional micro-nations, even pre-colonial Spanish kingdoms. There wasn’t even a true national language—there were only the disparate languages of the Tagalogs (arbitrarily instituted as the official language of the Philippines), the Capapampangans, the Ilocanos, the Visayans, and other micro-nations and tribes. Furthermore, any attempt to point out any positive contributions of Spain, other European countries, and the United States to our culture and the goal of nationhood was shot down as shameful manifestation of colonial mentality. With the blood of our revolutionary heroes, we righteously washed over the fact that it was significantly—for better or worse—our colonial history with the Spaniards and Americans that ironically suggested to us the notion that we could be a nation at all. Thus, we unconditionally rejected any proposition that began with the premise that it was possible that we as a people were enriched by our colonial experience, at the same time as we suffered immensely by it. In so doing, we blinded ourselves. We put on new blinders on top of the old ones that we inherited from our former colonial masters. I, in particular, proved no better, for the young student that I was unconditionally obeyed this manner of viewing our culture and history, believing myself a good soldier who was an integral part of her people’s struggle for independence from their colonial past.

How did this affect me as a Filipino writer in America, decades hence? I was surprised to discover that I still retained my instinctive negative predisposition against the European and American influences in my culture and my self. I basically avoided writing what could be perceived as a mark of colonial mentality, such as the mere suggestion of celebrating as positive anything that could be traced to our Spanish and American colonial heritage. In so doing, I had rendered myself both blind and lame as a writer for I had failed to consider, accept, and adopt all the aspects and elements—both the negative and positive—of my cultural and historical heritage.

Realizing this blew my mind. It reminded me to be always vigilant against my own lies to my self. It cautioned me to check my blinders—for we all have one, no matter how free we think we may be. Thus, I have resolved to liberate myself from the fear of fully embracing the European and American influences in my native culture and history. I will fearlessly create characters who unashamedly acknowledge they are both brown and white, who are proud of this wonderful melting pot of race and cultures that is their soul. I free myself of the fear of being criticized by my old mentors in the Philippines and my other Filipino brothers and sisters who choose to remain blind adherents of an uber kind of nationalism that seems to fancy itself as a pure, indigenous culture entitled to protection at all cost against syncretistic amalgamation with the cultures of other races and nations. To me, this is not unlike the kind of extreme nationalism we see in conflict pockets all around the world today which, while originally meant to protect oppressed former colonized peoples, eventually turns on itself and becomes a new oppressive tyranny that only serves to divide its people and all of humankind at a time when we should be uniting to fight for our ultimate common cause—our survival as a civilized species in a sustainable, healthy planet that is home to all of us, regardless of our race and national political and cultural identities.

I’ll start with this fearless premise in creating new literary works. And then see what happens.

(All rights reserved. Copyright ©2019 by Victoria G. Smith. For updates on her author events & publications, go to VictoriaGSmith. com. “Like” her on Facebook at Author Victoria G. Smith. “Follow” her on Twitter @AuthorVGSmith)