What We've Been Writing #06: The voices around us—and within us
The stories we tell about ourselves—and about others—shape us, for better or worse. This month we confront our histories, our prejudices, and our roles in each other's lives.
It was election day in the Philippines earlier this week. Sure, it’s the midterms—all local positions, plus half of the Senate—but it is still consequential if you can’t help but follow the country’s political ups and downs. And even if you aren’t, you still wouldn’t be able to help but notice how the past few months saw different narratives on where the country is now and where we should be headed come together. Are we turning a corner, and should we work to stay in the upward trajectory we are in? Are we plunging ourselves into darkness, and should we rescue ourselves before we go even deeper?
Nope, this month’s digest is not going to be overtly political—although, really, can one help it?—but it is inspired by how these narratives are formed, and how these voices shape us both in good ways and bad. Or so I think. It’s a pretty loose thread, but there are some really good pieces I can’t wait to highlight.
Figures of the past
I’ve had history on my mind in the last few weeks, especially as Regina Peralta 🇵🇭 and I worked on her guest post—if you haven’t seen it yet, you should. Anyway, it’s no surprise that a couple of pieces touching on history, and particularly on personal history, caught my attention.
First up is (once again) nam. Her piece was supposed to mark International Women’s Month, although it dropped in April, because, as she tells it, she wasn’t quite happy with how it initially turned out. Don’t let that disclaimer get in the way. This is an arresting piece about her grandmother, Lupe, and how she met nam’s eventual grandfather in the early days of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. I’m not sure why she wasn’t happy with the piece, but I personally like how it resisted the urge to be something bigger; how, in focusing on one anecdote, it said so, so much.
The soldier from outside followed her in and stood beside her.
This is it, she braced herself. He’s going to tell me to leave.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he asked, “What would you like to order?”
That’s how she learned his name: Dominador.
“But you can call me Ador,” he added.
“Guadalupe,” she replied. “You can call me Lupe.”
She also learned that this was his family’s eatery, and the two behind the counter were his parents. Lupe only asked for a glass of water. But Ador brought her a plate of pansit, too.
“On the house,” he said. “But you have to tell me your story. It looks like you have one.”
I wish I could write like this.
A second piece of personal history—although this one’s a little newer—comes from teacher and former journalist Erwin Oliva. His father-in-law, Lolo Mar, passed late in April, and in his post he shares his recollections of a man who, as it turns out, has a lot in common with him.
Years ago, Lolo Mar responded quickly when I lost consciousness, having been sick for days. My blood sugar went down (hypoglycemia), and for a diabetic, that could lead to shock. I remember him rubbing my chest when I woke up and whispering to me in Ilocano, “Wake up; you still have your kids and family to take care of.” He thought I was gone. I thought I was gone.
Lolo Mar was always part of my family, having lived with us for quite some time. He had his little room at home. Next to him are books he borrowed, a transistor radio (back when we had one), bottled water, and meds. Near the night desk, he had a handy meter, which he would use to check his blood pressure when he felt dizzy. I had mine, too. So we laughed once at the idea that we were “classmates” for having the same medical conditions: hypertension and diabetes.
Concerns of the present
Weeks ago, a shocking tidbit emerged from a Senate hearing: over 18 million of the country’s high school graduates can be considered “functionally illiterate”, meaning they have problems comprehending what they have just read.
The story may have whizzed by to most—considering it was the height of campaign season, it’s sad, but also inevitably—but not to me. I immediately had a chat about it with a friend of mine who works as an educator. So does this mean it comes in one ear and goes out of the other? Pretty much, he said. I know some of this is because of our education system, but could it also be because of our shorter attention spans thanks to smartphones and social media? Could be, he said.
Gigo Alampay is founder and executive director of the Center for Art, New Ventures and Sustainable Development (CANVAS), a non-profit that works with the creative community to promote children’s literacy, advance national identity, and deepen appreciation for Filipino art and culture. He is also an award-winning children’s book author. I’ve had my eye on his Substack for a while now, and I wasn’t surprised to see his measured—but also, foreboding, but not alarmist—take on the story.
Essentially, he argues that the rise of functional illiteracy should be considered a political issue, as it threatens the very foundations of Philippine democracy and allows essential discourse to be replaced by spectacle. Perhaps more importantly, he puts the blame squarely on folks like me, we who look down on these people, dismiss them as hopeless cases.
This is not their failure. It is ours. We - the supposed better educated, more well-read, more privileged - are the beneficiaries of an educational system from which others have been locked out of. Unless we actively work to dismantle these barriers and extend those same opportunities to others, we are not just witnesses to inequality. We are complicit participants in its perpetuation.
So what do we do?
We start by treating education not as a favor, but as a right. We start by seeing books not as gifts, but as vaccines against ignorance, against disinformation, against tyranny disguised as charisma. We stop thinking of ensuring access to books as charity, and start treating it as civic infrastructure.
But then, it’s easier to scream into our echo chambers that they should vote for our preferred candidates, and then dismiss them as “bobo” (stupid) when we don’t get the results we want. (That said, some of the “good governance” candidates did surprisingly well in the elections, so I haven’t seen a lot of these lines yet. Maybe they are choosing to see the silver lining instead of dwelling on the pro-Duterte cohorts also doing well. Whoops. Sorry for getting too political.)
This piece brings to mind a piece from another educator, mataraykween 🇵🇭💜, about something that hits me close to home… because I am a guy.
What is astonishing is that this whole system of thinking, the whole way of looking at the world, has been ignored for so long. It is only now, when we see a wholly different, much more woman-hating version of it rise, that people are starting to think we have to do something about it.
Only after the TV show “Adolescence” are people thinking of talking to boys about misogyny. And for most people, talking about this is very strange. As my students wrote, after I discussed Incel Culture with them in class, it has been ignored for such a long time, and yet it is so important to open a discussion about this, because this culture already has deep influences in our young men. As one of my students said, older people (like me) often just ignore it, and they don’t know that this is already how some of their children think, because of the internet.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been a little afraid to speak out on these matters. I feel that, as a guy, my opinions on how we are being portrayed—how we are being generalized because of a few bad apples—are automatically invalid because of my gender identity, of what genitalia I possess. I’m also aware that my perspective can be painfully specific and thus is not applicable to everyone, and therefore not that easy to empathize with. (I mean, I know for a fact that women can also cheat on their partners, like men, and yet somehow the former’s is an act of independence and the latter’s is just their nature to fuck anything that moves.) But this really is a conversation we ought to have… and the best place to start is to not vilify anyone just because of what they’re born with.
But, again, easier said than done.
Seeing the future
There’s something difficult to explain about why Angelica Teves’ piece is so gripping. There is the narrative she tells, of a love unfolding, a love unfurling—of the act of choosing to jump over the fence to better understand each other, of choosing to meet halfway, despite the pain and suffering, and then going on the rest of the journey together.
And then there’s the fact that Angelica’s metaphor is figuring out a shared language—I think the other subject in the piece is Japanese?—and then writing this piece entirely in Filipino. It forces us to meet halfway as well, to make the effort to see things from her perspective.
Now, I am born and raised in the Philippines, and can converse in Filipino pretty easily. But writing in our national language does not come easily to me. There’s something different about its rhythms, about how its words come together to become more than the sum of its parts, that I haven’t truly mastered. So, in the case of this piece, I read it out loud, with all the emotion I could muster.
Or maybe you could use Google Translate, as Angelica herself said. You can do that with the whole piece, but I’ll do my best to (manually) translate my favorite bit.
Siguro nga, may lumalaya sa aking matagal nang gustong kumawala. Pero mas akma sigurong sabihin na may bumabalik sa aking matagal nang nawawala. Ang ako na walang takot sumubok, at hindi ang ako na palaging nakatanaw sa hangganan sa kagustuhang tumakas tuwing nauubusan na ng lakas. Ang ako na gustong matuto sa bawat tamang desisyon at gayon din sa bawat pagkakamali. Ang ako na hindi takot magkamali. Ang ako na parating nag-aalab ang damdamin para sa mga kailangan pang danasin sa ngalan ng mga pangarap, hindi ang ako na ginawa nang kapansanan ang pagluluksa. Hindi ang ako na habambuhay nangungulila sa batang hindi na muling nakalabas mula sa silid na bumago sa buhay niya mahigit dalawampung taon na ang nakakaraan. Pumasok siyang buo at lumabas siyang hindi na kailan pang muli. Pinatay siya roon at namatay pa siya nang paulit-ulit.
Maybe something inside of me that’s long wanted to get out is being set free. But perhaps it’s more apt to say that something is coming back to me, something that had long been lost. The me that is not afraid to try, and not the me that’s always gazing at the horizon, wanting to escape whenever I am running out of strength. The me that wants to learn from every right decision, as well as every wrong one. The me that is not afraid to make mistakes. The me whose heart burns for all that I still have to go through in the name of my dreams, not the me that made a crutch out of my grief. Not the me that is forever yearning for the child that never got out of the room that changed her life over twenty years ago. She came in whole and went out never to be that again. She was killed in there, and she was killed again, and again.
Even I am sure I haven’t captured the oomph of what she was saying. And I kept on reading, out loud, even if I was having painful flashbacks of my own.
Before I wrap up, a hello to the newest additions to the Stack Natin directory in the last four weeks: CJ, Juviand Rivera, Maiden Manzanal-Frank, MBA, Memoirs of a Chef, Mindy, Riza and zo is online!
The directory is filled with fresh voices and perspectives from writers of Filipino descent from across the world. Check out their publications on the list here—and if you’re keen to be on the list too, sign up at any time.
Oh, and also, Stack Natin’s second round of submissions is currently ongoing!
nicely curated as always! thanks for including one of my posts alongside these amazing writers
Thank you, Niko! Your posts are always a sure way for me to not miss out much here on Substack when I am perpetually offline. Also, I love your translation. 🤍