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Mangozine's Issue #4 Presents
Sheila Bare on Carlos Bulosan
Michael Simms on Jose Padua
Eileen R. Tabios on Mg Roberts
Aloysiusi Lionel Polintan on Gemino H. Abad
Mangozine's Issue #4 Presents
Sheila Bare on Carlos Bulosan
Michael Simms on Jose Padua
Eileen R. Tabios on Mg Roberts
Aloysiusi Lionel Polintan on Gemino H. Abad
*
Sheila Bare on Carlos Bulosan
Is
America Still in the Heart? An
Exhortation to (Re)member Carlos Bulosan
The newly elected U.S. administration,
still in its infancy, has proven itself most burdensome—oppressive, really—to
many. The recent executive order banning
people of a certain faith from several countries most of whom were seeking
refuge from war-torn lands, from conflicts and hostilities in which the U.S.
itself has been engaged, has caused widespread upheavals: confusion,
protestations, litigations, a lifting of the ban, a staying of the ban, a
paroxysm. Indeed, since the
inauguration, thousands, perhaps even millions now have been marching against
this new president, his policies and agenda, and the members of his
administration. While I am heartened by
the protest movement, I fear that the energy might diminish and we find
ourselves passively acquiescing to a new normal where “alternative facts”
pervade and we are stripped of our inalienable rights. In trying times as this political moment, I
tend to look to writers for hope and inspiration. These I find in Carlos Bulosan, a pioneering
writer in Filipino American literature, an “old timer,” or manong, an immigrant who labored in the fields, the canneries, and
the kitchens across his beloved “America[1].”
Born in what was then
a U.S. colony, the Philippines, Bulosan emigrated to the United States in 1930,
hoping to find relief from the impoverishment of his childhood. War-torn from the Spanish American War and
then the Philippine American War immediately after, the Philippines was in
economic turmoil. Filipino nationalists,
the petty bourgeoisie, replicated their Spanish colonizers through absentee
landlords and exploited their tenants.
At the same time, the establishment of public schools by the U.S. taught
the restive populace the U.S. ideals of democracy that was inaccessible to
many. It isn’t any wonder that in the
early decades of the twentieth century, more than 60,000 Filipinos left the
Philippines for the U.S. to seek these ideals.
But in the U.S., Bulosan was met with racism and exploitation, and more
of the poverty he was hoping to escape.
America would hold out on her democratic promises for the likes of
Bulosan. Though he had little to no
schooling, Bulosan became an avid reader and came to believe that writing is
empowerment. For him, history is one
continuous struggle against tyranny. To
liberate himself, he must tell his history;
he must write:
I [. . .] started a letter to my brother
Macario [. . .]. Then it came to me,
like a revelation, that I could actually write understandable English. I was seized with happiness. I wrote slowly and boldly, drinking the wine
when I stopped, laughing silently and crying.
When the long letter was finished, a letter which was actually a story
of my life, I jumped to my feet and shouted through the tears:
‘They can’t
silence me any more [sic]! I’ll tell the
world what they have done to me!”[2]
And so he wrote. Before there
was Ceasar Chavez, there was Bulosan, writing tracks to embolden the farm laborers
to unite. Bulosan wrote poetry and
fiction. And he wrote his autobiography,
America Is in the Heart. His writings tell of the racism and
exploitations he and his compatriots encountered. Bulosan’s writings will be the site of
controversy. It hardly seems plausible
that one individual could be witness to the numerous events in his
autobiography. And yet no one to this
day could debunk his claims. His
autobiography is itself a challenge to the genre. As bildungsroman,
an autobiography depicts a narrative telos of the innocence and impotence of
youth to the mobility and potency of maturity, from poverty to wealth, or
immigrant foreigner to assimilated citizen subject—a linear history from beginning to end. But Bulosan’s autobiography is one of endless
movement, a circular narrative. An
itinerant laborer, Bulosan sought employment wherever he can. And this immigrant does not assimilate into
the national body politic. As poor,
immigrant, and person of color, the “American Dream” is out of reach for
Bulosan. Had he the wherewithal, alien
land laws would have prevented him from owning land and property, amplifying
his rootlessness and detachment to an American land. Although he arrives in America as a U.S.
national, by 1934, with the signing of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, at the stroke
of a pen, Bulosan becomes an illegal alien.
Moreover, his leftist leanings, writings, and activism earned him the
ire of the FBI; he was blacklisted.
Indeed, the FBI would have preferred to deport him. But how could they? His autobiography was so well received that
even President Franklin D. Roosevelt had commissioned him to write an essay for
his 1941 State of the Union address on the Four Freedoms. Bulosan’s essay, “Freedom from Want” appeared
in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943
along with Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of a family celebrating what looks
to be Thanksgiving. No, the FBI could
not touch him; instead, he was blacklisted.
In both his essay and autobiography, the titles belie their content;
both disclose that equality and freedom are not accessible to all. “But sometimes we wonder if we are really
part of America[3],”
Bulosan reflects in his essay.
Bulosan’s time has
passed, and fifty years after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, I dare hope
that his experiences will not be ours to live.
But in this time of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” we are tasked
to write our stories as Bulosan did, bravely, lest we be silenced. We must remain vigilant and resist an
increasingly oppressive administration and fight for an American ideal that is
yet to come, that is constantly evolving.
And we must claim our part in the landscape of a democratic
America. I end with Bulosan’s words, exhorting us to “Write your
guts out. Write with thunder and blood.”[4]
[1] I
use the word “America” in keeping with Bulosan, whose autobiography, America Is In the Heart, brought him
critical acclaim. I keep the scare
quotes to emphasize the ways in which the term participates and maintains the
myths of U.S. exceptionalism in that it elides many countries that belong in
the Americas of the Western Hemisphere.
[2]
Bulosan, Carlos. America Is in the Heart. Seattle
and London: U of Washington P, 1996.
[3] http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2008c-4.shtml. 2.5.2017.
12:00am
[4]
Bulosan. America. 183
*
Michael Simms on Jose Padua
The Very American Poetry of
Jose Padua
What are poets for in destitute times? — Hölderlin
Every
poem is a subversive act.
In
an age when our senses are benumbed by competing media screaming for our
attention, the radical quietism of a well-made poem is in itself revolutionary.
Sitting quietly and listening to a person share his or her most important
experiences expressed in a coherent form goes against our entire twenty-first
century Western culture. Poetry is the only antidote for the insanity of
post-modern life. This is the reason why poets have been in the vanguard
of the contemporary progressive movement and also the reason why poetry’s small
audience must be nurtured and expanded.
It
is very difficult for a contemporary American to sit still and listen to a poem
because the experience requires patient attentiveness to another person’s
feelings. Having few chances to practice this kind of empathy, we are simply
not very good at it. We are constantly assaulted by advertisements, besieged by
email messages, jangled by message alerts, battered by music videos, frustrated
by traffic jams, and disturbed by snatches of news. The coherence and silence
that human beings need have been shattered and replaced by a fragmented and
nervous existence. For our abused sensibilities, poetry offers an oasis of
ordered calm, a quiet subversion which, given time, heals the wounded
disordered spirit. Not being used to experiencing the music of language for its
own sake, we at first rebel against it, reacting with impatience, boredom,
frustration, anger. “But what does it mean?” the novice poetry listener asks,
throwing up his hands.
The
idea that poetry should be free from politics, as many argue, is absurd.
Writing a poem, whatever its subject, is by its very nature a political act
because artistic creation requires a new way of looking at the world. Pushing
the boundaries of awareness is the quality that makes poetry essential, and it
is the reason that in a totalitarian society, poets are the first to be
arrested, and why in our society poetry has been for the most part assiduously
ignored by mainstream media. Poetry provides something that helps make sense of
these confusing times. As evidence we need look no further than the aftermath
of the recent presidential election during which poetry websites saw a surge of
popularity. Vox Populi, for example, recorded over a million hits in the
few weeks after Donald Trump’s election, a new record for us. America needs its
small presses, its poetry readings, its poetry radio shows, and, yes, its
poetry websites, because without them, we are at the mercy of those who make it
their business to tell us what to think and how to feel.
Sometimes
the subversive quality of a poem is clear and emphatic — for example Pablo
Neruda’s poem The United
Fruit Company in which the poet excoriates the multinational
corporations that have exploited Latin America. However, as great as
Neruda’s poem is, most of my favorite poems practice a more subtle subversion.
For example, notice the nuanced tone and gentle rhythms in this poem by Jose Padua in which he
captures the beauty of the evening rituals in a working class family’s home:
And So the Brightness of Evening
I shine these minutes in the evening,
so heavy with the space of living,
rooms to walk into and leave, floors
to step upon to do a task and walk
away from. The end of the day is
like a polishing of time. You wipe
the table, I listen to its clearing from
the living room then take the plastic
bags of trash out the front door.
It’s a cleaning of the hours, and
for us, an emptying of what’s left
of the week. Work is what keeps
us here, what feeds us from bank
to store to hand to mouth. We keep
it clean, we let it get dirty, we mop,
we scrub, we rinse. Our clothes pile
up in the back of the house no matter
how hard we try to keep up with it.
We don’t try that hard. There are other
things to do, other things to see,
a show about tiny birds flying just
above the roofs; a book about the
end of the world, the stopping of
time, and the sailing of Greek boats.
Before I turn off the ceiling light
in the dining room I see the plates and
tumblers behind the cabinet’s glass
door gleam. It’s the quiet kind
of shining that moves us best,
a glowing with no need to make
its own sound, because upstairs
all the lights are switched on, and
I hear the soft voice of our daughter
getting ready for bed as she sings.
Of
course, those who are familiar with Padua’s work know that he is also capable
of harsh criticism of American attitudes, as in this poem in which the
ambiguity of a single nod becomes an anthem for the uncertain times in which we
live:
My True Love and Other Colors
Just off the exit
from the Interstate,
the man with the red, white,
and blue American
flag painted on the wall
of his garage has the words
Love These Colors or
Leave This Country
printed beneath it
in big bold letters,
and when he sees me
drive past he nods
at me so slowly
I can’t tell if it’s
more greeting or threat,
and because in twenty-first century
America I must consider
how a single movement
or motion can
mean two completely
different things
depending on who’s
doing the perceiving,
I nod back briefly and
quickly so as not to be misinterpreted
or misconstrued and
continue down the road
thinking only
about the colors
of the things in this world I
truly love.
Even
when Padua is being overtly political, he never loses his ability to modulate
his ironic tone and spin breathtaking metaphors:
American Sadness
Of all the sadness in the world
there is nothing that can compare
with American sadness. When
America is sad the whole world
weeps. Whenever one American
is sad, at least two non-Americans
somewhere else in the world consider
the possibility of ending it all. When
a hundred Americans are sad, wars
are fought in faraway lands for
the great purpose of making these
hundred Americans happy again.
When a million Americans are sad,
every flag in America droops, then
slides an inch and then another inch
down the flag pole and nothing can
stop this descent until bold, confident
smiles return to these Americans’ faces.
American sadness, let’s make it clear,
is exceptional. Unlike what you may
have heard, it doesn’t always talk
softly, but it always carries a big stick
because no one is sad the way an
American is sad. No one drags his feet
through the dullness of a day, or
walks with her eyes looking downward
quite as sadly as an American who
feels sad because America is losing
a battle, coming in second, or washing
ashore with empty pockets and bad breath.
American sadness, of course, is the greatest
sadness in the world—do not look it
in the eye unless your intention is
to make amends. Do not settle for a
knowing grin, or a sliding into place
of the proper order of thought or things.
Work hard, do your best, and fight
whenever a fist is called for, or a bomb
needs to be dropped upon a civilian population
whose greatest misfortune is not being American.
But above all, keep American sadness at bay
like a ship that wrecks off shore through
instability or from fault of navigation.
Let’s remember to keep America happy.
Let’s keep America entertained.
In
capturing the beauty and terror of one life, Jose Padua’s poems are subtle,
ironic, precise, and socially aware. Seeing an American flag painted on a
garage, remembering the taste of meals that his mother learned to cook when she
was growing up in the Philippines, putting his children to bed knowing that he
cannot protect them from an unjust society, watching the evening news with a
jaundiced eye—these are the moments Jose Padua evokes to wake us from our long
unhappy American dream.
______________________
Essay copyright 2017 Michael Simms. Poems copyright 2016
Jose Padua. All rights reserved. First published in VOX POPULLI: A PUBLIC
SPHERE FOR POLITICS AND POETRY. To read more poems by Jose Padua, click here.
*
Eileen R. Tabios on Mg Roberts
*
Aloysiusi Lionel Polintan on Gemino H. Abad
I’ve long
appreciated the works of Gemino H. Abad. His latest, Where No Words Break: New Poems and Past, is a wonderful book. Here
are just five utterances which stand out for their didactic impact and the
demonstration of Abad’s knack with logic and lyricism:
1
beware
then. be wary. choose well from language, for each word there has
predestination. and only the poet knows.
—from "eric has
father-longings" (2011)
2
for
words refuse their mirror
and
build their mazes
—from "To Speak then of
Poetry" (2012)
3
the
silences that sometimes fell
between
were even more telling.
—from "Stories"
(2012)
4
Did
I think poems could chart Love's continent?
I
have found only runnels moment to moment
where
glints a little snake of water.
—from "Prayer"
(2011)
5
The
past is never quite obliterated, and one great cause for its persistence is
literature. It is good that the case is so, for a people without memory has no
country.
—from "In My Craft or
Sullen Art: A Poetics of Writing"
This is a very
challenging book and heightens my appreciation of Abad’s work.
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