Rising From the Ash-Covered Loam: Tributes to NVM

Dear Frank,
Menchu sent me this and authorized me to send it to your blog if you'd care to use it. Thanks so much from both of us. -- Babeth

RISING FROM THE ASH-COVERED LOAM
By Menchu Aquino Sarmiento
Talk delivered at the Sixth NVM Gonzalez AwardsUniversity of the Philippines Executive House

26 November 2005 NVM Gonzalez would have been 90 this year. I never met him, but Chari Cruz Lucero, another NVM Gonzalez Prize Winner, told me a story that shows just how wonderful he was. Chari was a student then and had read something she wrote before an academic forum. An unsympathetic professor heckled and badgered her relentlessly. Being very young and unused to such an assault, she burst into tears. Wordlessly, NVM Gonzalez went up to her and took her in his arms.

Sometimes silence and the language of touch are better than words. And though it's risky to say this in a roomful of writers, it is always preferable to be a good human being than to be a great writer. Those of you here who loved him realize that NVM Gonzalez was both.

His last student at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), Alan G. Aquino, quoted NVM as saying that writers create their own nation, even if they never set foot in it. That is so very Zen, and just learning that he said such things makes me even sorrier now that I never knew him, but prouder than ever that I will always be known as the First NVM Gonzalez Grand Prize Winner.

Although he spent much of his life abroad, NVM remained a Filipino citizen, and liked to say that he never left home. What a tragedy that just 10 days before his 7th death anniversary, his home in UP Area 1 burned to the ground. This is also the year that the UCLA Asian American Studies Center held the First NVM Gonzalez Writers Workshop in the United States.

NVM Gonzalez pointed out that if nothing else, it is a hazardous voyage you undertake when navigating between cultures. Filipino writers once embarked on that voyage become inexorably part of the imperial narrative.

His son Mike Gonzalez noted: literary expression through the act of writing becomes itself the practice of establishing presence in a world beset by many insecurities. It offers a place for gestating ideas and creating images that forge new visions of life. Like the clearing of the land, the planting and harvesting, writing is a skill that must be learned, mastered and practiced.

Thus the NVM Gonzalez Writers Workshop sought to provide ample and secure scaffolding to those who aspire to claim their clearings from the growing community of Filipino-American writers in the American landscape.Regarding our presence as Filipino writers, navigating between cultures and even languages, I would like to read an excerpt from an essay by NVM Gonzalez, titled "The Log Across the Trail: Language and Literature in the Philippines," published in the Philippine Studies Journal in 1993

"So we've come this far! But consider this: asprawl amidst the second growth and brush farther down the trail lies an obstacle, the bole of a lauan, lichen-wrapped and vine-garlanded. It is five arm's-length in diameter and too formidable even for the foolhardy, given the spread of branches and leaves still green and thick, and broken twigs every which way demanding respect and attention. Better that you clear a path around it; for otherwise, how are you to move on?

"No place in the world has been spared of imperialism. Today, even with all but a few colonies sundered loose, it prevails upon land and sea. Time is grace and disgrace, wherever you turn. Its institutions are legion; its values, earthworm-like, undergo continual regeneration, stopped as if by natural right from decline, decay or death. Of colonization, a phenomenon where imperialism manifests itself so patently, we have quite so historied an experience as Filipinos; the nation, in a manner of speaking, emerged out of its womb or crypt, our modes of feeling and thinking as colonials shall endure."

To acknowledge one's past and beginnings, even as colonial writers speaking in tongues is no cause for shame. NVM Gonzalez's legacy through these awards and the Writers Workshop have been a boon in to writers like myself as we clear the land, sow and reap a harvest of words. We are all in a sense his children, children of the ash-covered loam if you like, arising from the fires of clearing the undergrowth to reveal, one plot at a time, a rich, fertile and still largely undiscovered land. He has helped us establish our presence, and for this we shall be eternally grateful.

I would also like to give this announcement about Writer's Night which is dedicated to Narita

WRITERS’ NIGHT AND OTHER LITERARY EVENTS ON DECEMBER 7

On December 7 at the UP Faculty Center’s Pulungang Recto, three literary even ts will happen: At 1pm, the oldest national organization of youngpoets – Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA) –will celebrate its 20th anniversary under the theme: "KAILANGAN BA ANG LIRA SA PANULAANG FILIPINO?" Discussants invited are Dr. Benilda Santos, Prof. Paolo Manalo, Prof. Allan Popa, Jowie de losReyes together with LIRA members Prof. Joey Baquiran,Dr. Rebecca Anonuevo, Prof. Edgar Samar, Prof. LunaSicat-Cleto, at Hernani Rafael. Ventriloquist OnyCarcamo and singer Mike Coroza will perform, whileperformance poet Vim Nadera will be the master ofceremonies. The founder of LIRA, Dean VirgilioAlmario, also National Artist for Literature, will bethe guest of honor.

At 3pm, LIKHAAN: U.P. Institute of Creative Writing, in cooperation with the Gonzalo Gonzalez Foundation,will reveal this year’s winner of the First BookAward. Dr. Jose Neil Gar cia heads the Board of Judgeswhich includes Dr. Jaime An Lim and Ms. Jessica Zafra.Atty. Gizela Gonzalez-Montinola will formally announce the winner.

At 6pm, the 27 year-old UP ICW will host the annualWriters Night. Writers’ Night is a festive occasionfor writers and lovers of literature to get togetherfor an evening of enjoyment and reminiscing. This tradition has been kept alive by the different Directors of theInstitute of Creative Writing throughout the years andis much anticipated not only by Filipino writers but also the Filipino artists’ community, members ofthe media, and friends. This year’s event will raise funds for the family ofthe late National Artist NVM Gonzalez whose house wasrecently gutted by fire. On the hand, the first bookof poems of UP ICW Administrative Office AFV Serrano entitled Quantum Fluctuations, launched earlier by theUniversity o f Santo Tomas Publishing House will bemade available to interested buyers. For inquiries and donations to the auction, contactthe UP ICW Office at 922-1830.