FOR A CHANGE, A RANT!

While reading resumes can be tedious, may I direct you to a list of books in which my writings have been anthologized: THE ANTHOLOGIZED CHATELAINE (a list I had to do for another project).  Writings = Poems, fictions, essays. I don’t do this as a literary Selfie but because, after finishing the list, I find that it affirms what many POCs have been saying all along about the importance of their community not relying on others to publish them.  

I started as a poet in 1996.  I suppose I’m blessed to have found two anthology homes as quickly as a year later, but those were anthologies specifically designed for Filipino American voices. My subsequent anthology representation shows the import of the POC community (including the rising importance of Carayan Press in San Francisco).  Frankly, I wasn’t expecting to see this result so … starkly — and starkly for me as one whose experimental efforts have not (it seemed to me) always been met enthusiastically by POC more invested in straightforward narratives due to the demands of story-telling and stories that should be told or unearthed.

And certainly the result can be affected by my own submissions practice (or lack thereof in more recent years).

But there ya go.  The implications are clear for continued work by the next generation of POC editors … as well as the larger culture.  We were talking about (lack of) representation last century!  Let me tell you something: if I see yet AGAIN another so-called multicultural or global or even national anthology without a drop of Pinoy blood in it (no,  it doesn't have to be mine) — and this is the year 2014 as I write this! — I just might go old school and run amok.   

Metaphors be with you...