My Blogiversary and the Filipino reader

A year ago today, I started this blog. And though I've had blogging ups and downs, I've always been proud and happy to be a book blogger, mainly because of the great community. One thing I'm especially proud of is that I have a lot of countrymen who are also book bloggers. Some of them I know personally, while others I only know through their blog. However, regardless of how I know them and whether I agree with them, I love reading what they have to say about books

So, this is me turning my nose up at those who say that the Philippines is not a reading nation. A few weeks ago, I read an article written by one of our premier writers (I was clued in by another fellow Filipino blogger). For the most part, I agree with it. Except for this part:

The university presses — particularly Ateneo, the University of Santo Tomas, and the University of the Philippines — are producing an avalanche of excellent titles. And so are the commercial presses — Anvil, New Day, and individual authors who are publishing their own manuscripts. And most importantly, so many young writers are coming up to assure us that, indeed, our literature is very much alive and well.

Unfortunately for all of us, this cultural bonanza will not be appreciated because Filipinos don’t read and, worse, those who do are often shackled by colonized minds and they snub our writers, even the very best. They will certainly miss this good harvest for the year.

I take issue with the second paragraph. I take issue with the sweeping generalization that we don't read. I think that, as a writer, there should be more responsibility in issuing grand statements such as this.

Filipinos do read. It's just that perhaps majority of the Filipinos do not read what some academicians or great writers want them to read. In May Jurilla's book, Tagalog Bestsellers of the Twentieth Century, she defines the Tagalog bestseller in the Philippine context and traces what kinds of books have been bestsellers. According to her research, there are certain genres per era that gain bestseller status. For instance, in the 1970s-80s, bestsellers were Filipino comics. In the later part of the century, the bestsellers were the local romances. Of course, at the time of their popularity, none of these genres were the kinds of texts taken up in college lit classes.

In fact, when I was young, I used to sneak reading the comics that our househelp had because my parents thought it wasn't proper reading. The comics I read weren't risque (though of course, some comics were); it's just that there was a cultural stigma attached to them. They were considered low reading. Same thing with the local romance novels. Whenever I go to the local bookstore, it's always the section with the Tagalog romance novels that has the most number of people hanging about. But you'd be hard put to find a college student from any of our top universities carrying a local romance novel around the campus.

In other words, there is a reading public. There are Filipino bestsellers. But they're not the bestsellers that some of the privileged few wish were bestsellers. And the public doesn't seem to be buying the books that, again, the privileged few want them to buy.

The writer above would classify me as one of those readers who are "shackled by colonized minds." I will freely admit to that. Unfortunately, most of my reading so far has been Anglo-American-centric. I have not read a lot of Filipino novels and books, though I have read a heck of a lot of Filipino short stories. Then again, perhaps it's also because the novel as a genre still has much to attain in our country. Though I honestly believe it's getting there. (Dalisay's Soledad's Sister; Syjuco's Illustrado). Nevertheless, this deficiency of mine is something which I intend to remedy forthwith.

And this is something I'll actually appreciate more--instead of generalizing us as a non-reading race, I'd like the critics of Filipino readers to look at why the greater public doesn't buy the books that the educated few thinks it should buy. Then I'd like them to propose concrete solutions to attain their goal. I know it's a confluence of greater factors--prices of local books vis-a-vis the other necessities of life, education, and background. But maybe something we could all look into also is how books are promoted or marketed. There ARE great Filipino books out there. But are they marketed only for the reading elite? Also, are they written only for the reading elite? Where are they placed in the bookstores? Who talks about them?

Because, little by little, I now realize that there is more to a book than just writing it. It has to be promoted. It has to be sold. What happens to a book between its writing and its reaching the ownership of an actual reader, or a million actual readers, is a long and complex process which we'll need to examine to solve this problem. It might be a bit lazy of us to simply conclude that, because books don't get sold, an entire nation doesn't read.

I am proud to be a reader, to be a blogger, to be a Filipino. Likewise, I am proud of my countrymen because of their intelligence and resourcefulness. We are readers. A lot of us are book bloggers. Surely a drop in the pond in terms of our entire population, but enough, I believe, to start making a difference. Definitely enough for me to conclude that, yes, we Filipinos read.