Filipino writers at the Melbourne Writers Festival 2017

Click here: SBS Interview

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Day One In Melbourne for the Melbourne Writers Festival and WrICE 2017

Whether it's difficult or easy to be a writer in these times, depends on the kind of writer you are or want to be. I thought it poetic to be in Melbourne for #mwf2017 same week a massive equality rally is happening, while in Manila it's the burial of #Kian, latest victim of police impunity and brutality. Always interesting to see place and compare notes with writers and locals who are also politically, historically inclined. Privileged to walk around parts of Melbourne yesterday with Christos, and then to walk right smack into the middle of the massive marriage equality rally. Later, in a balcony bar, we were joined by some people from the rally. They couldn't believe that there's no divorce in the Philippines. They were curious to know if people are interested in marriage equality, or in getting married, if that's the case. And they asked about the killings. I told them everything they've read in the news is true, and more. Our journalists have been doing a good job of bearing witness and keeping faithful to events. #photodumping#mwf2017 #wrice2017


https://www.instagram.com/p/BYRlkyfnYW1vnUUx5Irp3D2_l3OgQ1AtLqzDeo0/?taken-by=the_real_thelgado

Melbourne Writers Festival

In late August, I'm taking a break from field work, and boardroom work, and roundtable work, and even house work!, to take part in the Melbourne Writers Festival as one of the featured writers, and to reunite with fellows of WrICE 2017.

Here are some information on the events I'll be participating in:
http://mwf.com.au/writer/daryll-delgado/

If you're in or around the area, let's catch up and have a drink? :)

Preludes Analysis and Discussions

It's that time of year, when high school students bug me for all sorts of information, advice, answers to homework questions. I'm going to post here instead something I came across, this piece on one of my stories, Preludes, which high school students are being required to read:

Story Analysis

I thought this comment was such a gem:

Naixus Barbz

Question po, posible pang namatay yung husband dahil sa paglason ni Nenita sa kanya? Kasi kun pagiisipan, may background knowledge si Nenita about herbal mixing and concoctions dahil kay beshie, at sinabi rin sa story na gumagawa siya ng “medicinal tea” para sa kanyang husband para isabay sa dinner niya. Kaya kung ganon na ang kalagayan ng utak ni Gng. Nenita posibleng may hinalong kung ano anong sangkap sa “medicinal tea” ni husband na pampalason. Hindi man agad-agad pero little by little para di obvious ang paglason. Haha tama ba ang takbo ng utak ko??

:)

On a Writing Residency sponsored by the WrICE Program

Flew in from work travels in France - with a quick day-off in Belgium - last Saturday morning (about which I have a few notes to share in a separate post), and flew to Vigan, via Laoag (a historic city in the northern part of the Philippines), the following night. The layover at home was too short, but just enough for me to be treated to a pampering by the husband, to unpack and repack, and recover a bit from the long-haul flights. 

Here now in Hotel Salcedo de Vigan, where fellows are billeted for the next eight days, as part of the first leg of the 2017 WrICE residency program. I moved stuff around a bit in the room to maximize view from the picture window. Now I can write, and my leave from work officially starts. :) #WrICE2017

Vigan City, Philippines

The Movie Oro, Extra Judicial Killings, and Animal Rights Advocacy

Note: I have decided to revive my blog, and use it for lengthier musings about art, literature, writing. This is my first post for the year. 


The movie Oro tells a very important story, and many important points about social justice -- points which are executed with utmost care and intelligence, and with a keen awareness of the social and political backdrop against which the story is being told. 

One of the points made by the film is how systemic injustice and structural violence brutalizes and bestializes people; how it perverts their view of society and of themselves, and how it turns them against each other. Another point is about how power is used to legitimize divorcing concerns for the environment from the concerns of the community, how it is used to turn man and woman against nature. The part of the movie where the armed men harass one of the villagers by taking his dog, and later butchering it for pulutan, is important to show this brutality, and the power relations at work. They did it because they could. The villagers, hungry and fighting for daily survival with the loss of their livelihoods, could do the same -- kill their pets for food, and that would have been perfectly justified -- but they don't. Because they are more humane, more principled than the armed men. This point is emphasised more clearly when it is revealed that some of the villagers were former armed rebels who had put down their guns, availed of amnesty programs, to join the community in managing and making a living of mining their natural resources. In contrast, some of the armed men and fellow rebels of the villagers turned out to have been "recruited" or pirated from their previous roles as defenders of the community, to become paramilitary for the governor and his business partners. These same men would of course later also butcher, massacre, four of the villagers, former comrades, as foreshadowed by the animal killing.

***

Beyond the film, it's hard to gauge whether or not the outrage over the animal killing in (and for),the movie is more intense than the outrage over the ongoing, nightly extrajudicial killings of poor people. It sometimes seems that way on social media, but I suspect it is less so in the real world. I do think that the analogy is not invalid, not false, given the very obvious context in which our lives and our movies are currently being played out. 

There are so many interconnected issues here, and many ways by which they're being viewed. I thought that it is a good sign that people are still capable of outrage, that we have not been numbed by the daily and nightly barrage of images of violent, extrajudicial killings of fellow Filipinos; of the violence in the president's speech and pronouncements, and in his view of women; of the violence that workers and indigenous peoples are subjected to on a daily basis. Is it too much to hope that the outrage over the death of an animal in the filming of a movie will get people to realize that taking the life of, exploiting and marginalizing people, is very, very wrong indeed? Can this outburst of compassion for animals perhaps be harnessed and used to proactively call for an end to the state-sanctioned killings? 

Just wondering.

My short bio

for all the high school students who have been messaging me on FB, here it is:

DARYLL DELGADO’s first book of short stories, After the Body Displaces Water (USTPH, 2012), won the 32nd National Book Award for Short Fiction, and was a finalist in the 2013 Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award. She has also received a Philippines Free Press award for her fiction in 2010. Her more recent works have appeared in Maximum Volume 1 (Anvil, 2013); AGAM (2013); Our Memory of Water (Ateneo de Naga Press, 2016), and High Chair (http://www.highchair.com.ph/issue_22/22_delgado_placeoftrauma.htm); and Resurgent (http://www.resurgent.ph/artikulo/bodies). She has been a lecturer at the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila University, and Miriam College. She currently works for the Southeast Asia office of an international labor and human rights NGO. Daryll has a BA in Journalism and MA in Comparative Literature from UP Diliman. She currently resides in Quezon City with her husband, William.  She was born and raised in Tacloban City (in the Visayas, the central part of the Philippines) and continues to call Tacloban home.

***
I don't know if this helps you understand the story you're being required to read. But thanks for reading. I'll be posting answers to some of your questions on this blog soon. :)