MANILA, Philippines – Grief, longing, and violence, in plethora of ways, recur in the essays collected in Archipelago of Stars, which introduces both personal and larger histories, from the provenance of a name to the existence of royalties, from the Sabah invasion to the Philippine electoral system, from refugeeism to migration and notions of home, and from being a voracious reader to the proverbial question of what it means to be a writer.
Authored by Teng Mangansakan, of films such as Limbunan (2010) and Forbidden Memory (2016), the book’s strongest merit lies in its specificity, invoking chiefly the conflict that has long tenanted the southern Philippines and eroded countless Moro lives, while posing questions about life- and meaning-making at large.
The essays, rendered in simple and spontaneous lexicon, often appeals to the reader’s pathos, and are at its most terrific when it shares not only the view but also the experience. “Weeks passed. The war crept into our hometown. It was decided that refugees should go to the red house to take shelter. After having my morning coffee I visited the refugees with my camera. That was how I made my first film,” Mangansakan writes in The Dhikr’s Last Stand.
Published by Ateneo de Naga University Press in 2016 and marketed by Savage Mind, the essay collection, says the author, has gone through quite a long gestation period. Weaving “tales out of an archipelago of stars,” as he puts, it seems, requires tons of effort and patience.
Here, the award-winning filmmaker and essayist shares the impetus for piecing Archipelago of Stars together and writing outside the Philippine literary establishment.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Archipelago of Stars took me ten years to complete. Some of the essays started as entries in a blog that I started in 2005. When I became a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa International Writing Program (IWP) in 2008, I developed the entries into the essays in the book. In 2015, I was a fellow of the UP National Writers Workshop which allowed me to present an excerpt of the book’s manuscript to a panel that gave me valuable input.
I started my blog in 2005 two days after my grandmother died. I was compelled by guilt and a sense of responsibility to keep her memory alive. Years before she died, she told me to write the stories and narratives of our past before bedtime. Medyo tamad ako (I’m kind of lazy) so I would just tell her to tell me the story and I would write it in the morning. This went on and on. When she died, it dawned on me that I might forget her stories. So frantically I wrote down her stories in my blog. Somehow, she is ever present in my life, her stories inform my work, even my films. It took me a while to get over the loss of my grandmother.
There were about 50 essays, half of which I selected for the book. Some of the essays were too experimental, so I thought they might be more fitting in a future book endeavor. There were no big considerations really. I just wanted to present a collection that shows the diversity of experiences, emotions within me, and the identities that I carry, like an archipelago that has emerged from the sea.
In a way, I still consider myself as a spontaneous writer. I don’t have a routine, for instance. I write about what I feel in a particular moment. Unlike other writers perhaps, I don’t have a map of a career trajectory. I am already 48, and I still have one collection of works, although I have edited other anthologies. I have a manuscript for three collections (short stories, essays on cinema, and essays on Mindanao) but I don’t know when they’ll be ready.
Kristian Cordero and I are both alumni of the IWP. He asked me if I wanted Archipelago of Stars to be published by Ateneo de Naga University Press, and I said yes. Savage Mind markets my book. I have proposed my future books to ADNU Press. I hope they say yes.
I am a stubborn writer and a filmmaker. I write kilometric sentences and do long takes to the consternation of my audience and readers. But that’s me, stylistically, it’s hard to let go of the artistic identity that I have chosen. But as I grew older, and perhaps wiser, and recognizing that my chosen themes (armed conflict, state fascism, historical memory, colonization, gender, and class identity) need to be understood by a bigger audience, I started to meet my audience halfway. My sentences tend to be shorter nowadays too. I see it as a conversation and negotiation with my audience rather than a compromise.
At the start of my writing career, I wrote long, kilometric sentences which were described as Faulkneresque. I was compared to Borges because of the magical realist elements in my writings. I was advised in Iowa that if I wanted to get published, I must learn to write shorter sentences. So I studied Hemingway. But I guess the biggest influences are Jessica Zafra who was an icon in my college years and David Sedaris. To find humor even in the most trying of times. I’m still evolving.
The best thing about it is that I remain unaffected by the politics of the literary establishment in Manila. I choose to be a distant observer while they bicker about many things that I find inconsequential to me. I am also free from patronage politics, I don’t need to kowtow to anyone to be published or be included in a posse. I don’t adhere to standards. I write what I write the way I want it because that’s how I see the world. – Rappler.com
