The Wily Filipino

Scenes from Sangandaan.

1. The Sangandaan conference was just about one of the best conferences I've ever attended. Really. Not just because of the quality of the panels -- some panels were fairly uneven, most of them descriptive rather than deeply analytical, but the good papers happened to be very good -- but because of the overall coherence of the theme and the panels (and plenary sessions), the coordination of the entire festival, and the networking (it's great being with fellow Filipino academics again). (All this may sound like a backhanded compliment to the organizers, but it isn't -- I really did indeed find the conference quite satisfying. And this doesn't even include all the cultural events and exhibits!)

2. There were somewhat superfluous wrap-up "discipline" sessions towards the end discussing the adoption of resolutions, but they proved to be important because it impressed upon the audience the need to address the Manila-centeredness of the whole affair. (I think there were three presenters from Mindanao all told, and one attendee from UP Los Banos!) Being at the conference, in any case, reminded me of the time I was taking a couple of MA-level comp lit classes in Diliman and being acutely aware of my "promdi" origins; I was from UP Los Banos, and I was still all wide-eyed about being in the big city and marveling at all the Diliman students speaking English. (My fellow students in those two classes are all big shots now, too: Mila Laurel, Wendell Capili, Rofel Brion.)

I attended the literature session -- primarily because the lit panels, I think, were the best of the lot, even though I was on a "visual arts" panel -- and it was amusing to note that we had the least practical resolutions, because we got rightly bogged down on a discussion of "nation."

3. Each dinner -- hosted separately by different universities -- kept upping each other in terms of performances. Guitar and saxophone quartets from UP played at the first night; by the last night, the UP Madrigal Singers (beating out the previous glee clubs from La Salle and Ateneo the previous nights) were already performing. (They also brought out what sounded like their most technically difficult arsenal of songs.)

The DLSU dinner was the swankiest of all (though the food all four nights was uniformly superb): it was held at the La Salle Greenhills gym -- white flowers covering the scoreboard and on the tables, white tablecloth, jazz, airconditioner blasting away, candlelight, and two lechons. (And I dug the "No Parents, Yayas, Etc. Allowed Until 30 Minutes Before Class Dismissal" signs in the waiting shed.)

4. It would have been really, really nice if the hard work done by Nerissa, Leny, Penelope, Lucy, Theo, Luigi, Evelie (and Vince and Dawn), among others -- preparing for the ill-fated Kasarinlan conference, massaging the funding proposals (which miracle-workers Helen and Nic originally wrote), selecting our (also ill-fated) keynote speaker -- was also acknowledged somewhere. But I guess not being able to deliver just doesn't cut it. After much work, we still came out almost empty-handed, despite our approaching private corporations, non-profit organizations, and funding institutions. I can't remember how many lunches Helen and Vince went to, trying to court potential donors. If it weren't for the Filipino American National Historical Society East Bay chapter's gallant eleventh-hour save, many Stateside people would have been unable to go (and there were still people and activities that couldn't be funded).

So I guess I was a tad annoyed when one of the FANHS folks chided the academics at the final plenary: "What's all your education for if you can't raise any money?" He was right, of course, but I didn't feel like having to defend myself by reciting our litany of excuses -- the state of post-9/11 philanthropy, War On Iraq jitters, the SARS scare, the recession, the difficulty of securing US money to spend outside of the US. In any case, they had the moral high ground, as it were: they personally cracked open their checkbooks, for which I'm grateful; I didn't. (But it would have been nice if Nic mentioned FANHS in the closing address as well!) Rant over.

5. Name-dropping time! Some conference highlights: Rey Ileto's close reading of a Filipino-American War awit; Resil Mojares's epic sweep of a plenary talk (the man walks on water) on Filipinismo and how many national symbols were assembled and circulated during the American colonial period; Sarita See (one of the folks on our wishlist for Kasarinlan) on Filipino American postcolonial aesthetics; the Writing Against / About / For America panel with Jimmy Abad, Jing Hidalgo and Butch Dalisay; Charlie Veric on Villa's different receptions in the U.S. and in the Philippines (Eileen, you were cited all over that one); Kim Alidio (yet another Kasarinlan wishlister) on American children's books; Jody and Marivi Blanco's baby daughter Sophia (okay, their papers were good too!); Neil Garcia revisiting Villa, Montano and Perez through a postcolonial lens (he had written about them previously in Philippine Gay Culture from a queer perspective); Tatsushi Narita on T.S. Eliot at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair (one of about five papers on the expo, including mine). (And it was great to run into my friend Jun Aguilar, who is now teaching at Ateneo, and also Oca Campomanes, and Shirley Lua, and Dean Alegado, and Marjorie Evasco, and Theo Gonzalves, and Laura Samson, and Preachy Legasto...)

6. Probably the most touching thing during the conference was the sight of Liz Megino and Carolina San Juan, among others, filming everything -- and I mean everything -- for Helen Toribio. Sangandaan, as some of you readers might know, is partly Helen's brainchild; her and her partner Abe Ignacio's superb "Colored: Black and White" show was the germ for the conference, and Helen (also SFSU and CCSF professor) was the indefatigable conference organizer in the US. Unfortunately, Helen couldn't make it because she recently fell seriously ill, and so her absence was very much felt.

7. Cell Phone Blues! During Resil Mojares's talk, someone's cell phone kept beeping right behind me -- repeatedly, all throughout the talk, with total disregard of the audience members. Frustrated, I quickly turned around to shoot him a dirty look -- and discovered to my horror that it was none other than UP President Dodong Nemenzo, fumbling with his cell phone. Embarrassed, I slunk back in my seat. (My guess is that he didn't know how to turn it off, or configure the mute settings -- although at the dinner the night before, Nemenzo was happily puffing away at a cigarette despite all the No Smoking signs in the airconditioned auditorium.)

At another session, Resil Mojares, who was sitting next to me, was speaking when a cell phone started ringing. It took him about half a minute to discover that it was his own cell phone that was ringing, but after similarly fumbling with the cell phone, he gave up and gave it to me to turn off.)

8. Lito Cortes Watch! Butch Dalisay had a great story to tell about Lito Cortes and how he applied for (and won) his Wallace Stegner fellowship at Stanford. Similarly, Danton Remoto, who I met in front of the men's bathroom -- he would tell others later that we "met in the bathroom," which wasn't entirely true =) -- had something funny to say about Lito as well, but I honestly can't repeat it here dahil ayokong gumawa nang iskandalo. (Nerissa, if you're reading this, contact me; matutuwa ka.)

9. Vangie Buell's plenary address was excellent: a wide-ranging, personal history of Filipinos in the United States, complete with her own photographs. I suspect that not many people had heard the basic narrative of Filipino American history before, so this was mostly new to the listeners. By the end of the talk, Buell was in tears, and so were some members of the audience. She was finally greeted with what seemed like half a minute of applause. (Earlier at breakfast she was talking about the great treatment she would receive from strangers -- doors being opened, being helped up and down stairs -- because of her gray hair. I think that added to her presentation as well: the voice of wisdom and experience.)

Posted by the wily filipino at July 17, 2003 03:17 PM