I’m absolutely thrilled to be reading with some fantastic writers this weekend as part of the Filipino American International Book Festival in San Francisco.

First off, I’ll be reading at Eastwind Books in Berkeley on September 29 (that’s tomorrow, Thursday) for an event entitled The Places We Call Home, with a killer cast of folks (in alphabetical order): Oscar Bermeo, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Veronica Montes, and Barbara Jane Reyes. I’ll be reading an excerpt from a non-fiction piece about growing up in my Philippine hometown of Los Banos, Laguna, which will be a first for me. (Another first: reading with all these fine people.)

The Places We Call Home

Sept. 29, 2011

Eastwind Books of Berkeley

2066 University Ave.

Berkeley, CA 94704

Next, I’ll be reading at Koret Auditorium at the lower level of the San Francisco Public Library on October 1, Saturday, for a FilBookFest event entitled Hot off the Press, where I get to read an eight-minute excerpt from my novel in progress. I expect this to be rapid-fire, flash-fictiony, haul-you-off-the-stage-if-you-go-over-the-time-limit stuff. I don’t think I’ll be able to kick the very tall Rafe Bartholomew off the stage (he’s reading right before me) so I leave that up to Veronica, who’s moderating the event.

Hot off the Press

Oct. 1, 2011

Koret Auditorium

San Francisco Public Library

100 Larkin St.

San Francisco, CA  94102

And I’ll also be signing books! I’ll be at the Philippine Expressions Bookshop booth on Saturday at 1:45 (right after the reading above), and at the Philippine American Writers and Artists booth on Sunday, Oct. 2nd. All the booths will be out on Fulton Street, at the Civic Center.

My latest book, Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City will be for sale at both the Philippine Expressions and Eastwind booths, and if you have a hard-to-find copy of Displaying Filipinos: Photography and Colonialism in Early 20th-Century Philippines, I’ll sign it too. (Or just come by and say “hello!”)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Not so long ago I was talking with some academics (or some writers, I can’t remember), and the conversation turned to another writer (or academic, I can’t remember) who was — make your choice:

• Getting invited everywhere
• Getting all the editing/teaching gigs
• Getting published everywhere
• Et cetera

And then someone said:

Well — that’s because she’s one of those.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

From the first draft of "Displaying Filipinos," summer 1992

There’s a pile of paper propped up next to my desk. They’re multiple copies of a chapter entitled “Arnold Schwarzenegger,” and it’s about a philandering businessman stuck in traffic as his long-suffering driver tries to navigate their SUV out of Manila and into the provinces. These copies are from my classmates, from a writing class that ended about a couple of months ago. Some of the feedback, like the ones from my teacher, are line-by-line edits, complete with single-spaced, typewritten advice, and those are invaluable. Some comments from my classmates are mere scribbles in the margins, checkmarks and instances of “not clear” and “nice!” but those are okay too.

I still haven’t incorporated any of the revisions into the draft in my desktop, and that’s not okay at all. I’ve read the comments, of course, but they lie there untransmuted, unconverted into kinetic energy. I have many excuses, ready to be fished out in case I have to answer to authority: work, the need to write a more workable ending first, work, tiredness in the evenings, work, my doubts whether the manuscript is any good, work, the nagging sense that I have to exercise which I don’t do anyway, work, and so on. But the only authority figure here is me.

And none of these are legitimate excuses, according to Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work. The book — until recently a free download from Amazon.com — is a great kick in the butt, with passages I simply had to highlight and read aloud to my girlfriend. But in certain ways the book also assumes a fairly level playing field, a sentiment I don’t always agree with, and its tough motivational advice won’t be new to folks who’ve read, say, Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! Pressfield’s main argument is all in the title — one has to do the work — and anything that prevents you from doing that act of creation (the book is also both New Age-y and Chaos Magick-y), anything that holds you back is the enemy. (Pressfield, who refers to the enemy in blatantly martial terms, argues it’s almost always inside you.) It’s the dark side, the Jungian shadow, the dragon that you must slay. Do the Work also argues that the only real and right reason to do this work is not because of riches or fame or that one has to prove anything to friends and family; it’s because one has no choice.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

There’s no reason why R. Zamora Linmark shouldn’t shoot for the Great Philippine Novel in his ambitious and wide-ranging new book, Leche, even if it’s told from the perspective of a balikbayan, returning to the Philippines after 13 years. The fact that there may be anywhere from 8.2 to 11 million Filipinos overseas – about 10 percent of the Filipino population – surely makes it an “authentic” Filipino stance from which to write. Two of the greatest chroniclers of the Filipino experience, N.V.M. Gonzalez and Bienvenido Santos, wrote from this same vantage point of in-betweenness, after all. Part linear journey of discovery, part fractured travelogue and history lesson, Leche brilliantly milks (ahem) those forms. (Yes, I can get away with that pun because I’m Filipino — see more below.)

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Popularity: 5% [?]

When I was growing up in the Philippines, every guy in my neighborhood played basketball. As a writer one is trained not to use absolute terms like “every” or “all,” but this is surely a statement of empirical fact. Maybe those guys were too busy now, or their knees, like mine, had given way in middle age, but at some point in their lives, they had picked up a ball and chucked it through a hoop. And in every neighborhood, there was one. Even I can still remember the makeshift basketball court near my house: planks salvaged from some construction site and nailed to a tree, a frayed net clinging to a rusted hoop bent funny from all the dunk attempts, skinny street dogs weaving between the players’ skinnier legs, worn-out tsinelas and fake Reeboks raising little puffs of brown dust, overshadowed by the clouds of diesel smoke as a jeep rumbles down the street, and the game is temporarily interrupted to make way for the vehicle.

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Popularity: 17% [?]