Inherently Filipino

There’s a lot to compare about and contrast between Carlos Bulosan’s “My Father Goes to Court” and Manuel Arguilla’s “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife.” The fact that they are [self-]consciously writing for a foreign audience (Americans in the US for Bulosan, Americans in the Phil. for Arguilla), and were still on the way to perfecting their use of English can be easily deciphered from the text.

It also seemed to me that both writers tried to faithfully represent the values & virtues of Filipinos as they knew it. Bulosan tried to mirror the resilience, affability and wit of Filipinos, and our affinity with the comic in everyday life. Arguilla’s story, on the other hand, with all its rich imagery and sensory detail, made me miss the wide open pastures of my (or my father’s) hometown in Cagayan Valley; and makes me wax nostalgic about the pure, unadulterated, essential and “seemingly” uncomplicated way of life.

The language of both authors, their characters, plots and themes replicate what they thought to be true and beautiful about Filipinos and the local culture. And they wrote this primarily for the “outsiders.” Filipino character, spirit, the beauty of the local terrain, family values & relations, and the olden way of life.

But then, up close one may sense that both stories have this deceptive “innocent” “apolitical” feel to it. Like the depiction of places that show no other turmoil beyond personal issues with neighbors or family matters, which get resolved conveniently in the stories, anyhow.

That’s why it’s ironic to think that they were both written during politically turbulent times here and abroad. One can picture Bulosan writing against the grain about his countrymen while he experienced racial discrimination and exploitation in America during the Great Depression; and Arguilla writing about the peace in the countryside—the very spaces ravaged by the Japanese and the guerillas alike during the war.

This is what I actually meant in my first blog entry which I had not articulated clearly (even for me, now that I read it again). What I actually meant in my first entry was that it is in turbulent times when one most distinctly feels the need assert his/her identity as a person, a member of a community, or a citizen. An attack on your nationhood, heritage, citizenship—like what Bulosan and Arguilla had experience—calls for a retaliation on the same level. Hence the emphasis in these stories on what the writers claim as inherently native, and true, and beautiful.