What the school system won't make you read

I'll be honest, I didn't mind high school. Mostly because 'minding it' was NOT an option, and I was sure my parents had some radar that would turn on alarms and red strobe lights in the house if I so much as thought of skipping. Minding high school was just not an option. So I just sucked it up and dealt with it. Mostly poorly.

There were parts I liked - mainly lunch time, Spanish and English. I went to a French high school so any language was pretty much a bird class.

I HATED French. The teacher was a staunch separatist who thought it was appropriate to ask us for our personal info - like address and email and phone number. I am still not too sure what he was going to use them for. Plus he had this really breathy way of speaking and utb-of-Crisco oily hair. AND he made us read books in the most illogical way. The test involved giving the definition and context of page upon page of vocabulary word, so we were basically reading the dictionary and memorising page numbers more than getting to enjoy and understand the novel itself.

It actually made me hella nervous to pick up a book for a few years after that.

So when a kasama asked me "what books I had read" while we were preparing materials for the International Women's Day march this past March 8, I just turned mute. High school and the academic snobbery of McGill just turned books into a stigma. As though I would be a lesser person for not having read this guy or the other.

I haven't read most socialist and communist lit. Nor have I read most political, sociological or economic treatise* out there. Which doesn't mean I like reading - I just don't like reading about people who've discovered this week's truth of the month.

Anyways.

To this kasama's question I gave the following answer -

I've read Jessica Hagedorn. And Screaming Monkeys. And Babaylan and Returning A Borrowed Tongue. I've looked really hard for alternative readings and analyses of Filipino history. I picked up Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, but after starting it over three times I've all but given up reading it. Next up on my reading list is Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory and Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults.

Taking his advice, I finally started reading America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. I picked it up on a pretty epic trip, and am still not too sure why it took me so long to crack its spine.

From pretty much the third page, I had to take pauses and breathe in a little deeper. The themes he brings up in such a human and sensitive way - family unity and separation, poverty, peasant's land rights, class and social dynamics in the Philippines and in America, migration, "difference" and racism are still so relevant today although written in 1943.

In the space my brain's at right now, having just returned from working with peasants who were struggling to eat and keep their land, and preparing for the Ugat conference, this book couldn't have come at a better time to bring it all together. And remind me of things I had forgotten or had chosen not to know about my family's life, like where my family is really (REALLY) from and why my dad really (REALLY) came here.

I would quote some passages but I think you'd be better off reading it on your own. Some parts affected me really deeply that may not really strike a chord with you - it's just a matter of what hits home to each of us, depending where we've been and where we're at. Regardless, be it now or later, please please please get your hand on this novel. I swear, pick it up and first thing you know, three hours will have gone by and you'll have barely noticed. Hit me up if you want to share a copy - I have a sneaky feeling MTL public librearies may not carry a copy.


* 1: a systematic exposition or argument in writing including a methodical discussion of the facts and principles involved and conclusions reached 2obsolete : account,tale - HONESTLY, just the definition makes me cringe.