“Book Descriptions: This monograph explores key concepts and issues that undergird the essay as a genre in Philippine literary production. It tracks the emergence of “creative nonfiction” as a category of writing and studies its impact on the literary norms that govern the ways in which essays are written and read. It examines assumptions of what constitutes the personal when writing from lived experience, illuminating the challenges that lie in the intersection of point of view and positionality. Arguing for what it terms the “expansive first person” as the minimum obligation of the essayist who transacts in the field of literary production, which, like the world at large, is shaped by relations of powers, the monograph ponders approaching the essay, even at its most personal, with a keen regard for accuracy and accountability traditionally expected of journalism and for critical inquiry most associated with scholarly work.
Intended for Filipino readers, writers, and teachers of literature and creative writing, this monograph engages with studies of Philippine essay production both remote and recent, from post-war anthologies by A. G. Abadilla and Leopoldo Y. Yabes, to the works of Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Ramon Guillermo, and Martin Villanueva in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Drawing from a bilingual archive, it provides a provisional chronological reading list of essays by Filipino authors from the era of the Japanese Occupation to the aftermath of the Marawi Siege. By considering a range of texts, from essays produced in the professionalized writing circuit to writing circulated as zines and pamphlets, from works not conceived as literary to works not initially received as essays, the monograph seeks to expand possibilities in imagining, writing, and reading the essay.” DRIVE
Read Ebook 
