From Cecilia Brainard: I am proud to share Dr. Caroline S. Hau's Essay on HOW I BECAME A WRITER. All articles and photos are copyrighted by the individual authors. All rights reserved. Cecilia Brainard and PALH have permission from the authors to use their materials here.
Caroline S. Hau was born in Manila and educated at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and Cornell University. Her books include Tiempo Muerto: A Novel, Demigods and Monsters: Stories, and Recuerdos de Patay and Other Stories. She lives in Kyoto.
How I Became a Writer
Caroline S. Hau
1
People like myself aren’t supposed to dream of being a writer, let alone become one.
Asked what course they would like to take up in college, the children of my neighborhood of San Nicolas in the part of Manila known as Chinatown mostly responded with “Commerce.” I myself copped to that once or twice, despite having zero interest in minding the store.
The long 1970s were a literary desert for the Philippine Chinese. The price paid by Chinese-language newspapers to remain in publication was the abolition of the literary section, the better to avoid having one’s work (mis)interpreted as a critique of current affairs. A moot issue anyway, since I could barely read and write Mandarin Chinese.
Before that, writing was among the childish things one put away. Pioneers of Chinese-Filipino fiction in English like Alexander SyCip and Benito Lim published only a handful of short stories.
My parents, however, belonged to that rare breed of Chinese Filipinos who were able to pursue full-time careers as artists. It was my mom who supported my decision to major in English instead of a Pre-Med course at the University of the Philippines. (The response I got from others was invariably “English lang?”)
I met Charlson Ong soon after the EDSA Revolution opened up a democratic space for writers and publishers. Charlson showed that it was possible to write compellingly about being Tsinoy as a Tsinoy (or, better still, “Intsik”, a fraught term Charlson has called for reclaiming).
