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Marianne
Villanueva
Website: Kanlaon
Marianne Villanueva , a former Stegner
Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, has been writing and publishing
stories about the Philippines and Filipino Americans since the mid
1980s. Her critically acclaimed first collection of short fiction, Ginseng and Other Tales from
Manila (Calyx Books 1991) was short–listed for the
Philippines’ National Book Award. Her work has been widely
anthologized. Her story, Silence,
first published in the Three
Penny Review, was short–listed for the 2000 O. Henry
Literature Prize, and The
Hand was awarded first prize in Juked’s 2007
fiction contest. She has edited an anthology of Filipina women’s
writings, Going Home to
a Landscape, which was selected as a Notable Book by the
prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. She currently teaches
writing and literature at Foothill College and Notre Dame de Namur
University. Born and raised in Manila, she now lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
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Short
story collections
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Mayor of the Roses (Miami University
Press, 2005)
Reviewed by
Steven Wingate
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Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx
Books, 1991)
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Interview
with Marianne Villanueva
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Marianne Villanueva:
It took me over a decade. I began the first story, Lenox Hill, December 1991
the same year my first collection, Ginseng
and Other Tales from Manila, came out. I finished the last
story, Selena,
in 2003.
TSR: Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
MV: My first impulse is
to say no, since I had no real idea what I was doing. I was snatching
time in between a series of administrative jobs. Also, in between
raising a son. But, looking back at my correspondence file, I see that
I actually began trying to submit a few core stories to publishers in
1997. So I guess, once the stories had achieved a kind of "critical
mass," probably once I felt I had around six or seven good stories, I
began to think of the stories as a "product" -- that's a clumsy term,
but what else can I call something I'm submitting to publishers.
TSR: How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
MV: I always knew
the "grief" stories were the heart of what I was writing, in the 1990s.
Everything I wrote then, even the ones that didn't have a family member
dying, even the ones that were about raising a family, were really
about grief. So I knew those would be in the collection. The other
stories that I had a harder time fitting in were the ones like Mayor of the Roses
and Extinction
that were written out of homesickness (Funny, they're not exactly
loving depictions of the Philippines! But the impulse to write them
came out of a love for the landscape, and anger about the ways in which
that landscape was being destroyed). They should have been part of my
first collection, Ginseng
and Other Tales from Manila
(if only I had written them sooner!), since that collection was all
about landscape. Anyway, when I sent the manuscript to Miami University
Press, it turned out that Brian Ascalon Roley, who edited the
collection for Miami University Press, really loved Mayor, but there
was this problem that it was so different from the other stories, so he
made the decision to put the story FIRST. It couldn't be at the end,
because it was too shocking. It couldn't be in the middle, because it
would stick out like a sore thumb. So he said we had to get it out of
the way as soon as possible. And the other stories -- Brian was really
instrumental in determining the order in which they would go.
TSR: What does the word "story"
mean to you?
MV: That
is such a great question. My glib response would be to say "narrative."
But it's got to have emotion, so maybe what I mean is it's "emotional
narrative." It has to touch you, even if it's told in a completely
documentary way. I also feel that a story has to show someone (the
author or the characters) trying to get at the truth, whether it be a
larger political, social, or cultural truth, or just a small truth like
"this is what it feels like to get hit in the head by a paper airplane"
or something like that. So, any story has got to have a connection to
something larger than itself. Because if it doesn't have this larger
connection, it doesn't touch me. And, what's the point then of the
story if it doesn't touch (i.e., change) the reader?
TSR: Do you
have a "reader" in mind when you write stories?
MV: I
know I wouldn't have the heart or the courage to write the stories if I
didn't believe that they could touch someone, anyone. But who this
reader is, I don't really know. I'm not writing stories for a
particular set of people -- say, for young women, or for Filipinos
only. Actually, to imagine I was writing for only a particular or type
of readers would be one quick way to make me lose the motivation to
write! I feel that my stories have to constantly push outward, to find
a way to touch people who are very different from me. And that's the
real joy of writing, to know that you have touched people who don't
necessarily have anything in common (at least externally) with you.
TSR: Is there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your
collection,
anything at all?
MV: I'd like to
know if they have a new way of perceiving Filipinos and Filipino
Americans, after reading my book.
TSR: How does it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
MV: Well, it feels
good! But I know my books are a "hard sell," since they're not that
easy to define. I mean, what would the pitch be: Dysfunctional Filipina
trying to make it in America? I always want my "Filipina-ness" to be
front and center, but it's not always obvious, when reading my stories,
that I am very, very Filipina. So, how does one sell a collection
that's set in such an ambiguous landscape? I don't know how to do it. I
need a publicist!
TSR: What are
you working on now?
MV: I just finished
a 280-page collection, last year, and the collection includes a
novella. It was an interesting experience/ challenge, trying to write
the longer work. I deliberately sat down and tried to write something
that would be at least 100 pages long. And I found that the only way I
could do it was to write the novella in very very short chapters, and
using a kind of hyper-lyricized language! So, each chapter is like
reading a prose poem? That was interesting, a real learning experience.
Now I'm writing something that feels like it actually might be a
full-blown novel. Not sure yet, I've just started it. But I like the
voice, and I like the main character, and I like the setting (which
I've just decided will be 16th century Spain -- a period which,
surprisingly enough, I feel I understand!)
TSR: What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
DH: Joy Lisberger's Remember Love:
Samrat Upadhyay's The Royal Ghosts: The Best Philippine Stories of the Twentieth Century, edited by Isagani Cruz
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