On the Road with Marj
Charlson Ong
From September to November 2002 Marjorie and I represented the PH as honorary writing fellows at the International Writing Program (IWP) of Iowa University (IU). The famed program began in 1936 as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (now a separate program). Paul Engle who served as second director from 1941 to ’65 secured much funding and turned Iowa City into a US cultural landmark. He also expanded the Workshop into an international program by opening it to foreign writers. Among its distinguished participants were the late Dr. Edilberto Tiempo and National Artist Edith Tiempo who became lifelong friends of Engle. Upon returning to Dumaguete the Tiempos set up the Silliman University Writers’ Workshop in the late 1950s. Later, their daughter Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, herself an accomplished poet and fictionist, would serve as IWP associate program coordinator for many years.
Since the 1960’s many Filipino writers have participated in the IWP, including the late National Artist Rolando Tinio, the late Gelacio Guillermo, National Artist Cirilo Bautista, Alfred Yuson among others.
But during the 1990’s there were no Filipino writers invited. The termination of the US military bases in the PH, say some wags, had occasioned the snub and the US State Department — that funds much of the IWP — had deemed it wiser to spend its money on eastern European invitees after the collapse of the old Soviet empire.
But the world changed again after 9/11 and the US, it seemed, looked to refurbish old ties amidst new threats.
In any case, by the fall of ’02 the IWP, for the first and I believe only time, invited two writers from the Philippines to the same term — Marjorie Evasco and myself. Christopher Merill was in his second year as IWP director.
Marj and I happen to be neighbors as well in Mandaluyong so were able to travel together from our homes to the US and back. The arrangement was heaven-sent for me. It was my first trip to the US and being a technophobe — entering the digital and online universe much later and grudgingly — I proclaimed to Marj early on that I would be quite dependent on her for most communications, except for emails, and travel plans outside rural Iowa. That is, I would go anywhere she went as long as she booked the tickets and made all the plans. She would lead and I would follow. And so it came to pass that we made a short jaunt to New York City (NYC) during our IWP term — which did not sit too well with our hosts — and visited San Francisco, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, NYC, Washington D.C. and Hawaii on the way home. We met up with old friends and linked up with new ones. In upstate New York we attended a grand poetry festival that featured the likes of Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Maya Angelou among others.
There were some thirty other writing fellows that year at the IWP from all over the world although not everyone stayed for the entire term. There were many writers from China, due largely to the efforts of Nieh Hua Ling, Paul Engle’s widow, herself a poet. There was poet Alvin Pang from Singapore whom both Marj and I knew from before and Nori Nakagami from Japan. They joined us in our first NYC trip where Marj read poetry at the Asian American center and we met up with PH-born novelists Gina Apostol and Eric Gamalinda both NYC-based at the time as well as with poet Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta, then doing her graduate work in NYU.
Till this day I think of the IWP fondly as a sort of writers’-in-rehab program: we were housed comfortably in the on-campus hotel, given money upon arrival, library access, and left mostly to our own devices and vices. There were occasional field trips — to the Amish community, for instance, whom by this time may have met more far-flung foreigners than most Americans despite eschewing modernity — and regular powwows among the fellows, but it was all voluntary. Still there was always more than enough alcohol and international dishes to go around and smoke out the toughest recluse.
Iowa City is small town USA, quaint, pretty, and fairly quiet, but with enough bars for a few months stay. Still there were all these tales of city slickers, as per IWP folklore, losing their mojos and/or knickers at some point especially back when the program lasted much longer.
The ambience I suppose is to inspire conversation among writers from different places including those from nations in conflict. Our batch had Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan who commanded a tank during her time in the army and Palestinian Mahmoud a chain-smoking poet whose habit might have partly stemmed from the stress of living under foreign occupation all his life. There was Ugandan playwright Charles Mulekwa whose first word to me upon knowing I came from Manila was “Ramon Zamora.” He’d grown up watching all these Pinoy martial arts flicks with Zamora and Weng Weng in their neighborhood movie house. There was head turner Irina from Bulgaria who hied off to meet Irvine Welsh of Trainspotting fame right after the IWP.
There were visits too from literary luminaries like Nobel laureate Derek Walcott.
Among the most memorable personalities in the IWP were the couple Peter and Mary Nazareth. As members of the Asian community in Uganda — their forebears were Indians from Goa — the Nazareths were among those expelled from their home country by dictator Idi Amin in the late 1970’s. The couple sought asylum in Iowa where Peter joined the workshop and eventually the literature faculty.
By the time we were in IU, Peter Nazareth was teaching a course called “Elvis Studies” and their home was a veritable museum of Elvis Presley memorabilia. He lectured to us about Elvis as a “closet revolutionary” whose most popular songs had “coded” messages against US imperialism and white supremacy despite the fact that he was “deputized” by Pres. Richard Nixon in his anti-drugs campaign and was said to dislike hippies. That was all a ruse, claimed Nazareth. Elvis’ true heart, he averred, lay not in the US but the Global South.
Any challenge to Nazareth’s thesis earned one a rebuke for “buying into” US “establishment propaganda” against the man who “mainstreamed black music”.
It was the first time I’d heard any of it, and being an Elvis fan myself, I was dumbfounded. Those from places not too familiar with American popular culture didn’t make much of it. The younger ones weren’t that interested as Elvis was long dead and Michael Jackson ruled pop. Jackson was undisputed King by then (though he had yet to march digitally into Eastern Europe.)
Whether Nazareth was talking about the historical Elvis or the Elvis in his mind — that is, himself — is debatable. (He drove around town as well in a top-down red sports car with his shades and “Elvish” pompadour blowing in the wind). Perhaps the trauma of displacement and exile had urged him to embrace an icon of his adopted country and imbue it with his own advocacies, his own pomp and circumstance. Perhaps it was his way of surviving both practically (carving a niche in academe) and psychically. Or perhaps he was the real deal, a true prophet in the belly of the beast? Who knows? Before Iowa I’d written a short story titled “Love Me Tender” about a supposed Elvis “sighting” in Timog Avenue. I guess Presley orphaned not a few of us in the post colonies. The empire croons back.
Still encountering such a “counter-Elvis” in middle America said a lot to me about the American heartland’s open-heartedness. Now I think I know why the US holds its electoral primaries in Iowa.
The IWP was presumably designed to give usually harassed fellows time off to work on present or delayed projects. I think Marj was able to work on a book during her stay getting into her groove early on but I ended up watching more TV than anything. I remember The Sopranos, banned then in the PH, was on its second season and there were a number of new shows as well. To assuage my guilt I borrowed a huge copy of Moby Dick from the library — I figured I should savor an American classic while in America — but never finished it. I sauntered over to the Iowa River many an afternoon with book in hand but more often ended up communing with real life ducks than the fictive white whale.
Marj and I visited Rowena, then teaching in the IU English department, and her family for dinner, Mom Edith was visiting as well and that was a very special occasion. Sadly Dr. Edilberto had passed on by then but I was able to borrow his winter coat as the cold was beginning to nip my tropical bones.
We were hosted too by Dr. Ramon Lim and spouse Dr. Victoria Lim who were long time Iowa residents from Manila and avid IWP supporters. They are both medical doctors and IU faculty. Ramon also writes essays and practices Chinese calligraphy.
We crossed town to the University of Iowa in Ames — footballing rival of UI — to visit with Filipino-American author/academic Vince Gotera.
In Chicago we bumped into poet Filipino-American poet Eugene Gloria and spouse Karen Singson outside the museum and sauntered off to dinner instead.
In San Francisco we were hosted by the writing couple from the PH Nerissa Balce and Fidelito Cortez who steamed crabs caught fresh from the bay, we met up too with poet Joi Barrios in Berkeley and read with poet Louie Syquia at the public library. In Hawaii we had a grand time with Ruth Elynia Mabanglo, then teaching at the University of Hawaii.
Since our term the IWP has gone back to inviting a Filipino writing fellow annually. The list includes some of the best and finest among our younger generation of writers.
On the road with Marj was a blast. She was the perfect travel companion: meticulous planner, cultural guide, good cook, and if memory serves, enjoys ironing. Happy retirement!
