Melting Pot

Changing the literary landscape

Merlinda Bobis at the “Salu Salo” Sydney

Writers Festival a few years back.

On studying post-colonial literature at the University of New South Wales, I came across Filipino-Australian writer, Merlinda Bobis but found few sources and a gap in research about the Filipino diasporic story.

Being the one of the largest ethnic communities in NSW (11th largest to be exact) - they are a community with stories to share of journeys from a country far away and vastly different to Australia. This is especially in the creative literary scene where grappling questions about the meaning of “Australianness” and how the Filipino story fits in is significant.

Some conflicts exist in the representation of Australian identity, which can be a challenge for Filipino-Australian literature. The image of a colonial past  often competes with contemporary nationalisms.

These reveal underlying and sometimes overt discourses in racism from the time of Federation which existed in legislation through the “White Australia policy” and of course, manifested itself in popular culture such as literature.

Merlinda Bobis’ writing in the form of poetry tackles this racism evident in history and shapes a new Australian literary landscape. In her poem “Word Gifts for an Australian Critic” from the anthology “Summer was a Fast Train without Terminals” Bobis makes a point through form and language. The poem contains words written in Tagalog, which cannot be understood by those who do not speak the dialect.

The effect is that the non-Tagalog speaking reader struggles with pronunciation just as much as the narrator is struggling with her new form of identity as part of the new Australian community.

“So now I can laugh with you.

Halakhak! How strange.

Your kookaburras roost in my windpipe when I say ‘laughter’.

As if feathering a new word.

Halakhak k k k kookaburra

One of the few academics who have studied Bobis’ work Edna Manlapaz highlights that Filipino women writers who solely wrote in English were seen as elitist as they did not embrace the wider readership by writing in the vernacular.

But Bobis does both, and celebrates her rich bi-cultural heritage. As a Filipino-Australian, she adds to a long tradition of Anglo-Australian writing, however if her poems were solely written in Tagalog, would her works still be considered ‘Australian literature’?

Although there is no straight cut answer it determines how Australia is cultivated by a diverse literary scene and inclusive of its many voices. Through local art, film and literature the Filipino story needs to be a part of this literary journey.