Barbara Jane Reyes on Creating or Destroying Readers in Filipino-American Literature 1

Recently, another Pinay writer said to me that I have more non-Filipino American readers than Filipino American readers. I agreed with her, and thought about how telling her observation about me was.

Here’s something that’s been coming up in a lot of discussions and interactions I’ve been having re: teaching Filipino/a American Literature. Are we creating/cultivating readers? And how does one go about creating/cultivating readers? To add: does our popular American culture cultivate readers? Or does it destroy readers? So then in addition to what we’re doing within our community, there’s that larger battle to fight.

I can tell you that my freshmen students do come into the classroom enthusiastic and curious; they come with questions, and they come with a need to understand something about themselves. They want to learn something about their families and their lives. They’ve come to a literature class thinking this is a good place to ask those questions. This tells me they are already readers. As I’ve also written before about my Fil Am Lit students in general, they want to be visible, to see themselves and something familiar about their lives and families in the literature.

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