The first — and hopefully not the last — of a new series of quick, lightly-edited, stream of consciousness, semi-regular/weekly blog posts of what I’m thinking that week.
Earlier this week, I got to attend two book readings/author panels for two incredible Filipino-Canadian writers.
On Monday, I attended “LiterAsian Presents…From the Margins to the Centre: Asian Writers Reclaim the Page,” particularly to say hi and support my friend Jennilee. I’ve been reading through Reuniting with Strangers, a novel about Filipino-Canadian caregivers and their families. This book deserves a deeper dive into its narrative and themes and what it means for Canadian society, but I don’t think I can do it justice in this “quick” weekly recap. Hopefully after I finish the book, I’ll find time to sit down and write something.
What I’ll say is that the book hit me real hard emotionally. My family didn’t immigrate as caregivers, but I know many other Filipino families who immigrated to Canada through the caregiver program and were reunited after years of living apart. Every chapter has been special—meeting Monolith, reuniting mothers with their teenage daughters—but one chapter that I found really interesting was “The Caregiver’s Instruction Manual,” where a Filipina woman is reunited with her cousin in Montreal: the latter hiring the former as a caregiver for her children. Jennilee contrasts the two women: one who immigrated when she was too young to even remember her life in the Philippines, and the other who lived in the Philippines her whole life. I won’t spoil the whole story, but sometimes I wonder if I was once the Filipino-Quebecois mom, or perhaps even resonate with the character—someone who wanted to integrate into Canadian society and find success but in the process, lose sight of their Filipino identity, their “birthright”. I had once thought that in order to succeed professionally in Canada, you had to hide your “Filipino-ness”—don’t stand out as “the other”. Thinking about it now, I think that’s a flawed philosophy — perhaps what makes you special and unique is your cultural identity and that that perspective makes you a better person to contribute to society. Or perhaps we don’t always have to chase some concept of “success” with a standard that isn’t made for us and that we can never truly achieve. If the rules will always be against us and we can never win the game, perhaps we should play a different game— one where cooperation is rewarded, not ruthless competition. In any case, I’m very glad for my friend, who is up for a Golden Balangay Filipino-Canadian leadership award this weekend! Always happy to support friends when they come to visit this godforsaken town.
On Wednesday, I got to meet Teri Vlassopoulos and Lindsay Zier-Vogel at a Glebe bookstore for a chat about their novels, Living Expenses and The Fun Times Brigade. I’m also glad to have met their friend Jennifer Whiteford who wrote Make Me A Mixtape (the summary of which sounds incredibly Giocore).
It’s funny how the world works sometimes — I had been following an Insta account for a collective of Filipino-Canadian writers called Salaysay through my friends Jennilee and Rachel. One day, they had put up a post promoting Teri’s book Living Expenses and I thought she looked quite familiar. Turns out she’s close friends with another mutual friend and we swim in other similar circles and I’ve been seeing them hang out on various Instagram Stories. I ended up reading Living Expenses, a book about adulthood, family, and fertility. Teri draws upon her cultural upbringing—including as a Filipino-Canadian—to create the characters Laura, Claire, and their mom. I really enjoyed the book and related to the exploration of adulthood in Laura’s and Claire’s 30s. It’s a fun experience sometimes when you’ve been following a writer or musician or someone important on Instagram and you’ve been following their lives online and you finally get the chance to meet them in-person and get the chance to tell them how much you enjoyed their work.
All of this exposition just to say that we had a chat after the reading about music (as I always do) and Holly Brickley’s book Deep Cuts. We had varying opinions about the book and its narrative, but my problem is that the story is so up my alley — a rom-com that spans years, centred around music — that I have blinders on about its potential flaws. Deep Cuts is about as Giocore as any book could be. When discussing with Jennifer, Teri, and Lindsay about the book, I remembered how I used to write reviews for Exclaim many lifetimes ago. If we’ve been friends for any amount of time, you’ll know that I have so many strong opinions about music and I’ll let you know all of it. So it was only natural that I wrote reviews for various publications when I was younger. I particularly remember writing a few album reviews where I was (maybe unfairly) overly critical. I won’t link the piece on here, but here are some excerpts from this incredibly terrible piece of writing:
“Most of the songs are unconvincing.”
“… at best, boring and at worst, monotonous and dreary.”
“The song plays off as a karaoke pastiche version of an ’80s song in an enjoyable way. Unfortunately, the rest of album is not as delightful, and ultimately, forgettable.”
A little after I wrote that review, I came across the musician’s Twitter account, where they complained about how mean the review was and that it didn’t need to be so harsh. I immediately felt horrible. Here’s a musician who just wanted to make art and bravely put it out into the world. And I — someone whose music talent led me to play guitar for my Catholic youth group, but nothing more than that — was trashing their hard work.
I told this group of accomplished writers about how I related to the protagonist of Deep Cuts, as a young undergrad/recent grad who wanted to be edgy and wanted everyone to know how “cool” I was by being pretentious and pompous about my music tastes. Now I feel so embarrassed thinking about it, how cringey I once was. Since then, I’ve promised myself that I would never write about music like that again. If I didn’t like a record or a song, I might voice my dislike, but only in discussion. If I can, I want to avoid writing publicly about how I “hated” an album. The more I read writers like Hanif Abdurraqib, the more I realize that you can write about music in an in-depth way that contextualizes it and presents an eloquent and poetic reflection of the music in a way that doesn’t dim its light but shines on it so you can see new angles and nuances to reveal deeper meanings.
In any case, it was wonderful to meet these three women authors, particularly Teri who I’ve admired from afar since reading Living Expenses. And I can’t wait to dig into The Fun Times Brigade and Make Me A Mixtape.
What else am I thinking about this week? Here’s a quick hit list, that I might get around to writing about.
- Psychiatric medication, Latuda, Seroquel, and side effects – including somnolence and drowsiness.
- Masterchef, “elevated food,” and the recently announced Toronto Michelin Guide (shoutout Chef Eric and R&D and Akin).
- Jimmy Kimmel and fascism. No way I can do this topic justice on a quick Sunday afternoon blog post.
Starting now, I’m hoping to challenge myself to write more often and get better at writing. I’ll try to write weekly “newsletters”/“blogs”/whatever you want to call it, where I share my thoughts from the week — what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and thinking about.