Filipino American Artists Network

Marianne Villanueva writes and publish stories about the Philippines and the lives of Filipino-Americans abroad. She was born and raised in Manila. She was accepted at the University of the Philippines Writers Workshop when she was only 17, and the Creative Writing Program at Stanford when she was 25.

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 story, “Silence,” first published in the Threepenny Review, was short-listed for the 1999 O. Henry Literature Prize.

She has co-edited, with poet Virginia Cerenio, an anthology of Filipina women’s writings, Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx Books, 2003), which gathered together the writings of Filipina women from around the world.

Then Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dream Jungle came along and invited her to submit to the first Charlie Chan is Dead anthology during at that time her sister had just died. She channeled her grief and loneliness into writing her stories. After they started to get published, people from all different cultures and backgrounds embraced her stories because it touched on their own experiences.

Jessica Hadegorn commented that “Marianne Villanueva is a gifted story-teller with an unflinching eye. Her elegant stories take us on a powerful journey from the harsh realities of life in the Philippines to another kind of harsh reality in urban America.”

In 2005, Mayor of the Roses: Stories was published (Miami University Press, 2005). Excerpt from the Pacific Rim Review of Books, July 2006: “Taking Root in an Unfamiliar Landscape,” by Frances Cabahug:

“Mayor of the Roses pinpoints the immigrant question as primarily a question of identity. In answer to the question of what it means to be Filipino, Villanueva humorously presents many cultural fixations; the stories “TV” and “BMW” revolve around the family’s preoccupations of acquiring television sets and high-end cars, while the story “Black Dog” almost dips into magic realism in explaining the pervasive belief in superstition. But these somewhat comical idiosyncrasies reveal a culture which places tremendous value on family, community, storytelling, and religion.

The entire book is handled with sensitivity and grace. Villanueva’s tales may cautiously walk over a thorny tightrope, but the stories mediate the tensions between idealism and disillusionment, community and withdrawal, cruelty and hope without falling deep into cloying sentimentality. Mayor of the Roses is a testament that coherent meaning can be drawn from the immigrant experience despite its contradictions, and the clash of beauty and ugliness certainly adds vibrant dynamics to the Filipino cultural identity.”

Last year, Frederick Barthelme picked her story “The Hand” as the winner of the Juked magazine Fiction Contest.

She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches creative writing and literature at Foothill College, Notre Dame de Namur University, and UCLA Extension.

According to her blog at KANLAON, she is still writing, even after xxxxx number of rejections.

Creative Pinay’s email Interview with Marianne Villanueva:

CP: Do you have any projects that you’re working on right now? If not, what was the latest work you did?

MV: Yes, I’m currently writing what I hope will be a longer work (a novel?). It’s coming together, but slowly. And, since I’m just beginning, it’s hard to say what it’s really about. Can I get back
to you on this question next year — ?

My latest work was: I completed another short story collection called THE LOST LANGUAGE. And I’ve started sending it out to publishers.

CP: In your experience, what do you think are the difficulties of FilAm Writers trying to make a living as an artist here in the US?

MV: Writers, whether Fil Am or not, have the same difficulty: how to find the time or the emotional space in which to create. Well, maybe Fil Am writers have it a little harder than others because there is a lot of incomprehension about how a book gets written. There’s this feeling that writers live in the public realm, when they don’t –they live in the private realm, and we’re not particularly social or nice when we’re in the midst of writing a book. Which makes us anti-social. And, you know, that’s the antithesis of what a well-adjusted Filipino/a is.

CP: In what ways do you cope and overcome these difficulties?

MV: For one thing, I married a man who is himself anti-social (!!) If I had married someone who was very concerned about his status in the social community, we would have been entertaining a lot more, going out a lot more, volunteering a lot more. As it is, I don’t feel “that” weird because my husband and I have exactly the same lack of social skills.

My husband has also made it possible for me not to have to work full-time. I have always worked, but only part-time. Even though the ideal would be not to work at all, simply to be writing, I realize that we live in a very expensive area, and we have a huge mortgage, and we have a son in college. Working part-time allows me to eke out short stories from time to time (albeit sloooowly . . . )

CP: What advice can you give to other emerging writers or even artists in other disciplines?

MV: Don’t despair if you haven’t “made it” by the time you are 30. Or 40. Even 50. Do what makes you happy. Believe in yourself.

Sources: Kanlaon blog, Miami University Press, Hyphen’s blog