INNOVATION (CAN BE BUT) IS NOT NATIONALISTIC

I found it interesting to stumble onto this article for several reasons. Since this blog is about Moi, let's scroll down to where you see my name...

...in reference to a 2001 symposium in New York in which I participated regarding "Filipino Literature and the Arts in the Diaspora". The article references an idea I've launched more than once at these Filipino Literature-related forums about the "community" supporting its literature, to wit, about de facto enforced purchases of books as door prizes at the numerous conferences that sprout up within the community. The article mentions one "fundraising ball" where the prize was a Coach bag. Well, where's the imagination? One couldn't stick a less-than-$20-book into that bag that undoubtedly cost in the hundreds...?

Books can be less than $20. Why not purchase these books in bulk, add the resulting (discounted price of, say) $8 to the entrance fee which probably would not be noticed, and force the books into the attendees' hands? Even if they don't read it, said attendees would take it -- it is a freebie -- and bring it home and it may end up in a daughter's or son's hand....

Filipino social clubs, professional associations or activist groups frequently sponsor these big parties, conferences, etc. There is room within such infrastructure for mass promotion of a relatively inexpensive object like a book!

Okay, so I toss out this idea again -- hoping after a decade of it being ignored that this idea may yet get traction elsewhere. What else is internet for?

Meanwhile, do read Tricia J. Capistrano's well-wrought article which raises larger issues about what is "Filipino" in literature. Perhaps such might make you curious about reading moi SILK EGG which has received, so far, fabulous critical praise among a cognoscenti more rigorous than what typically populates mainstream publishing. Jest sayin'...