Writing from a colonised English

Abstract

This article argues for the validity of using English to express Philippine identities and realities. It is an exercise in substantiating what my father, Philippine poet Gémino H. Abad (and National Artist for Literature since 2022), has written in so many essays about the writing of our literature in and from and through English because: ‘We have our own way of feeling by which we then use this language called English. So that English is ours. We have colonized it too’ (Abad et al.). It accounts for a writer's possible journey or process, as I grapple with what my father means and consider how it might apply in my own writing, particularly in Salingkit: A 1986 diary, set during the EDSA Revolution, and Letters from Crispin, set during both the Philippine Revolution and the EDSA Revolution. In writing these books in and from and through English, I affirm that English becomes less the language of subjugation, and more the language of liberation.