Libulan: The amplification of non-political national literature

ISSUES, concerns and the needs of the society have always been the steering wheel for the various implementations of laws, changes of systems, and the creation of advocacies in the educational system of the Philippines. These societal, political and cultural concerns shape how the educational must be done and be made in order to realize the objectives of such law implementation, such system change, and such advocacy promotion.

The education department probably has the most number of advocacies made, promoted and implemented compared to other sectors of the community. With this, we could precisely say that the education department of the Philippines is an advocacy in itself. It is where one can because education is itself an image of an outcome or a cause.

Various advocacies of the Department of Education are quality, equal, and equitable education (or education for all); anti-bullying; gender sensitivity and equality; academic freedom; freedom of expression; multilingualism; etc. These are grand

- ciently and appropriately addressed in the public. Unbearably, some of these concerns were in a cinch practically advocated. Schools generally simply advocate for something by posting on walls dilapidated by a rusted learning and traditional teaching approaches, uncared by unmoved hearers and passersby. It is not because it is not a good advocacy, but simply, it is an inadequate advocating. With these things, it is but timely

- equate advocating, must pass the borsource for the promotion of some advocacies of education. For this year Cratos Publishing House Co.) will flap its wings to soar somewhere beyond the conventional, beyond the political, beyond the constrictive norms of the society. Advocacies on gender sensitivity and equality, freedom of expression, multilingualism, and beyond are the major concern of this anthology.

There have been perennial discomforts and restrictions among the queers before then. There is usually that built-in mental mechanism of everyone to really segregate and categorize things, places and people. Apparently, there is that sense of distance and alienation in the lives of the queers, as Miguel Antonio Lizada, the author of the introduction of the said anthology, assumes. But it is in the lives of the queers that we understand further the limits of categorization, of what alienation brings, and of how distance in its various positions affects things; and hence stretches the freedom of self-actualization.

When one advocates gender sensitivity and equality, one must not two sexes (male and female) but also include all the rest of the sexes where one could belong liberally. Once we omit and neglect the other sexes other than the mentioned two, the advocacy becomes an anti-campaign against itself. Hence, this anthology will amplify the wider perspective of the advocacy aforementioned. There shall be a voice that can amplify the murmurs of the queers. If this happens, we could open ourselves to more emancipation of human self-actualization.

It is time to restrict the constrictive genderings of the traditional past. It is time to understand and accept that heteronormative culture should not be the culture for this era, and that it is time for the awareness that the spectrum had now more colors and it had lengthened dramatically. Now is a matrix of transformation.

Apart from amplifying the advocacy on gender sensitivity, Libulan, as an anthology of the Binisaya writings from the South, also exempli Philippine Literature.

We cannot deny the fact that the educational system before had only taught and allowed the students to be readers and writers of English and Tagalog languages. But it is in the advent of the K-12 that we have come to promote more and advocate better the writings of the since there are some subjects included in the senior high school that have competencies of such.

Libulan (Visayan deity of the moon), as an anthology of Binisaya writings from the South, will cast political national literature. This anthology will push for so-called - tional literature and not just regional. It will demystify the proposition that National Literature must be the differentiated writings from the different regions and not just the English and indeed an encompassing advocacy.

- ogy are written originally in Binisaya, languages were included as they were translated to the Binisaya language. Varied genres were accepted. Some the play of John Iremil Teodoro, “Usa Consuelo” of Jerry Grácio; the poem “entropiya” of Omar Khalid; the short story “Ladybeverly_69” of R. Joseph Dazo; “Hedonicus” of Jaime An Lim; and more.

sprouts from the thoughts of the anthology’s editors (who are also con- tributors)—Alton Melvar Dapanas, who i an associate editor of Mindanao - says on Mindanao and the found and performance poetry. He has also authored two forthcoming Archipelago of Napes and Other Prose Poems (2019)—and R. Joseph Dazo, who was hailed as the Labing Masaarong Bag-ong Magsusulat sa Bisaya (Most Promising Young Writer in Bisaya) for the year 2016 of Manila Bulletin’s Bisaya Magazine. of the annual Cebu Young Writers Studio and the general editor of the forthcoming Dan-ag Literary Journal of Central Visayas.

Along with these editors are progressive contributors who are Grácio, Ian Rosales Casocot, Omar Khalid, Jaime An Lim, Jhoanna Lynn Cruz and John Iremil Teodoro, to mention a few. Some are emerging Genory Vanz Alfasain, Elvin Ruiz, Jessrel E Gilbuena, Arian Tejano, etc.; and some are the straight allies - Chan, Jae Magdadaro, etc. These writers from the South are the islands of stories, poems and songs of queer writing with the transgressive voice for transformation. All of them and beyond are the manifesto themselves—that it is time indeed to reify the advocacies on a more equitable gender equality, of an encompassing Philippine National Literature.

These writings from the South will become mobile to the different islands of this archipelago; will become new colors of the spectrum of these ever-changing, ever-evolving queer lives in the queer times.