I read an interesting interview with Filipina Isabel Yap. To begin with the standard American voice dominated a great deal of discourse. This is followed by diverse voices, but they remain in an American context: the concerns of Asian-Americans (or South Asian Americans, since in America ‘Asian’ refers to people with epicanthic folds), which feels alien to me as someone who grew up in South Asia and will never identify as anything other than Pakistani. I suppose someone must always feel left out and not spoken for.
The main takeaway I got from that conversation was that I probably shouldn’t italicize my words anymore. And you know, because of where I’m coming from, even in the Philippines, that’s what we do, I don’t mind if an editor asks me to change it, but I won’t do it to start with. And that’s sort of like a response to people saying, “who are you writing for?”
This struck me as I am not reluctant to italicise Urdu words that are not in mainstream English. It makes sense to me, though I may define ‘English’ rather loosely. In ‘The astrolabe’ I actually went the other way. The language of the story is in Hindustani and the point of view is of someone who doesn’t speak English, so any English words are italicised.
Then, there is this quote, which also struck me as I don’t hesitate to have stories where there is no one who is not Pakistani.
Like, I am trying to write a space opera. And my protagonist there is Filipino, but the rest of the crew is not. This takes place — in my head, I want it to be a Cowboy Bebop world where the Earth is still around but nobody lives there anymore. And I thought, “what if I make the whole crew Filipino?” Like, you know, there are books where the whole crew is American. Why can’t I make it so the whole crew is Filipino?
And there’s something in my gut where I want it to be a diverse cast. I don’t want them to all be the same nationality, even if they’re in this world where countries aren’t the same way they are now. That’s still a decision I’m weighing. But I have this weird feeling of responsibility. That maybe I should make them all Filipino.