Decolonize Your Bookshelves is not just about diversifying your reads to include more Filipino authors. It’s about making our own voices dominant. It’s also about the intersection of literature and activism. It’s actually no surprise to me that so many Filipino American authors are also activists: Gina Apostol (a fellow convener of Malaya Movement), Carlos Bulosan, the late, great Dawn Mabalon, Gayle Romasanta, Randy Ribay, and Al Robles, just to name a few.

Filipino authors are often overlooked within the Asian American genre of literature. So much attention is given to East Asian authors. Think of the most mainstream Asian American authors: I’ll bet they’re all Chinese (Amy Tan and Celeste Ng to mind), Korean (Mary HK Choi) or Japanese (of course, Murakami comes to mind). Filipinos mistakenly get lumped in with today’s East Asian struggles and issues in America, which is inaccurate because we have a completely different experience and culture. We actually have a lot more in common with Latin Americans.

“The phrase ‘decolonize your bookshelf’ has been on the rise in recent years, and its meaning is fairly simple. Decolonizing your bookshelf means examining the books you keep and the books you love and considering whether/how each book has served to uphold the acts of colonialism. In addition to sifting through the works you’ve already read, decolonizing your bookshelf means actively seeking out and reading works by authors whose work has been disadvantaged by colonialism. There is an incredible wealth of literature out there that has not made it into the Western canon simply because of the circumstances in which the author lived/lives.” (Alex Nolos, Bookstr)

Some of our discussions will focus on children’s and young adult literature as well. The books we read as children and teenagers are some of the most important books that we read, because we read them when we are in the process of figuring out who we are, what we believe, whose stories are important. All children’s and young adult books are political in the sense that their authors make choices about who to include and who to exclude, and which values to promote and downplay. Too many American children do not grow up in politicized households nor are they given much instruction on race, marginalization and identities other than their own. (See my article about pre-socialized representation for Asian American children.)

My goal: thought-provoking discourse that reveal the absolute necessity of these works to our collective Filipino American identity. These works are absolutely necessary to our decolonization and liberation.