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this year’s theme, "visionaries," sought out pieces that would reflect on our personal and communal past, present, and future. "visionaries" was never a rigid criteria by which we choose from the submissions, but it did become a dynamic concept which gained its meaning through gathering the works themselves. by using end of the twentieth century as a focus, one fear was that we would receive a lot of pieces about the apocalypse. we didn’t. what we did receive were genres as diverse as erotic prose, revolutionary poetry, spoken word scripts, confessionals, academic research, autobiographies, geneaological histories, future fantasies, and many, many love poems.
as straddlers of the boundary between our parents’ homeland and the one that we call home, we possess a double-vision. the literary pieces demonstrate the urgency which comes from that point of view. many of the pieces cry out, "this is who i am!" others chat with ancestors who listen from the other world. still others rally our pilipina community to march forward together in common struggle. all of them mobilize the reader in some way, whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. these are not pieces to place on the bookshelf or coffee table to collect dust. these are pieces to read out loud to your children, to chant, to memorize, to sing. these are pieces to stick in your back pocket whether you’re going on a political march or to your daily bart trip. yes, these are pieces to travel with.
the end result of the literature of "maganda99" is a writing of a history-in-progress, a shared vision of a living culture. take a look at the mission statement at the back of the magazine and you will see a list of names of artists of pilipina or pilipino american descent. after looking at this issue, it will be clear that this list should be expanded to recognise the creative work of this year’s contributors. our achievement as artists is not limited to a select few. you are the ones responsible for the updating and constant renovation of pilipina identity.
kim chanbonpin and aimee suzara
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