21st Century Literature (Philippines): CHICK LIT

Reading and Teaching Chick Lit [2021]

Script written for a 2021 talk for Ateneo de Manila University's Filipino department's radio show/podcast Sari-Sari.

Hello, my name is Mina V. Esguerra and I am here to talk about reading and teaching Filipino Chick Lit and Contemporary Romance, Like You Care Like You Mean It Like You Respect It. I am a romance author and publisher. My first book was published in 2009. Since then I have written and published 25 standalone books mainly in the subgenre of contemporary romance, in English, and my work often features Filipino characters.

My background: my degrees are AB Comm, Ateneo de Manila University and Masters in Development Communication, University of the Philippines. Before releasing my first book I had already worked 10 years in editorial and web publishing, including a career as a consultant tasked to build international online communities for development. I've been a published author for 12 years. I've been a publisher of romance books for 11 years. I founded the writing community #RomanceClass 8 years ago, and my latest "job" is that I am now a media adaptation agent, representing books written with the romanceclass community, by Filipino authors.

Before I proceed I am going to define some terms that I will be using. When I say chick lit, I mean that the book has a female main character and the plot is about her life, her goals, her happiness.

When I say Filipino chick lit, the main character of the book is Filipino but it may be written in English. When I say Filipino contemporary romance the main characters are Filipino and the main plot is romance, but the book may be written in English.

When I talk about romance, it means that the book has romance as its main plot. Not subplot, not accompanying plot, but the main plot. And it has a required "happy ending" meaning the characters choose each other in the end. In the industry that has been called "emotional justice."

The 21st Century Contemporary Philippine Literature modules I've seen have featured my book under "Chick Lit" which is no longer relevant if it means the candy-colored genre of books released in the early 2000s, because Philippine publishers have stopped publishing this entire genre. When invited to speak at a DepEd teacher training session for Senior High School at PNU in 2017, I talked about this and said that to keep this part of the module current, they'll need to consider contemporary romance and young adult, which is what publishers and authors of chick lit moved on to by 2012.

Now most of us write romance. I founded a romance writing community in 2013, and it's called #romanceclass. Since then we've helped over 80 Filipino authors write and publish over 100 books. We write in English and we sell these books in print and digital and audio, available to a worldwide audience.

Romance is a billion-dollar industry worldwide, with a readership in the reported millions. In the Philippines, we have a readership in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. We can know this because reports are available: book sales, surveys, and analytics from sites like Wattpad. In 2020, during lockdown, I released a new book and experienced my best ever release day numbers. In 2020, My Wattpad account gained 24,000 new followers, most of them following me during ECQ. In terms of books written, books sold, and books read, romance by Filipino authors is thriving and I see that in every publishing space that I'm present in. The genre and its authors deserve a place in the study of 21st Century Philippine Literature. We also deserve respect.

For a romance reader and writer the disrespect can be avoided if you join the right communities, which is why we've formed ours and keep it as welcoming and safe as we can. The disrespect we routinely experience is coming from classrooms, and all connected to it. It's in class discussions where people routinely discuss the validity of a genre they obviously don't read. It's in writers workshops where romance authors are not invited to submit romance. It's in awards where there are no romance categories or romance doesn't get to compete. It's in faculties where no one teaches or specializes in romance scholarship. It's in class assignments where books are chosen for convenience rather than content, and copies are not provided. It's in modules where the activity doesn't require reading, but a report that "predicts the ending"—because they don't intend to supply the full book or even read it. What's the point?