Nikki Alfar: Writing with Courage

Photo credit: Dean Alfar

Originally published in Pinoycentric.com on June 26, 2007

“It took a long while before I got enough confidence to admit that I’m not Butch Dalisay, but that’s okay.”

For someone who once did not have enough courage to write, fictionist Nikki Go Alfar has certainly covered considerable mileage, judging from the awards she’s received.

In 2001, the comic book Isaw Atbp, which she edited, earned a National Book Award. Her short story for children, “Menggay’s Magical Chicken,” won third prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2005. A one-act play, “Life After Beth,” also won last year.

Nikki was named among the “13 emerging women writers” by the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings, which cited her work as editor of Mango Jam, a girl power comic series.

At six, Nikki already knew that she was going to be a writer. “I started writing Nancy Drew-type stories, then I moved on to the Sweet Dreams type. I used to get in trouble a lot in school because my notebooks were full of stories but had no notes,” she relates.

“Pretty much from the start, I was really into this whole speculative fiction bent. One of the first novels I read was Stephen King’s Cujo and later The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien,” Nikki remembers.

Her parents were not as encouraging, however. “My mom brainwashed me, ‘If you’re going to be a writer, you will be poor!’ and I didn’t want to be poor. I’m kikay [stylish], so I can’t be poor!” she laughs.

Enrolling at UP Diliman’s creative writing program didn’t provide much encouragement either.

“You know how it is,” she explains, “in grade school and high school, you think you’re very brilliant—and then you get to college and you realize: hey, there are other more brilliant people and you’re just okay!”

While she put her writing ambitions aside, Nikki continued to participate in a writers’ group, where she would meet playwright Dean Alfar, who would later become her husband.

“After college, I did a lot of other things—I was a flight attendant at Air Philippines and later a bank manager—because I wasn’t brave. You see, when you start in writing, it’s not a lot of money, and of course, since I had just come out of college, I wanted money!”

(Her husband Dean, who had won three Palancas before they got married, also went on a writing hiatus for the same reason: “When I got married, I decided that I should prioritize my real life [because] there’s a certain sense of duty, of obligation. You have two mouths to feed, and honestly, writing doesn’t pay the bills,” he said in a previous Innerview with PinoyCentric.)

Getting the groove back
It was in Hong Kong, where the Alfar couple lived briefly, that Nikki slowly eased her way back into writing, first for magazines and later for comics catering to an adult audience (“I wrote porn!” she exclaims, “but somewhere in the course of the last couple of years, I seem to have lost the ability”).

Sometime after moving back to Manila, where Nikki gave birth to their daughter Sage, now five, the couple started writing fiction again.

Nikki reflects: “The first year that I joined, we both lost, and I felt, oh my God, I’m not just not good, I’m bad luck!”

It was her second entry to Palanca—“Menggay’s Magical Chicken”—that got Nikki her first award in 2005.

“By that time, I had been married to Dean for many years, and he’d been winning a lot, and I was used to going to the award ceremony and receiving things for him, so when I got an envelope, I assumed it was for Dean. I opened his, and said, Yay, he won!” (This was for Salamanca, which won the grand prize for novel that year.)

The other envelope was for Nikki. “I honestly thought when I was reading it, siguro naman they’re not gonna write to tell me I suck, di ba? ‘Dear Nikki, you suck, don’t join again.’”

Discipline
Because of her speculative fiction leanings, Nikki’s stories are mostly a blend of the modern and folklore or mythology. In the short story “Heritage,” for example, the protagonist makes a life-changing decision with some guidance from Lola Basyang.

“I have been told that I tend to be funny, although I don’t try to be so. I guess my sarcasm and cynicism come out in my writing, as well as my mad obsession with folklore,” she assesses.

“I wouldn’t say it’s unique because my idols—Gilda Cordero-Fernando and Jing Hidalgo—have delved into that. Maybe mine is a freakier version!”

These days, Nikki works mainly from home, which gives her more time with Sage and also allows her privileges that a corporate setup does not offer—cigarettes, for example.

“I can’t think without my nicotine! If I don’t smoke, I write two or three sentences and then nothing,” she says. Years back when she was doing full-time copywriting work, she’d go out of the building and, after two puffs, would run back to the office and write.

There also has to be absolute silence. “I have to not have people talking when I’m writing. I can’t even listen to music with words. It has to be instrumental or else I’ll follow the words.”

Sometimes when she’s stuck in a story that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, she shifts gears. “I usually move on to a different story, or I play an online game until I can get back to what I’m writing. My husband has a theory that there’s no such thing as a writer’s block: All it takes is discipline.”

Nikki is certainly braver now than she was years ago. “It took a long while before I got enough confidence to admit that I’m not Butch Dalisay, but that’s okay.”

To talent and courage, add discipline, Nikki says. “Having studied creative writing in college, I believe one cannot teach a person how to write, but you can teach someone how not to write. The only way to write is to read and write.”

Keeping the Flame

For Fil-Am writer Carina Montoya, writing two historical books about Filipino immigrants in California was an attempt in knowing more about her father who died when she was seven

Her recently launched book, Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown, released by Arcadia Publishing, traces the history of one of California’s largest Filipino enclaves. Historic Filipinotown was where many Pinoy immigrants settled and put up businesses during the turn of the twentieth century.

“Getting to know my father through my books has enlightened me about so many things about the Filipino community. It lit a flame within me to preserve this history that I am very much a part of,” says Carina, a full-blooded Pinoy who was born and raised in the Hollywood area.

Carina’s father, Tommy, a native of General Trias, Cavite, served with the US Navy and settled in Los Angeles, where he found work in Hollywood as a waiter at the Don the Beachcomer, a Polynesian resto-bar that catered to the Hollywood film industry crowd.

Like many other Pinoys who pursued the American dream, Carina’s father had a hard time when he first arrived in the US.

“My father did not have any relatives in America. His friends became his family—they lived in groups, sharing food and money when times were bad,” Carina relates. He met and later married Carina’s mother Rose in San Francisco when she was visiting a brother who worked in the Alaskan fish canneries.

Later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Tommy became paralyzed from the neck down and had to be put in an iron lung at the Rancho Los Amigos in Downey, California. Rose was forced to find work to support an ill husband and two young children, Carina and her brother Eric.

“My mother took English and business classes, which resulted in her finding a job at Occidental life Insurance Company in downtown LA,” Carina relates. While she was not earning much, Rose managed to bring food to the table, pay rent, send her kids to private schools, and even afford music lessons.

When Carina’s father died, the family moved back to the Philippines, where they often traveled to see relatives in Ilocos Sur.

“There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and water was drawn from the well,” Carina recalls of this Philippine visit. “But the country was beautiful, and I will always remember the beautiful clear blue-green water and the fruit trees.” After a year in the Philippines, Rose decided to bring her kids back to the US as they often fell sick.

Discrimination
While researching for Filipinos in Hollywood, an earlier book, Carina realized that discrimination in fact existed, and Pinoy immigrants like her parents were victims of it.

“My brother and I never felt the effects discrimination and interracial marriage. Language barriers and identity confusion were never issues. We viewed ourselves as American and had no socialization problems,” Carina explains.

Now having come to terms with her Pinoy roots, Carina is working on several projects that, she hopes, “will keep Filipino history alive to pass on to future generations.”

Carina is happy to share that her kids are intent on understanding and preserving their Pinoy roots.

“My children’s cookbooks [with renowned artist/muralist Eliseo Art Silva as illustrator] are also an attempt to preserve our culture, identity, and heritage by passing on this information to future generations.  The cookbooks incorporate Filipino history and food, such as where adobo came from and its Spanish influence, and how it is made,” Carina relates.

Another of Carina’s projects is the Los Angeles Filipino Museum, which is housed in an original Victorian house purchased in the thirties by one of the city’s oldest Pinoy families. Located at the heart of Historic Filipinotown, the museum will display photographs dating back to the twenties when Filipino immigrants first settled in LA. The exhibit will also include prints of the first Filipino organizations founded in LA, among them the Filipino Federation of America, Philippine Women’s Club, Santa Maria Ilocos Sur Association, Pangasinan Association, and the Cebu Brotherhood.

With all of Carina’s efforts in preserving the Pinoy culture for the children of the diaspora, Tommy Montoya must be very proud.

Carina Montoya’s books Filipinos in Hollywood and Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown can be purchased at all Internet book stores, Barnes & Noble, Filipino American Library and at her Website.