Bakka’s Literary Editor, Bryan Thao Worra first met Dr. Penelope Villarica Flores during her animated workshop session at the Second International Conference on Lao Studies in Arizona in 2007.

From 1951-1957, Dr. Flores was a member of the Filipino program Operation: Brotherhood in Laos during the mid-20th Century. She was a social worker and teacher.

Today, she is a scholar and teacher in California, and she was the editor of the book Good-bye Vientiane: Untold Stories of Filipinos in Laos, printed by the Phillipine American Writers Association in 2005.

The project came about after a chance lecture in 2001 when Dr. Flores was invited by Mekong Circle International to address a group of Filipino Americans who served in Laos from 1957 to 1973, a key period of the Cold War.

She writes in her introduction, “After many years of my neglect in linking with those who went to Laos with me, I suddenly became reconnected to the nurses, doctors, dentists, agriculturists, architects, engineers, artists teachers, technicians, nutritionists, social workers, and fiscal and executive administrators who went to Laos and served the people of Laos at the same time that I was there.”

She continued, “As I began to reminisce with them about those days, I realized how much the Lao experience had shaped us. We were the only generation who…saw the peripheral/collateral war fought in Vietnam but was waged on the bombing fields and soil of Laos. We were the only ones whose late adolescence and early adulthood years coincided with the Kennedy and Nixon years at the White House where the Laotian Front became a war cry in the Oval Office.”

These days Dr. Flores interests cover a wide breadth with a particular focus on the growth and support of Filipino writers and artists and history that may present interesting ideas for Bakka readers. We caught up with her to discuss her work and process.

Bryan Thao Worra: What’s been your biggest challenge for you as a writer?

Dr. Penelope Flores: I need more time to think and play around some themes and ideas. I am still working as a professor of education, and I still lecture to my students at San Francisco State University. I need large chunks of time to be able to get some writing done. 

I find that I need to talk to some people about what I am doing. This is for my own benefit. When I explain my ideas to others, it helps me crystallize my direction of thought. Then, when I sit down and write, my thoughts flow naturally because I had explained it verbally and externally to some other person. My husband, Manuel, plays this role very well. He will just sit there, eat his meal, while I rattle on and on and on.

There are days when I just sit and look out of the window. I write something and then, I change it a hundred times until it looks right to me. I need the exact words. The more parsimonious the words appear on paper, the more it delivers some edge and impact on the reader.

BTW: Has your family been supportive of your writing?

PF: As I said earlier, my husband serves as my foil. My family (two sons) are proud of my work and they have bragging rights with their friends. My brother who also writes, strongly believes that I had done much more literary and academic work than those others in the home province in the Philippines where I grew up, who got recognized for their literary work. I don’t care at all for accolades, because I like what I am doing.

BTW: What are you working on these days, artistically?

PF: I’m currently working on two projects, both historical in nature. One is an on-going book project about the Philippines’s national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. Rizal studied in Spain from 1882 to 1887.

I traced his footsteps by accessing his letters to his family and friends and then, locating these addresses, apartments, residences, schools, colleges, libraries museums, theaters, cafes, restaurants, etc. on Madrid streets, I write about what had happened circa 19th century Filipino students agitating for Spanish reforms in the Philippines. We endeavor to make history sizzling and alive!

This idea of the pictorial-historical context book is to help the Philippine and Filipino American history students find the spirit of the times, and then couple the information with visual and emotional appeal. We first started this on September 11, 2001. In fact, we were visiting one Madrid site when we heard about the Twin Towers in New York. We were back in Madrid and Sevilla, Spain in 2002 and again in 2003. We added the “In Barcelona, Spain” portion last May 2007.

This book launching will be in the Philippines soon with Dr. Bernardita R. Churchill, President of the Philippine Historical Society as our host and sponsor. 

The second book project one is a historical novel of the “First Circumnavigation of the World.” Ferdinand Magellan, who also found the Philippine archipelago in 1521 had a boy slave and interpreter. 

Earlier in 1511, Magellan, then a Portuguese navigator and seaman participated in the sack of Malacca. There he acquired a young Malay slave who he Christianized and named Enrique. He took Enrique in his war campaigns in India and Africa and then upon his return to Portugal, he brought Enrique. In time, Magellan served under the Spanish monarch seeking passage of the Spice Islands by going west. He brought Enrique with him during the expedition of discovery. Upon arriving in the Philippines, Enrique was surprised that he understood the dialect and language of the people of Cebu, Philippines. Did he by any chance originally come from the Philippines? Many Historians (Quirino, Parr, Roditi, Nowell, Benson) now believe that Enrique was the first man to circumnavigate the world.

Currently I am doing a lot of original research into this Enrique character. I have a lot of first-hand journals by the chronicler who accompanied Magellan (Pigafetta, Oliveira, Maximilian of Transylvania, and others). I have developed a story line based on factual history about this Enrique person. He is the main character in my historical novel. I argue that Enrique was the first man who circumnavigated the world.

I also will use a non-European perspective. For example, Pigafetta states that the native kings brought gifts of gold and a basket of ginger, and that Magellan refused. I know that in the Philippines, even today, when being offered something expensive the correct and polite response is to initially refuse the offer. However, Philippine customs and courtesy requires that the giver insist that they take it.  Pigafetta had taken the initial offer and concurrent refusal on face value without knowing the polite and proper protocol.  There are many cultural misinterpretations that the Pigafetta journal reveal, and as a historical novelist, I will clarify all these.

BTW: Who’s on your reading list lately?

PF: Last night, I received a brand new, just released copy of the PAWA anthology, Field of Mirrors, edited by Edwin Lozada. There were 71 Filipino American writers in the anthology. The pieces are very powerful. Barbara Jane Reyes had several poems and short stories. 

Some authors are so inspirational that at some point last night, it came into my thick, insatiable, stupid, fickle-minded head to write my first attempt in the Enrique historical novel, first as an epic poem. But I digress. Better to keep plugging along into a historical novel and not play around with an epic poem. Maybe some time later.

I also am reading two historical novels.

One is about a young page in the Crusade Wars by Catherine Jinks. She is a medieval scholar and young adult author. The period of the Crusaders is about the year 1270s while the period I’m writing about is the 1520s. I need to see the feel around the exploration aspect of the Crusades, so that I can write about the age of discovery and exploration in the 16th century Portugal and Spain.

The second one is an account of the Crusaders in 1275 by Michael Alexander Eisner. It gives me an idea of how to approach the plot and chronology of the depicted era.

I have taken out the research history of Afonso Albuquerque, the second Portuguese Viceroy of India. He talks about how the Portuguese wrested the international trade from the Arabs to the Portuguese. This is the actual decline and waning of the Muslim world’s influence on the world that exists today still. 

I am also reading different versions of the life of Magellan. This is part of my historical research. I keep meticulous notes of each specific encounter and I find interesting nuances, which I will develop in my writing.

BTW: Do you have any advice for emerging writers? 

PF: Yes, I am an opinionated old lady. I would say, make it a habit of making an entry in your journal everyday. 

Then, develop a small group of people of the same interest and hang around with them. I have a group of artists (we play classical guitar together), and on clear days, we bring out our canvasses and do some oil en-plein painting mostly on Ocean Beach by San Francisco Cliff-house, or on the Sonoma wineries. When we are done, we exchange some ideas about our written works. It is stimulating to read others’ works and get feedback. However, this only works if we do something non-writing to get the authentic push and pull as a writer.

My other advice to emerging writers is to think in terms of developing a nexus between the right brain (artistic domain) and the left brain (cognitive domain). This will ensure that CREATIVITY is enhanced painlessly and seamlessly.

Also, because I teach in a Teaching Credential Program, I observe how high school AP courses are taught. Daily exercises with prompts are always helpful to these young budding writers.

Also, I would suggest going through the exercises of Anne Bernays’ and Pamela Painter’s (2004) book entitled What If? for a start. This book helped me with a lot in writing for Good-bye Vientiane.