Interview by Kyla Jamieson
Emerging writer Marc Perez’s story “Dog Food” appears in our “BAD” issue. Of his story, Perez says, “I once had a dog, and I named her Bruce. The story is a lament for her.” For this issue, we sought work that took us to true places along difficult or unexpected paths; “Dog Food” is one such story. In it, a boy witnesses violence he’s helpless against, and is denied understanding in the aftermath. His pain is real, but nobody sees or acknowledges it; where can it go but forwards, into his future?
Marc Perez immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and now lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Perez has been working in the nonprofit industry for the past five years; in addition to this work he is currently participating in Writing Lives, a project in which writers collaborate with Holocaust survivors to write their memoirs. Read on for Perez’s thoughts on identity and home, privilege and marginalization, and the best time to write—while asleep and dreaming.
1. What’s happening around you—either right around you or outside of where you are?
It’s eleven a.m. My partner is currently obsessed with Bill Evans, so gentle jazz piano has been playing for hours. Quite dark outside. A rain cloud is passing. It looks windy, based on my neighbour’s slanted wind chimes, though the brittle branches of the sakura trees that line the sidewalk seem still, unmoved.
2. Why do you live where you live?
I was born and raised in Manila. In 2004, I moved to Vancouver to live with my strong and courageous mother, who had gone to work as a domestic helper in Hong Kong before entering Canada as a live-in caregiver. Though we’re independent beings, our liminal journeys and struggles are connected by filial love.
Home belongs to my childhood, on a street called Arellano, whose culture and physical environment have little to no resemblance to my current relatively privileged location. I exist between two distinct cultural spaces, and I feel as though there’s a disconnect between the past and the present. I think such disruptions are a typical consequence of being suddenly uprooted and dislocation. I have not acculturated even more than a decade later. I refuse to assimilate, because to do so means shedding parts of who I am. But I also understand that identity is not fixed. Rather, as Stuart Hall said, it’s a process of becoming.
I particularly like the Joyce-Collingwood neighbourhood where I now live because of the Filipino sari-sari stores and carinderias; I’m in close proximity to Filipino food. The rent is also very inexpensive compared to the $3,333 that the City of Vancouver considers affordable.
3. Is there a public space you’re fond of? Will you describe it?
I like browsing around Book Row—MacLeod’s, Albion, Paper Hound. From West Pender, I take the #19 bus to Main and visit Pulp Fiction and Massy, which recently relocated to East Georgia. In addition to the thrill of discovering new authors on the shelves, I greatly appreciate recommendations by booksellers—most recently, the incredibly intense work of the Korean novelist Han Kang was introduced to me at Paper Hound. These shops are real gems.
4. What are you looking forward to this week?
I have a ticket for the film The Young Karl Marx by Raoul Peck. He also directed I Am Not Your Negro, which I found so powerful and moving that I went to see it twice, then read the book.
5. What’s your morning routine?
I usually take my time to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, then hurry to get ready and catch my bus because I’m already late for either work or school.
6. What’s the first story or poem you remember writing, and how does it relate to your current work?
Since elementary school, I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing, so when I immigrated to Canada and didn’t know exactly how or where to begin my studies, I took a grade twelve writing class in an adult school, where I began to write very short stories. In a derivative way, they were my first attempts at emulating socially conscious literature in the Philippines, but unfortunately they ended up melodramatic like Filipino teleseryes.
I think they relate directly to my current work because I still deal with similar themes and construct characters who inhabit the margins. Also, then and now, I try to write stories that are morally and politically engaged without being didactic.
7. Do you have a favourite place or time of day to write?
I write in coffee shops, at bus stops, on the train, or whenever I feel the urge, but they’re usually confused musings. I write productively at home, when everyone, including myself, is asleep and dreaming.
8. What are you most proud of?
I’ve been wary of the word proud, perhaps because I feel uncomfortable treading on the thin line between pride and vanity. But I also like to tell folks that I read The Brothers Karamazov while working as a graveyard housekeeper in a local hospital. I sat in the storage room, surrounded by cleaning supplies—boxes of tissues and microsan, mops and buckets, brooms and dustpans—and read some of the classics, which meant works of dead, white men. It’s a formative experience, I think.
9. What’s one risk you’re glad you took?
I’m glad to go back to school after a four-year hiatus and, as Horace writes, seek the truth in groves of Academus. I wonder what he would say about student loans?
10. Is there any advice you like ignoring?
Read Infinite Jest. Though I might heed the advice soon.
11. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as an emerging writer?
My concerns are basic—what to write and how to write it. Although the act of writing is done in isolation, I’m learning that honing the craft is a collaborative process in many ways. Hence, I need mentors. But it’s not easy to overcome visceral insecurities and fears, then proactively seek out people (not necessarily fiction writers themselves) who will generously share their time and expertise by reading and critiquing my work and introducing me to other writers, literatures, or platforms. I’m blessed to have met folks who did just that. Shoutout to Jill and Itrath!
Producing work is challenging enough, so I try not to worry too much about publishing. All I can do is submit my stuff wherever I can. But I’ve heard folks say that there are only good and bad pieces of writing, and the good ones get published. It’s classist and elitist, to say the least. There are privileged lives and marginalized voices.
The marginalization of voices is an ongoing process. The centuries-long history of colonialism refers not only to the theft of lands and mass murders, but also to cultural and epistemic genocides, and attempts to erase the languages, stories, and world views of racialized bodies continue to this day.
The hegemony of the English language and literature is tied to colonialism. Western ideas on beauty or aesthetics are linked with modernity, which, since the beginning, has been informed by racist and sexist colonial logic. As Ramon Grosfoguel writes, the subject in the Cartesian dictum “I think therefore I am” refers exclusively to Western men, whose humanity, unlike the colonized, is not questioned, and yet it also claims to be universally applicable. Similarly, I think, Western literature purports universality, as though stories from the suburbs of North America somehow reflect the lives of folks hustling on the streets of Manila.
In the words of Arundhati Roy, “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
12. Do you have a favourite word? Or a least favourite word? What is it and why do you like/dislike it?
I like the Filipino word yakap, which translates to hug. I have to part then press my lips together when I say yakap, which is akin to the motions when embracing someone. I’m a hugger.
Kyla Jamieson is PRISM’s Prose Editor. She lives and relies on unceded traditional Coast Salish territory and her work has appeared in Poetry Is Dead, SAD Mag, ELLE Canada, Room Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her writing at kylajamieson.tumblr.com.