After reading Massimo Mongai’s “Galactic Guidebook for the Gourmet,” I was fascinated by the author’s attention to detail in crafting bilingual word play. This week, I found an interview with Isabel Yap, a Filipino writer of speculative fiction and poetry, who addresses the question of whether bilingual writers should italicize foreign words in their writing. While she notes that she never thought much about italicizing Tagalog words in her English writing, a teacher in a fiction workshop made the point that, “when you italicize, it draws attention to the text. This is a word that’s not in English, and therefore it’s sort of like you’re catering to a white audience. Whereas if you just leave it in there, it’s more like whatever your background is, you can just read this and take the text as it is, and you may recognize this word or not.”

I think this speaks to an important point when discussing diversity in the genre. While we’ve discussed in class the prevalence of SF written in the US and the UK, and how that has affected the development of a distinct SF literary style in other countries, the question of style is just as essential as the question of intended audience. To this, Yap responded: “I write for whoever wants to read my stuff…if you have to force me to pick a group, I’d be writing for Filipino students…’cos it’s essentially me writing for myself.”

Full interview: https://medium.com/the-baton/isabel-yap-on-writing-filipino-fiction-and-the-comfort-of-being-sad-together-a6ea5228e528