AVANT GARDENER
If there are two things many Filipino children lack these days, it’s a love for reading and an appreciation for farming. Joel Donato Ching Jacob, HIV counselor and author of the Scholastic Asian Book Award winning novel Wing of the Locust and its sequels Orphan Price and Heirs to Flame writes about both in his new novel, Wayang Alimagnum, published by Adarna House.
“In Wayang Alimango, Waya finds her dead mother's mech under the river. She uses the mech to compete in the town farming competition. Her most formidable rival is last year's winner, her own stepmother,” Jacob said, adding that the story was inspired by “the Filipino Cinderella story: Maryang Alimango.”
For those unfamiliar with Japanese anime, a mech, or mecha, is a giant robot piloted by a human and usually used for warfare.
Other inspirations include, “The jeepney phaseout. Along with many Filipinos, I am outraged at the anti-working class initiative to phase out the jeepney. The jeepney was made from artifacts of the war where the jeep was an all terrain mobile armalite platform. I imagined a Philippines where we were able to take the machines of our oppressors and use it for life-giving endeavors like we have already done with the jeepney.”
It was also inspired by a video by American sketch comedians Key and Peele about what would happen if teachers were treated like top athletes. “Instead of teachers, who definitely deserve the honor, I feel we should also enshrine our farmers if not as pro athletes but at least people who deserve a liveable wage. There is a low key reference to universal basic pay in the book,” as well as the board game Scythe. “Not much of the game, but the paintings of idyllic rural landscapes with towering mecha.”
Jacob is no stranger to farm life. “I grew up on a garlic farm in Cabuyao, Laguna. I would get paid five centavos per handful of garlic I peeled, which I only used to buy candy…. It was a community endeavor with the entire barangay pitching in. We had landlords… but they were absent overlords. We would sometimes play with the grandchildren, my father would do electrician stuff for them….
“...the land was eventually sold for development. My first novel… is about us kids playing on the hills of rock and sand, oblivious that they were being used to pave the farmlands our parents worked in. My father eventually started work in Qatar, we moved to Los Baños, and I studied in UP Rural High School, where I studied horticulture, agriculture, animal husbandry, and wood and metal shop over four years. This was the time when I learned some of the science of it,” he said.
Wayang Alimagnum is a solarpunk novel, one whose plot revolves around machinery. This is interesting given the Philippines’ lack of machinery in the agriculture sector. The irony (or is it actually hope) isn’t lost on Jacob, who uses it as a way to get young readers interested in farming. “I am aware that we lose a lot of crops in post harvest tech, or rather the lack thereof, among many other problems plaguing our farmers. Why? Aside from the aforementioned board game Scythe, I feel the disinterest in agriculture as a field is not unwarranted. It is just not as ubiquitous as a concept among young people.
“In the book, the stepmother Quicay is a mechanical engineer, the father Juan is an accountant, and so on. But they think of themselves as farmers. I feel that young people will be enamored by the real-world fact that some of the largest mega machines are used in farms (Well, I am. I hope they feel the same way). I want to make farming as exciting as it is necessary.”
This optimistic view of farming dovetails into Jacob’s hopes for the country: “Universal Basic Pay and socialized services like farm to market transportation, healthcare, a fund to ensure price stabilization, harvest insurance, post harvest technologies to reduce food wastage, so on.”
There are many things Jacob hopes that readers take away from his novel, but the most important thing would be that they enjoy it. “...I can say valuing the role of farmers in society, capacity building and legislation towards capacity building, family and its various permutations, sportsmanship.
“But none of those matter unless we cultivate in young people a love for reading. So the key takeaway from the target audience of 10-14 year-olds is enjoyment.”
His perfect reader, he says, is “a kid who has never finished a book. I hope my story is exciting and that the language is accessible so that they find it easy to finish their first book.”
Wayang Alimagnum will be launched at The Philippine Book Festival this March 13 to 16 in Megamall Mega Trade hall. There will be a book signing at 3 p.m. on March 15, Saturday at the Adarna Booth.