What does queerness mean to a young Filipino student in another Southeast Asian country? A novel’s chapter explores it.

In the chapter “New Boy”, Pau, a Filipino exchange student from Tagum City, attends classes in photography and Thai arts and culture at a university in Bangkok. His interactions with Thai students and professors gradually allow him to reflect on his own life back in the Philippines. In one class, the professor asks the students to contemplate the meaning of looking at famous and historical photographs. In another class, Pau tries to recall where his familiarity with the Buddha comes from. The glaring differences and uncanny similarities between the two countries merge before his eyes, affecting even his other senses. Most of the time, the foreignness of his host country almost overwhelms him. But there are also times when, particularly because of the topical heat, he also feels as though he is still in Tagum, Davao del Norte. Meanwhile, Pau grows more and more interested in a classmate named Mitr Kritayakon-an aloof, if slightly arrogant Thai student who nonetheless points Pau in the right direction during an encounter at the library. At the end of the chapter, Pau is invited to a party by his Thai classmates. Will he overcome reluctance and accept the invitation? Or will Pau further retreat into his proverbial shell?

“New Boy, An Excerpt: On the Sensorial Tropics and Queer Consciousness” is taken from a work-in-progress that was begun during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. The novel, from which this chapter is taken, reimagines the experience of a Filipino international student in another Southeast Asian country: Thailand. Seldom do fictional narratives from the Philippines reflect on the intercultural encounters between Filipinos and their Southeast Asian neighbors. In cinema, for instance, Filipino personae temporarily stationed in a neighboring Asian country are often represented by overseas workers, and justifiably so. The ethos of these stories is often that of the nobility of labor in a foreign and sometimes exploitative land.

“New Boy, An Excerpt” explores a variation of this narrative by placing a Filipino exchange student from Southern Mindanao in a university in Bangkok. The student, who happens to be queer, conducts his undergraduate studies abroad and, in the process, gains new perspectives about the place he has relocated to and the life he has momentarily left behind in the Philippines. This work of fiction also asks what queerness means to a young Filipino. Setting aside Western references of gender queer politics, the novel derives its motifs from the popular genre of boys’ love, which, since 2020, has made prominent the interaction between Filipino audiences and creators and their Thai counterparts. It is the author’s hope that the chapter will become part of a longer work of fiction that makes use of Southeast Asian popular culture in its depiction of a particular queer Filipino experience.

Author: John Bengan (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain; University of the Philippines Mindanao)

Read the full paper: https://journals.jcu.edu.au/index.php/etropic/article/view/4049

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