5 Questions with Patricia Arcilla
Patricia Arcilla is a Filipina-Australian writer living and working on Gadigal land. She writes about cities, culture, and the Filipinx diaspora, and her work has appeared in Kill Your Darlings, Jacobin, Overland, and more. She is an active member of Anakbayan Sydney.
Patricia was recently announced as one of two recipients of the Opera House’s inaugural Mentorship for Diverse Emerging Writers. Her piece will be an essay inspired by the #StopAsianHate panel discussion, and highlight the need for a more nuanced understanding of Asian-Australian identity.
No.1
How did you come to writing?
Writing has always been a way for me to unspool thoughts tying me up in knots—from childhood nightmares and teen angst to present-day crises under capitalism.
But I didn’t get really into it until I did an architecture degree and developed an extremely pretentious obsession with ‘architectural fiction’: writers like Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, J.G Ballard, etc. I was constantly turning in unsolicited short story collections and meandering essays with my end-of-semester projects, much to the chagrin and bemusement of my tutors. In hindsight, this was a deeply annoying and inconsiderate thing to do to overworked tutors—peak annoying late-teen behaviour—but it helped me realise that I wanted to write in any capacity for a living, rather than design buildings.
No.2
Tell us a bit more about the work you’ll be developing under this mentorship. What kind of work and research do you think it’ll entail?
I’ll be writing an essay in response to the #StopAsianHate panel featuring Cathy Park Hong, Beverley Wang, and Benjamin Law. As a Filipina, I’m particularly interested in carving out nuance in the construction of the ‘Asian experience’ in Australia, which is typically framed in the narrow context of those with East Asian heritage. Over the past year, it has been somewhat strange and frustrating to see Southeast and South Asian voices—and the specific ways in which we experience racism as distinct from our East Asian counterparts—left out of the discussion of anti-Asian racism.
I’m also really keen to explore what Cathy Park Hong’s excellent Minor Feelings, which is grounded in an American context, means in Australia as a settler colony—and for Asian-Australians as settlers of colour on stolen land. This is something I grapple with a lot, both in my writing and in my activism. I’m re-reading the book now and am also scouring the internet for any takes (hot, considered, or otherwise) that could help shape my thinking in this regard.
No.3
What was your first response upon receiving the email confirming your acceptance into the program?
I know everyone probably responds to questions like this with a response along these lines, but genuinely: I was super surprised. I’ve accepted that most things I want to write essays about are niche topics only really worth either a single pithy tweet or a long verbal rant to my poor, unsuspecting partner, so it’s always a delightful surprise when someone else is interested. Particularly when this ‘someone’ means two writers whose work I deeply admire, such as Winnie Dunn and Declan Fry.
No.4
What will this mentorship mean for you and your practice?
As someone who didn’t have a formal education in writing, this will be the first time I’ll get to intensively workshop a piece of work, and I’m just really grateful for the opportunity. My hope is that this will be a way to develop both my writing skills and my ability to take on and incorporate feedback: I’m sure there are plenty of things I’ll learn from the editing process, but it’s quite hard to know what I’m yet to know.
No.5
What are you reading at the moment? What authors or books inspire your work?
I’m currently re-reading Take Care, a new poetry collection by Eunice Andrada, whose work inspires me greatly. And though I generally avoid the bit of the internet where people in the Philippines and in the diaspora argue over who gets to call themselves ‘Filipino’, I’ve really internalised the criticism (for better or worse) that the latter are too reliant on social media for learning about our motherland. So I read a lot about the Philippines: right now I’m reading From Indios Bravos to Filipinos by Luis H. Francia and Duterte Harry, a biography of President Rodrigo Duterte by Jonathan Miller. I’m also very slowly reading Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear by John Kuo Wei.
I’m inspired by many authors, but the ones I think of most are: Elaine Castillo, Jia Tolentino, Lauren Carroll Harris, Allison Whittaker, Owen Hatherley, and Carlos Bulosan. And I still have a huge soft spot for Borges.
The Mentorship for Diverse Emerging Writers is the inaugural instalment of a year-round series of mentorships. Launched as part of the Opera House’s Antidote 2021 festival of ideas, action and change, the new mentorship program accepted applications from Sydney-based emerging writers from First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Antidote 2021 will take place on Sunday 5 September, exploring themes including: solutions for the climate crisis, #StopAsianHate, alternatives to capitalism, decolonisation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the myth of the ‘fair go’, anti-Arab racism since 9/11, Deaf culture, morality in Australian politics, and the quest for meaning in a post-truth age.
Find out more here.