nameabledays Archive One

CARLOS BULOSAN, First OFW (Overseas Filipino Writer), is being deprived of a space in the Web

TO ALL FILIPINOS IN THE WEB, wandering in strange lands or wandering in imaginary landscapes even while staying put in the home country. This is both a protest and a call to attention. If you don't know OUR OWN VOICE and have not visited the site ever, "OUR OWN VOICE: Filipinos in the Diaspora" (or OOV, formerly oovrag.com, and lately, ourownvoice.com), is the award-winning literary e-zine, the great website that provides one of the best venues in cyberspace for new (and old) Filipino writing, from the home country as well as from overseas. Without warning...

OUR OWN VOICE HAS GONE MISSING FROM THE WEB!

OOV SEEMS TO BE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH ITS DOMAIN NAME. As a writer wanting to know what's happening to Filipino writing both abroad and at home, I have been a regular visitor of OOV. That's why it was one of the first sites I linked to my own blog. But when I tried to click its link just now, out pops a bland-looking commercial site, an apparent illiterate (ignorant of Filipino writing), one of those stores that sells sound systems. Now I like to think I am an audio enthusiast myself, but I do not want audio vendors to pop up when I click one of my favorite sites in the Web. This interloper seems to have taken over OOV’s name. That is why this is also a protest.

I TRIED TO GOOGLE IT, searched the names of Reme Grefalda and Nadine Sarreal (publishers, moving, living, spirits behind the e-zine), hoping their names would bring me to the site, I went to blogs and other sites where I know it is linked (e.g., poets Luisa Igloria’s and Eric Gamalinda’s), but the same thing happened. When I clicked OOV’s link from their sites, this pesky audio vendor popped up.

I CAN'T EVEN REPRODUCE HERE any of the exemplary frontispieces of OOV (to give you an idea of how great and interesting it looks, if you haven’t visited it), so I am posting here the picture of Carlos Bulosan, perhaps our first Filipino writer in the Diaspora (after Rizal and the Propagandists?), our first OFW (Overseas Filipino Writer), the subject of one of the best OOV issues (each OOV issue is THE BEST). Carlos Bulosan has been deprived of a very accessible archive of studies about and appreciation of him with this I hope temporary disappearance of Our Own Voice.

WHERE IS OUR OWN VOICE? WHO STOLE ITS NAME? I AM RAISING A HOWL OF PROTEST. THEY ARE EXCLUDING OUR OWN (FILIPINO) VOICE FROM CYBERSPACE! PUT IT BACK THERE!

(Write me if you're experiencing the same problem searching Our Own Voice. I have no idea what we can do to help, but raising a howl might mean something.)