By IAN ROSALES CASOCOT

Happy birthday, Silliman University!

This is a pop-up issue of Buglas Writers Journal celebrating the 123rd Founders Day of Silliman University in Dumaguete City. It cannot be argued that if Dumaguete is a City of Literature, one of the biggest reasons for this distinction is the presence of Silliman University, which, since its founding in 1901 by Presbyterian missionaries, has somehow come to hone the literary talents of many of the the country’s best writers. Part of the story, of course, is the founding of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1962 by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo — but beyond the workshop, the university itself as cradle of literary writing is something that begs examination and is truly something to celebrate. That history has its ups and downs, but the the importance of that literary legacy cannot be denied.

In 2001, in celebration of the school centennial, Sands & Coral, the literary folio of Silliman University — which was founded by Rodrigo T. Feria in 1948, with Aida Rivera Ford and Cesar Jalandoni Amigo as its first editors — came out with a unique generational anthology that celebrated the literary writing in campus since the 1940s, the decade the folio was born. The issue contained the usual stories and poems, but what made it groundbreaking were the generational memoirs written by specific writers from every decade of Silliman writing, from the 1940s to the 1990s. Each piece has the writer recalling mostly their work for the Sands & Coral, but also gives us a glimpse of what the culture of literary writing was like in their decade — hence, a treasure trove of generational writing memories.

This issue reprints those essays, from Aida Rivera Ford in the 1940s to Graciano H. Arinday Jr. in the 1950s, from Myrna Pena-Reyes and Cesar Ruiz Aquino in the 1960s to Anthony L. Tan in the 1970s, from Timothy R. Montes in the 1980s to Anne-Marie Jennifer Eligio and Shielfa Alojamiento in the 1990s — each recounting the pain and the joy, the disappointments and the exhilaration, and the very Sillimanian travails unique to a Dumaguete writer.

28 August 2024