Syjuco on Asian Writing

I write against Southeast Asian exoticism and books that italicise Tagalog words or place names ... The Filipino or Asian experience is global. To say that a novel has to be set in Asia to be Asian is completely wrong.

Well exactly!

Winner of last year's Man Asian Literary Prize Miguel Syjuco is interviewed in The Australian [via]. He also suggests that:

Asian writers in general have a duty to expose the "cancers of their society" perhaps to an even greater extent than Western writers.

Go to it chaps!