THESE NOVELS, all published in 2003, had as its predecessor Sering’s freebie novel Getting Better, which clearly set the tone for the kind of writing that would come to be known as Philippine chick lit. Sering, an oft-anthologized fictionist who has won prizes for her short stories, is a product of the creative writing program of the University of the Philippines, and was Cosmopolitan Philippines’ editor in chief before becoming book editor of Summit Books.

Modern Tales for Today’s Pinay Excerpts (with permission) from some novels published by Summit Books Tara FT Sering’s Getting Better (2000) starts off with: Chapter 1 How to Deal with June First, pretend that it doesn’t bother you. Watch movies about how great it is being unmarried but boyfriend-ed. Single, dating exclusively and enjoying all the perks — you’ve got a kiss-and-cuddle buddy without the children and commitment, so you should be ecstatic right? Download photos of all the cute men you can find on the internet — single George Clooney is a good start, or go for someone closer to home like a topless and ripped Marc Nelson — and fantasize all day at work about strolling down the beach with each of them, hand in hand, in nothing but a skimpy gold string bikini. Toast to the ladies in Sex and the City and chat with your friends about how sex fiend Samantha should be every single chick’s role model. Tune out when your parents mention how nice it is that another daughter of a family friend is getting married in the merry month of June, but pipe in with “Didn’t Tito Celso’s daughter leave her husband after what? Seven months?” (p. 29) Dialogue between lead character graduate student Teri and gay best friend Moose, from Mr. Write (2003) by M.D. Balangue: “I remember genuinely disliking him that night at Sukiyaki Babe then I’d see him sa corridor and he’d always look so intense and shy, and before I knew it I was nervous around him, I liked seeing him in the hallway, ewan! Maybe I’m ready to move on and maybe something inside me is —" “—is subconsciously looking for a papa, and Gito is very papa-ble!” Good old Moose, Teri thought. Always there to make sense of things that left her confused and bewildered. (pp. 37-38) On broken hearts, from Mr. Write (2003) by M.D. Balangue: What happens when someone breaks your heart? When someone breaks your heart, first you are shocked. Someone will say you are heartbroken and you examine the words break and heart and heartbroken and you immediately decide that it’s inaccurate. You feel pain in the region of your heart and you think it’s your heart breaking but one’s heart doesn’t really break, something else does — faith. You stop believing. No, not in the big things which are most of the time irrelevant. You still believe in God or Buddha or some Supreme Being, you still believe child prostitution is bad. You just stop believing in the small things that you do, the small things that give meaning to your daily life, and you begin to think everything is pointless: Why get up? Why dress up? Why breathe in and out? What for? What for? <...> When someone breaks your heart, you turn into a small ball of self-pity. You lie in bed, in a ball. You hug your knees, keeping them close to your chest, like a fetus. Freud said it’s human instinct to go back to the womb where we can feel safe. But that’s what happens when someone breaks your heart — they steal the very thing that makes you feel safe, whole, intact. (pp. 70-71) On Starbucks from Drama Queen (2003) by Abi Aquino: Twenty minutes later, we were sitting inside Starbucks and blowing at our cafe americanos. This is a strange and sad fact: No matter where you are, you are only 20 minutes away from a Starbucks. I keep telling myself that one of these days, I’m going to look for a map of the metropolitan area of Manila. My conspiracy theory is that if you draw a line connecting all the outlets, it would form the shape of a giant frapuccino. With whipped cream. (pp. 122-123) Lead character Kach, struggling with dealing with best friend Jorge, who found a girlfriend just when Kach realized she had fallen in love with him. In Drama Queen (2003) by Abi Aquino: Sometimes, Jorge would text to ask if I was busy or to invite me to dinner or coffee. It would take me several minutes to compose the appropriate reply: cant. it hurts to c u i luv u paksyet (clear clear clear) cant. hab rehersal pro i myt folow. unles kasama c angie (clear clear clear) hi jorge! cant eh. hab rehersal. nxt tym! (send) (pp. 134-135) Maya Calica’s The Break-up Diaries (2003) starts with: February 1, (past midnight, my room) Has anybody seen my self-esteem? I think I may have tossed her out on her nice, decent, well-mannered ass in the trashcan, together with the empty bottle of Gato Negro Merlot I swallowed to the last drop last night. A girl can do that — lose things when she’s had a little too much to drink. And I don’t drink. Well, OK, but only when the occasion calls for it. <...> Or now that Itos, the guy I’ve been thinking about/breathing for every waking hour of this past year, has told me, “This isn’t working.” Like our relationship was the windup toy that came with his Happy Meal — the hopping hamburger he was so aliw with in the beginning. When it suddenly refused to walk/roll/jump, he didn’t want it anymore. (p. 12)

I do not doubt that Sering’s background in creative writing informed the manner in which she sank her teeth into the conventions of chick lit. Because while there is a formula to stick to, her opening salvo was anything but. There is nothing formulaic about starting a novel with the month of June, and the contingent pressure on Filipino women to well, become brides, quick, before it’s too late. Here, Sering writes in the second person, engaging the Pinay reader in the struggle of being single in this country, particularly when everyone else is getting married and even when one is just considered to be “of age.” The Pinay reader who would have grown up hearing about marriage as the end-all and be-all of existence, would easily get hooked by this story, because really, even in the age of annulments and marital abuse, marriage is still seen in this country as “paglagay sa tahimik” or “settling down.”

Having kick-started the now productive industry of Philippine chick literature, there is no doubt that Sering has set a standard for the kind of chicks’ stories that need to be told — and how they can be told. It does not compete with any of the other popular romance novels a la Valentine Romance and Precious Petals Romance, which obviously have a different market; neither does it pretend to be all feminist or liberal or even elitist when it talks about the middle-class Filipina. Instead, Sering set the standard for a realistic reckoning of how middle-class Pinays live and are merry, how they may become miserable and inconsolable, how they struggle with society and learn to deal with it, and how they go through a process of finding themselves given those limitations. Highlighted by these novels is a Pinay who, for the first time, is owning the chick label and living it out on her own terms, with her own money, within her own spaces. It almost seems as if the man is secondary.

“Pinay chicks rule!” these novels unabashedly say. No apologies. No disclaimers. They disengage themselves from the literary establishment’s rules and regulations, as they recognize the Pinoy reader who does exist in the Philippines — but who has yet to get interested in what is considered as “real” Philippine literature. Of course there are limits to what can be written in these novels, but if there’s anything that Sering’s handling of Summit Books has proven, it’s that there is always the option of dealing with the formula and seamlessly going beyond it. Ideally, toward more realistic portrayals of Pinay chicks’ lives — diverse and varied as they are.

Given this, it is entirely possible that Sering as the brain of Summit Books has become that one chick ruling the worlds of many Filipina readers. And while she has yet to be acknowledged as someone who rocked the literary world, she undoubtedly has changed the dynamics of its existence. Because chick literature in her hands has not only become proof of a Filipino readership; it is in fact testament to how the literary establishment can face up to the challenge of getting an audience that is here, in this country, and actually be read by those they speak of. This task must not be dismissed as easy, or as something that only really means “selling out” to the popular. That Summit Books ceased publishing (temporarily?) chick novels upon Sering’s departure from the company is a measure of how tapping and keeping this audience is no task for the weak chick (or hunk for that matter).

Because when female students’ eyes light up at the mention of a Sering short story (published in a book by the University of the Philippines Press), then that is no doubt a measure of her readership — and credibility. The contingent reaction to NVM Gonzales or Franz Arcellana is, after all, blank faces. What Sering has done is to blur that line that divides “real literature” from popular literature, because she is unabashedly both. Now, there is no dismissing any kind of text — any book — as just a love story, just a comic book, or just crap. The beginnings of chick literature in this country tell us that we shouldn’t knock it. At least not until we’ve opened that hot pink book cover, and taken a peak inside these chicks’ writings, and their lives.

Most importantly, because of Sering’s brand of chick lit, there’s now a higher probability that a Philippine book will be picked off of a bookstore shelf, not because it’s required reading, but because there is renewed interest in reading literature that is our own.

That, to me, is how chicks rule.

Katrina Stuart Santiago is finishing her thesis for an M.A. in Philippine Studies at the U.P. Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas. She does freelance writing and editorial work on the side. Much of her time is happily devoted to teaching writing and literature at the Department of English of the Ateneo de Manila University.