Nemencia Armia’s 60-page, handwritten tale stood out from the typed submissions not just because of its format, but because it was sent from Taoyuan Women’s Prison.
Serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2007 of killing her Taiwanese broker, the former Filipino migrant worker’s story was selected for a choice award at the 5th annual Taiwan Literature Awards for Migrants, which held its award ceremony on Sunday at the National Taiwan Museum. In a video shown at the event, she discusses the difficulties of her trial due to language barriers and even maintains her innocence.
“We’re not the judges,” the host says in response to the video. “What’s important to us is that these people have something to say, and our responsibility is to give them a platform so they can express themselves in their native language.”
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Literature Awards for Migrants
With 553 submissions in Tagalog, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai from migrant workers or immigrants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore, a total of eight winners were honored at Sunday’s ceremony — two of them living in Hong Kong and the rest in Taiwan. The winning stories cover a wide range of topics, from LGBTQ issues to human rights abuses to homesickness, but all of them speak to the migrant experience in their host countries.
REPEAT WINNER
Chang Cheng (張正), owner of Southeast Asian-focused Brilliant Time Bookstore (燦爛時光) in New Taipei City, says the origin of the awards can be traced back to the time when he ran Four Way Voice (四方報), a monthly newspaper serving Southeast Asian immigrants that folded in 2011.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
After receiving an overwhelming number of literary submissions from the paper’s migrant readers, Chang consolidated the stories into a book, which eventually led to the idea for the awards. Selected stories from each year’s awards are edited into an anthology, which will be released later this year. The stories are only translated into Chinese.
The entries must be written in the migrants’ native languages so they can best express their thoughts, and they are screened by a panel of native-language judges before being translated into Chinese and passed on to a panel of judges from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The prize money is generous, with the grand-prize winner receiving NT$100,000, two jury awards of NT$40,000 and the rest NT$20,000.
This year’s top prize goes to Loso Abdi, who also took home the 2016 trophy under the pen name Justto Lasoo, for Nyanian Ombak (Song of Waves), a poignant tale about an Indonesian fisherman working on a Taiwanese boat. While Loso returned to Indonesia two years ago, he says he continues to write about migrant workers in Taiwan as he still has many friends here.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
“I still keep in contact with my friends in Taiwan every day; sometimes I feel that I’m still here,” he says, noting that about 50 percent of his inspiration is still about the Taiwan experience.
Returning to Indonesia, he says, has enabled him to work less and write more. A former factory welder, Loso Abdi’s previous work was praised as he stepped outside of his regular circle to research and write about other types of migrant workers, and that it considered both Indonesian and Taiwanese perspectives.
This year’s winning piece, Tentang Cinta (About Love) has the same characteristics. Based on a friend’s true story, it’s a heart-wrenching, first-person account of an Indonesian caregiver who is torn between the love she has for her employer’s child — whom she had looked after for nine years — and her own children back home.
“I wrote this because there are many news reports of migrant workers mistreating the people they’re caring for,” Loso Abdi says. “This really affect society’s perception of us. I want people to know that many migrant workers also treat their employers with love.”
LGBTQ REFUGE
The award ceremony was especially emotional for Melinda Babaran, a Filipino factory worker who won a Jury Award for her story Latay sa Laman (Pain in the Flesh). With her late father’s photo in one hand and the trophy in the other, she embraced her mother on the podium as they both wept.
Written as a monologue, Pain in the Flesh details Babaran’s turbulent relationship with her father, who frequently berated and beat her for being a tomboy as a child and later a lesbian. She composed it in just one hour back in March after she found out that her father was hospitalized. He died a month later.
“This is for my father,” she says. “I submitted this [story] for him to know what’s inside me … I wanted to tell him that he’s forgiven. That I love him, despite the fact that we did not start really [well] as father and daughter.”
In the story, Babaran describes Taiwan as a refuge, a place where she can be open about her sexuality, where she does not have to live in fear.
“It’s a really big difference,” she says. “In the Philippines, people are very close minded when it comes to things that are beyond normal.”
Babaran will hit the 12-year limit for migrant workers in Taiwan soon, and after that she’ll have to return home even though she wants to stay here. Although the hours are long, her experience with Taiwanese supervisors have been much better than that back home.
“The moment I received news that my father was hospitalized, I couldn’t focus on my work. I asked if I could take a day off, and [my supervisor] just allowed it. You can’t do that in the Philippines without having to do much explaining,” she says.
BOXES OF LOVE
The other Jury Award recipient Louie Jean Decena’s story, Ang Mahiwagang Kahon ni Itay (My Father’s Magical Box) is also about her father, who was often away working abroad when she was young, including 18 months in Taiwan. It’s a tragic tale about a young girl who mainly knew her father through the boxes of goodies he’d send home, but finally only got to meet him when his body was delivered home in a coffin.
Decena says that while only the first part is based on true events — her father returned home well and alive — she wanted to highlight the fact that these Filipino workers are often abused abroad. However, she says the story is driven by love, from her childhood excitement to opening her father’s boxes to watching her coworkers in Taiwan send the best food and clothes home, rarely keeping anything for themselves.
While her father spent years away to feed the family, Decena says she only plans to stay in Taiwan for about one year as she hopes to return home and resume her career as a high school teacher. She moved to Taiwan to work in a factory only partially for economic reasons.
“Before I devote myself to teaching, I want to experience something different. So I came here,” she says. “I don’t want to have any regrets.”
Decena says she only found out about the award after stumbling across its Facebook page. She hopes she can continue to highlight different topics, planning on delving into women’s issues next.
“I want to be heard,” she says.
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