Environmental Justice Forum

Start:     Nov 11, '04
End:     Nov 12, '04
Location:     UP Los Banos, Laguna

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Boljoon: More Reasons to Return

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8 and 9 June 2007. When editor Kristin Llerin asked me to write about Boljoon for the Cebu Yearbook, I asked, "Why ME?". I'd just written an article on it a few months before for the Lifestyle page (supposedly, it was what inspired the Yearbook editors to feature Boljoon in the yearbook), and I felt I had written all I had in me to write about Boljoon, after years of yearning for it. I'd explored all I wanted to. It was a closed book, as far as I was concerned. "Because you like to travel!" she said. Fine. It was MY Boljoon, after all, so I thought it might as well be me. When I got there on a Friday morning (the first weekend of the schoolyear, and I was already on another "vacation" :P) to interview some government officials, I discovered that there was an archeological dig going on in front of its historic church, and that there were actually still a couple of places I hadn't been to...which some of the locals hadn't even heard of, eit...
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Being Brown... again

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In 2002, I wrote an  #essay for one of my Sun.Star columns titled "It Ain't Easy Being Brown" . In March 2016, I suddenly got requests from university students in different parts of the  #Philippines  to interview me about this essay for their class. The essay wasn't online and they had to ask me for a copy, so I have no idea how their teachers thought to assign it as a text. In October 2017, I was contacted by students from yet another school telling me that they had chosen the same essay to make a  #shortfilm  on for a school competition. Again, no idea how they got hold of it. But since my essays are  #autobiographical , it was basically a film based on my life. Sharing it now because it's just so hilarious 😂 especially their portrayal of my parents. It's so amazing what kids can do with the technology these days. This is the  #poster  they made for the film. You can read the (very short) essay first . And then watch the  #trilingua...
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It Ain’t Easy Being Brown

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Jeneen R. Garcia Published in 2002 Never fails. Every time I walk down a grocery’s toiletries section, an overly eager, mestiza sales lady blocks my path, wielding the latest whitening product. It’s as if I had a sign on my forehead saying “In Need of Whitening: Approach at Will”.  It’s weird how even in this age of political correctness and Naomi Campbell, Filipinos still automatically equate beauty with fair, cancer-prone skin. And have you noticed how they use naturally white people like Lucy Torres and aforementioned sales lady to endorse their product, in a strategy to make us brownies insecure? In fairness, it’s generally easier to find something that’s bright than dark. It’s less straining to the eyes. Bright surfaces reflect instead of absorb light, making everything else around them brighter. My mother most of all has always wished my skin were whiter. She says I was born reddish, and was worried I would take after my kayuman...
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