Alex‘s reply to one of my post inspired me to reflect about the volume of Philippine Literature I have read. Because of that , I decided to make it as a blog post. And this is her comment:
Subconscious colonial mentality?
To give a brief background, my previous post (a grabbed post actually) is about the top ten list of Pinoy Literature recommended in a Yahoo! article. I commented about the article about myself being guilty of not being able to support our own literature here in the country. And now going back to the topic of this post, is my preference for foreign literature a subconscious colonial mentality?
Colonial Mentality (CM)
Before I answer that, let’s define what is colonial mentality (CM). I searched on Google and I read the article Colonial Mentality by Jon E. Royeca. The author defined CM as:
Colonial mentality is the thinking that foreign talents and products are always the good, the better, and the best, and that the local ones are of poor or no quality at all.
Do I think that foreign literature are always the good, the better, and the best? Yes, they are good but not all the time. Do I think that the local literature are of poor or no quality at all? A big NO. They are sometimes poor but not all the time. Some of them are really good. And to tell that they have no quality at all is false. But how do you define quality? I won’t dwell on that since Robert Pirsig defined quality beautifully in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a foreign novel, an evidence).
But honestly, I think CM is the effect and not the cause of my preference for foreign literature.
Br. Allen 
Hi. 🙂 In my own experience, I read more english books because I was trained from the very beginning to buy and like reading english books. Aside from the fact that my train of thought is first and foremost english, and although there are filipino authors that I do love to read, I still find a qualitative difference between reading international authors and local ones. Not that one is better than the other; just a simple personal preference in the way they are written. I usually find filipino books too serious or too… not serious, like there’s not much variation to choose from. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know! HAHA.
Anyway, I’m touched I’m mentioned here. HAHA.
Colonial mentality still lives on until this day, though. It could be an effect for the others.