Rene O. Villanueva
(September 22, 1954 - December 5, 2007)
I will not act as if I had known him all my life. I will not pretend to be a constant follower of his works, nor will I bother to list the multitude of accomplishments he has gathered through the years. I will present who Rene Villanueva was to me. It is most important you understand that my point of view is rare and unlike any, for when I had gotten to spend time with him, I did not fully know who he was. He was simply introduced to us as "Rene O. Villanueva, children's writer for Adarna Books," and so my initial knowing of him was not of the literary genius that most begin to know him by, but rather of a man who simply wrote for a living. I met Sir Rene when I was 13 years old. I and a friend were invited to join a story writing and storytelling workshop sponsored by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The workshop was originally for pubic pre-school and elementary teachers, but since two people backed out at the last minute, we two 13 year old know nothings took their place. We were to spend more than a week in a retreat house, in one of the more wooded areas in Silang, Cavite. When we had arrived there, the seminar immediately began. Sir Rene was the quietest man I had ever met. He was always at the back corner of the room, with his arms folded, leaning against the bamboo pillars of the seminar area. He left his co-presenter to do the necessary introductions, and when his name was called, he merely raised a hand, still silent, and then returned his hand into the tucked position beneath his arm. In the afternoon, the formal workshop would begin. He was the first to present to us his seminar on story writing. He sat there with us on the wooden floor, and calmly gave his lecture. He requested we search our thoughts for an everyday item, and write a story regarding it. He taught us that being too obsessed with our grammar during the initial stages of writing would only hinder our creative flow. He taught us that when we write, we should always think about our audience. Writing is never supposed to be an act of selfishness. Good writing is always done with the audience in mind. Find common ground with your audience. You are connected via the things you write, and the stronger the connection between you and your audience, the better the piece of literature. We then read our stories one by one to our 14 fellow participants in the seminar. He then gave comments and suggestions to each story. My story was of a tin can that had been rolling around Manila for a decade. I wanted to catch my audience’s attention by relating to them the familiar filth and poverty that littered the city. I felt proud of my work, which was well written, and with social value. When I had ceased my narration, he stared at me with that blank stare that never seemed to leave his face, and he said, “That was good, but no one likes a preachy can.” He told me that the idea was nice, but when the can started to critique the situation versus being just a spectator, it became comical. That was a lesson I never forgot. After his story writing seminar, the story telling seminar began. He stayed with us even during the story telling workshop, although as before his own workshop began, he was standing at the back with his arms folded again. In the seminar, we were asked to read to some local children, a book from Adarna Books. I was constantly under fire from the presenter because my Filipino wasn’t as well developed as that of my constituents. To give a clue, the presenter used to call me “English Boy.” It was at this point, where I in my pride, chose to read to the children in Filipino. The book I was tasked to read was entitled “War Makes Me Sad” by Ordinario. The presenter gave me the book because it was the only one in English, although it had Filipino subtitles. It was a book about a Muslim girl caught between the crossfire of a Moro-Christian battle in Mindanao. I studied the book as best I could, and I got pronunciation lessons from some of my companions, but in the end, I could not fully project the full spectrum of emotions shown by the piece. It was at this point, as I was practicing one day in the main hall that Sir Rene sat down beside me and asked if he could help me. He took me to the back portion of the main hall and told me that “A story should be said in the comfort of your own language.” He continued to say that it would be better to deliver the story in English, where I would be able to fully use my understanding of the language to give life to the story. I decided though that I was to deliver the story in Filipino. He nodded, and was supportive. He gave me tips on how to read properly. He listened to my recitations and commented on how I could improve myself. He basically taught me how intonations and stresses in Filipino were very different from English. He also taught me that words are not the only means of how an author can connect with an audience. An author is not merely a writer, but he is most importantly a story teller. You do not just tell “a story”, but rather “someone’s story.” By telling the character’s story, the story teller can gain an even closer bond with the audience, and when stories are told properly, the person reaches the final goal of all story tellers, which is to bring emotion to people’s lives. To bring emotion to people’s lives; that would be the thrust that would drive me forward in literary study. I was given a task, which is to be able to bring emotion into an impersonal world. When I told the story of the Muslim girl who hated war, it was a personal landmark in many ways. It was the first time I had told someone’s story in my native language. It was also what I consider my true literary awakening. I wish to be at least half the story teller Rene Villanueva was. He taught me many things in the days of the seminar, but with all the great lessons I learned, he left me with one last. Fairy tales don’t always have to end the way they were meant to. A character might search for gold, yet find an even greater treasure at the end. He was truly a great man, and a giant of a literary figure. In the end though, it wasn’t what he wrote that made him such a great man in my eyes, but rather, it was his great understanding of the close relation of stories and human emotion.
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