The Biggest Crisis in Philippine Literature Isn't Translation. It's Readers.

For decades, the international ambitions of Philippine literature have centered on translation, foreign publishers and global recognition. But conversations with Anthony John Balisi, Kristian Sendon Cordero and Genevieve L. Asenjo point toward a more fundamental challenge: before Filipino books can travel farther, the country must build the culture that will keep reading them.

Words by Mye Mulingtapang

Photos courtesy of Genevieve Asenjo, Anthony John Balisi and Kristian Sendon Cordero, and NBDB

Anthony John Balisi, Genevieve L. Asenjo, and Kristian Sendon Cordero approach Philippine literature from different corners of the literary world, but their perspectives converge on a deeper challenge: beyond translation and global recognition, Filipino books need a strong and sustained culture of readers at home.

Before Philippine Literature Can Conquer the World, It Needs Readers at Home

For years, discussions about Philippine literature have looked outward. The prescription has remained remarkably consistent: more translations, more international publishers, more rights deals, and greater visibility at book fairs in Frankfurt, London, and Bologna. The assumption is straightforward. If more Filipino books crossed borders, they would finally receive the recognition they deserve.

It is an understandable ambition, and one that has already transformed the trajectory of Philippine literature. Anthony John Balisi's Database of Philippine Works in Translation documents more than 2,600 translations across 65 languages and 81 countries, revealing how Filipino books have quietly traveled through continents and generations.

Translation has preserved works that might otherwise have disappeared, introduced Philippine writers to readers who would never encounter them in their original language, and carried local stories into literary conversations far beyond the archipelago.

As Balisi puts it, "Without translation, literature stays geographically and linguistically confined."

Translation has undoubtedly expanded the horizons of Philippine literature. The more pressing question is whether those books are leaving behind a reading culture strong enough to sustain them once they have gone.

The Passport We Keep Chasing

The desire to bring Philippine literature to the world has shaped publishing conversations for decades. Success is often measured by translated editions, foreign rights deals, and international recognition. Those milestones matter. They broaden audiences, create new opportunities for writers, and allow Philippine stories to participate in a global exchange of ideas.

Building a literary culture requires more than producing and translating books. The National Book Development Board's presence at book festivals creates spaces where publishers, writers, and readers can meet—part of the broader ecosystem needed to keep Philippine literature circulating at home.

Yet they can also foster a subtle misconception. Translation is frequently treated as the beginning of literary success when, in reality, it is more often its culmination.

When writer, translator, publisher, and filmmaker Kristian Sendon Cordero was asked to identify the greatest challenge facing Philippine literature, he did not point to translation grants, overseas publishers, literary prizes, or international book fairs. Instead, he shifted the conversation to something far more fundamental: readers.

"If I were to identify the greatest challenge today," he says, "it would not simply be producing excellent books, nor translating them, nor even finding international publishers. It is cultivating readers."

Readers, he adds, "are the lifeblood of literature."

His answer reframes the discussion. Books do not become part of a culture simply because they have been translated. They become part of people's lives through repeated acts of reading and sharing—when someone recommends a novel to a friend, introduces it in a classroom, reads it aloud at home, or returns to a favorite poem years later only to discover something new.

Each encounter may seem ordinary. Together, they create the habits, conversations, and sense of ownership that sustain a literary culture.

Balisi's research quietly reinforces the same idea. His database maps where Philippine books have traveled, but it also reveals what remains unseen. Many works written in regional languages struggle to circulate beyond their own communities. Some never reach readers outside their province, let alone outside the country.

Translation, he argues, is not only about bringing Philippine literature to the world. It is equally about allowing Filipinos to encounter one another's histories, languages, and imaginations.

Before Philippine books can cross international borders, they must first cross the country's own islands.

That internal crossing matters because language carries more than information.

For novelist Genevieve L. Asenjo, Kinaray-a and what she calls her "Visayan-Filipino" are not simply vehicles for storytelling; they are among the ways she experiences "reality, memory, intimacy, and loss."

Geography, too, shapes language and imagination.

"Geography builds our vocabulary, shapes how we think and dream, and how we relate with others and the world," she says.

Reading across the country's languages, then, is not merely about expanding a national bookshelf. It allows Filipinos to enter ways of remembering and experiencing the world that may exist within the same country yet remain unfamiliar to one another.

A Literary Culture Begins With Readers

Reading rarely disappears overnight. It recedes quietly, crowded out by pressures that have little to do with literature itself.

Books become more expensive. Free time grows scarce. Digital platforms compete relentlessly for attention, rewarding speed while reading asks for something increasingly difficult to give: patience, focus, and uninterrupted time. Even people who genuinely want to read often struggle to create the conditions that make it possible.

Cordero resists reducing that reality to a familiar narrative about technology destroying attention spans. The problem, he argues, runs deeper. Reading has become a luxury—not simply because books cost money, but because many people no longer have the time, space, or opportunity to make it part of everyday life.

The issue, then, is not necessarily a lack of interest. It is an environment that makes sustained reading increasingly difficult.

Cordero says the challenge is cultivating readers.

Asenjo adds another dimension: literary culture must also trust them.

When asked how she balances the deeply local world of Lumbay ng Dila with readers unfamiliar with Kinaray-a culture, Asenjo's answer was strikingly simple:

"I have done my share, and so has the translator; now we trust readers."

The statement shifts responsibility in an important way. Writers need not flatten the particularities of their worlds simply to make them immediately accessible. Readers participate in literature, too: by entering unfamiliar places, following context, remaining curious and accepting that understanding does not always arrive immediately.

For Asenjo, specificity is not an obstacle to connection.

"The more specific the story, the more opportunities it creates for genuine encounter," she says.

And then comes an idea that challenges much of the conventional thinking about making local literature internationally accessible:

"A particular place is not a barrier to universality; it is often the path toward it."

"We meet each other through details."

That distinction matters because it changes where responsibility lies.

A reading culture cannot be rebuilt by repeatedly telling people to read more. Nor can writers be expected to make their worlds progressively simpler in the hope of attracting readers.

The question becomes larger:

What conditions allow readers to encounter difficult, unfamiliar or deeply particular literature—and stay with it?

That question takes the discussion beyond translation itself.

It leads to schools, libraries, bookstores, publishers, teachers, technology and the physical and digital spaces in which reading either becomes part of everyday life or slowly disappears from it.

End of Part I

In Part II: If readers are the lifeblood of literature, what does it actually take to create them? From Cordero's "ecology of reading" to Asenjo's call to let readers "dwell, for a time, in unfamiliarity," the question shifts from how Philippine books travel to what happens when they finally arrive.