Do Dumangasanons even need this book nook?

By Noel Galon de Leon

There is a new book nook in Dumangas, Iloilo, set up inside a portion of Rock Drilon’s own home and opened to the public. It is warm, generous, and admirable, yes. But we cannot allow admiration to replace analysis. A community space built around books requires more than sweetness and sincerity. It requires structure, responsibility, and a deep understanding of how cultural spaces actually work. If we want this book nook to matter, the conversation must move beyond praise and into critique.

The first issue begins with scale. The space is small. It looks charming online, but spatial limitations demand intentionality. Not everything fits, and not everything deserves to. Yet after Drilon announced a call for donations, the expected flood of materials arrived. Here is the uncomfortable truth. Donation drives often trigger a certain behavior. Suddenly, everyone wants to declutter. People donate not out of cultural responsibility but out of convenience. Old magazines from airplanes, battered romance novels, twenty-year-old textbooks, and materials no longer visually or intellectually appealing somehow end up being labeled as “donations.” In reality, many of these items are the very things donors do not want in their homes anymore.

A small space filled with random, outdated, or low-quality books stops being a reading nook and becomes an overcrowded storage room pretending to be a library. And this is where the argument for curation becomes not just reasonable but absolutely necessary. A curator or cultural worker must filter the materials. A librarian or book agent should help identify what stays and what goes. A community consultation should determine what Dumangasanons actually want or need to read. The absence of such discerning processes doesn’t make the space democratic. It makes it chaotic. And chaos, in a book collection, is never neutral; it actively pushes out the materials that matter and buries the books that could have shaped young readers.

Another gap that must be addressed is the erasure of regional literature. If a book nook exists in Western Visayas, it should reflect Western Visayas. This is not optional. A dedicated space for Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a writers is not merely symbolic; it is foundational. The region has a long, rich literary lineage, yet many of its own children grow up reading only Filipino or English texts because local works are hidden, unavailable, or unprioritized. This nook could challenge that. It could become a micro-archive for Dumangas writers, a hub for regional voices that rarely get the spotlight they deserve. If this opportunity is ignored, the space simply reinforces the ongoing marginalization of local literature.

There is also a bigger question that everyone is politely avoiding. Dumangas already has libraries. So why did people immediately celebrate this new one? Why did they feel its necessity? The answer is uncomfortable but important. Either the existing libraries are inadequate, or they are inaccessible, or their programming has failed to engage the community. This is not Rock Drilon’s fault, but his initiative exposes a structural problem. If his book nook is filling a gap, that gap should be identified and publicly acknowledged. Otherwise, we are celebrating the symptom while ignoring the disease.

A reading space is not truly alive until it has programming. Shelves filled with books are not enough. Books need bodies, voices, events, and ritual. A book nook that does not celebrate National Children’s Book Day, Book Week, National Book Development Month, or other literary events remains static. It must host storytelling sessions, small workshops, discussions, reading clubs, open-mic nights for young writers. If no programming exists, then the space is merely decorative. Pretty, yes. But not transformative.

Despite all these, Rock Drilon deserves recognition. It takes courage to open a personal space to the community. It requires effort to maintain such a project. And it is admirable that someone as busy as he still invests in something this culturally meaningful. But good intentions are only the beginning. A book nook can become a cultural lifeline, or it can collapse into irrelevance. The difference lies in direction.

If Rock Drilon shapes this space with purpose, curation, community consultation, regional pride, and consistent programming, then the book nook will thrive. If not, it risks becoming yet another well-meaning project that slowly fades, overwhelmed by mismatched donations and the absence of vision.

The hope is that this space evolves into what Dumangas truly deserves. Not a cute corner. Not a donation dump. But a powerful, vibrant cultural site that honors literature, nurtures readers, and reflects the identity of the community it claims to serve.

In the spirit of fairness, we are also publishing the reaction of Magnet Gallery which organized the Dumangas library:

Thank you for taking the time to write about the new community book nook in Dumangas. Critique is always welcome, but only when it is grounded in verified information. Many of the assumptions raised in the article do not reflect our actual processes, programming, or intentions, so we’d like to clarify a few points for transparency.

1.The book nook is not a private hobby, nor is it “inside someone’s home.”
It is part of Magnet Gallery’s ongoing cultural initiative, run by volunteers, artists, student workers, and community partners. It exists for the community, and its development continues to be shaped with the community.

2.The library is curated and follows structure.
– We implement the Dewey Decimal System, using an established reference site as our model.
– Damaged or outdated materials including magazines and Reader’s Digest are stored separately.
– All accepted books are encoded by our student volunteers. We maintain a detailed internal database tracking book titles, authors, donation dates, and donors to ensure organization and proper acknowledgment. A summary of our collection and donations is available for public viewing, without revealing personal donor information.

3.Programming already exists – and has existed since 2024.
– The PSN poetry readings held last year will continue this month under the new program POETIKA, soon to be paired with regular book readings and storytelling sessions.
– These activities were not “missing”; they were simply not verified before being written about.

4.We give priority to local authors and their works.
– We already maintain dedicated shelves for Ilonggo writers. At present we have works from four Ilonggo authors and hope to expand this section as more local writers donate copies of their books. Our collection can only grow from what is made available to us.

5.The children’s section is underway.
– We are currently developing an additional dedicated space for children’s books to integrate early readership with art.

6.The book nook has community guidance.
– We work with pro bono community consultants who help us shape the space, the collection, and its programming. This is not a random accumulation of books but a guided, intentional project.

7.This project is entirely volunteer-driven.
– Artists, students, cultural workers, and community members share their time to keep the library organized, clean, catalogued, and welcoming.
– Every donor will also receive an acknowledgment email once the current batch of books is fully encoded.

8.And yes, this is a work in progress.
– We do not claim perfection. What we do claim is transparency, sincerity, and a steady commitment to improving what we can, with the resources we have.

We appreciate discourse, and we welcome suggestions grounded in actual observation. We only ask that future commentaries about the space extend the same courtesy we extend to the community: ask first, verify first, then critique.

Everyone involved is simply trying their best to build something meaningful for Dumangas one book, one shelf, one volunteer hour at a time. – Magnet Gallery