In transit: Bangsamoro speaks

By Noel Galon de Leon

One of the greatest failures of Philippine literature is not the absence of talented writers. It is our persistent inability to imagine the nation in its full complexity. Even today, when we speak of “Philippine literature,” we often refer to works produced in Manila, written in Filipino or English, or sanctioned by institutions that have long dictated the country’s literary canon. Bangsamoro literature continues to exist at the margins of this national imagination. For many Filipinos, Bangsamoro is more familiar as the subject of news reports about armed conflict, extremism or poverty than as a site of literary production. It is precisely for this reason that In Transit: Selected Works from Bangsamoro Literary Review 2021–2025 deserves urgent attention. It is not merely another anthology. It is an intervention into the way Philippine literature has been written, taught and remembered.

The importance of this collection lies in its refusal to accept one of the oldest myths of the Philippine literary establishment: that the nation possesses a single, coherent narrative. The Bangsamoro that emerges from these pages is not a peripheral region waiting to be absorbed into a national story. Nor is it the exoticized Muslim South that has too often appeared in tourism campaigns, textbooks and even literary representations produced outside the region. Instead, the anthology presents Bangsamoro as a living intellectual and cultural landscape shaped by multiple histories, languages, ethnic communities, religious traditions and political experiences. It reminds readers that diversity is not an exception to the Philippine experience. It is the Philippine experience.

One of the anthology’s most compelling arguments is its insistence that contemporary Bangsamoro literature has moved beyond assertion toward articulation. For decades, Bangsamoro writing understandably centered on the struggle for recognition against political exclusion and historical injustice. Today, however, the question has fundamentally changed. The challenge is no longer simply, “Who are we?” It is, “How do we live after conflict? How do we negotiate peace, memory, faith, governance, and the uncertainties of the future?” This shift is significant because it redefines literature not merely as an instrument of resistance but as a space where societies confront ambiguity, negotiate contradictions and imagine new forms of collective life.

In an era dominated by algorithmic feeds, viral outrage and compressed attention spans, In Transit serves as a necessary reminder that some histories cannot be reduced to headlines, infographics or 60-second videos. There are experiences that demand careful listening rather than instant opinion. There are histories whose complexity resists the speed of digital consumption. For decades, Bangsamoro has been interpreted by outsiders who have often mistaken representation for understanding. This anthology reverses that dynamic by allowing Bangsamoro writers to become interpreters of their own realities rather than objects of someone else’s narrative.

Equally significant is the anthology’s willingness to confront one of the defining questions of contemporary literary culture: the rise of artificial intelligence in creative writing. Its position is remarkably nuanced. It does not indulge in technological panic, nor does it embrace technological optimism without reservation. Instead, it frames the issue as an ethical question. Literature, particularly literature emerging from communities marked by displacement, violence and historical marginalization, cannot be separated from lived experience, moral accountability and the difficult labor of memory. Artificial intelligence may imitate language with astonishing fluency, but it cannot inherit trauma, assume historical responsibility or bear witness to human suffering. That distinction is not merely philosophical. It defines the difference between producing text and producing literature.

The anthology also advances one of the most intellectually provocative discussions of identity in recent Philippine literary discourse. Rather than defining Bangsamoro identity through rigid categories of ethnicity, bloodline or language, it proposes a more expansive understanding grounded in political commitment, historical consciousness and ethical responsibility. This challenges essentialist notions of identity that continue to dominate public discourse. Identity, as the anthology argues, is not a biological inheritance but a continual act of positioning oneself in relation to history, community and shared struggle. Such a position does not weaken Bangsamoro identity. On the contrary, it acknowledges the historical realities that have always made Bangsamoro society internally diverse and intellectually dynamic.

Perhaps the anthology’s most provocative contribution, however, is not what it says about Bangsamoro but what it reveals about the Philippines itself. Read carefully, In Transit exposes the limitations of the country’s dominant literary imagination. The burden should not fall on Bangsamoro writers to make themselves legible to the nation. Rather, it is the nation that must expand its imagination to accommodate histories it has long ignored or misunderstood. For too long, regional literatures have been treated as supplements to a Manila-centered canon, as though the country’s literary history radiates outward from a single cultural center. This is not merely an outdated framework. It is a form of internal cultural colonialism that continues to shape publishing, criticism, literary awards, academic curricula and institutional recognition.

If Philippine literary institutions are genuinely committed to diversity, then the publication of anthologies such as In Transit cannot remain a symbolic gesture. Universities must teach them. Publishers must invest in them. Critics must engage them seriously rather than treating them as regional curiosities. National literary history itself must be rewritten to reflect the multiplicity of voices that have always existed but have too often been excluded from the canon. Inclusion is not achieved by adding one more chapter to an old narrative. It requires rethinking the narrative itself.

In Transit: Selected Works from Bangsamoro Literary Review 2021–2025 is far more than a collection of poems, stories and essays. It is an invitation to reconsider the assumptions upon which Philippine literature has been built. It asks readers to abandon the comfort of simplified national narratives and to confront the country’s unresolved histories with greater intellectual honesty. If we are serious about creating a Philippine literature that truly reflects the nation in all its diversity, then reading In Transit is not an optional exercise in multicultural appreciation. It is an intellectual and ethical necessity.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the Secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.