Raymond Antrobus and the problem of asking who a book is for

In a conversation about fiction and reading, Raymond Antrobus, poet and one of the judges of the 2026 Booker Prize, emphasized an idea that sounds simple but carries profound implications: fiction can expand a reader, and our understanding becomes limited when we insist on defining who a book is for and who it is not for. For Antrobus, a reader does not have to share the identity or experience represented in a work to have a reason to enter it. One of fiction’s essential functions, after all, is to place us before lives that are not our own. I agree with this because, at its best, reading is not simply an act of recognizing what is familiar but an exercise in encountering what is not. Yet as I think about Antrobus’s point, I cannot remain with the abstract idea of “the reader.” I inevitably return to a particular place, a city where questions about who reads, what gets read, and whose stories travel have their own history: Iloilo.

I understand Antrobus’s point more intimately when I think about my own relationship with Iloilo. The city is familiar to me in ways that are difficult to explain to someone encountering it for the first time through a book. There are places I do not need to describe in my mind because they already exist in memory; there are words and jokes I do not need to translate; there are ways of speaking that I understand not only because of their literal meaning but because of their tone and context. But when these things enter a book, their status changes. Ordinary life becomes literary material, and a local experience can become a doorway for someone who has no personal connection to it. This is where fiction becomes interesting: it does not have to make a place familiar before making it worth reading. It can allow a reader to remain a stranger for a while and then gradually teach that reader how to look.

Part of the problem lies in the way we use the word “regional.” The term is important because literary traditions need to be understood within their own histories and linguistic contexts, especially in a country as culturally and linguistically diverse as the Philippines. But sometimes a label that should provide context becomes a label that closes the conversation. When we call a novel from Iloilo “regional,” there is a danger that our interest ends there: it is local, therefore it is for local readers; it is written in Hiligaynon, therefore it is for Hiligaynon speakers; it is about a particular community, therefore outsiders do not need to approach it. Such classifications may seem practical, but they can reduce a work to its point of origin. A book can have a particular address without having a small imagination.

There is a contradiction here that is worth examining in the Philippines. We often ask for more voices from the regions, yet when those voices emerge, we immediately place them under the category of “regional,” as though we must first establish where they come from before discussing what they do as literature. Meanwhile, certain urban and metropolitan experiences are more easily treated as representative of the “Filipino experience” without having to defend their particularity. I am not suggesting that we should erase the distinction between local and national literature. The more important question is why one kind of particularity is allowed to appear universal while another remains regional. I think this is where power enters the conversation, not only in determining who gets to write, but also in determining which stories are made to appear as though they belong to everyone.

In Iloilo, the question of language makes this even more visible. Hiligaynon is not simply a communication tool that can be replaced by Filipino or English whenever we want to reach a larger audience. It has its own cadence, humor, intimacy, social codes, and ways of giving meaning to ordinary experiences. Some things feel different when expressed in Hiligaynon than when translated into Filipino, while other things cannot be carried completely into another language. This is not a reason to make Hiligaynon literature exclusive; it is a reason to take its linguistic specificity seriously. Translation matters because it allows a work to travel, but translation should not become a requirement before we recognize the literary value of a language.

As a reader, I also understand that familiarity has its own limitations. Because I know a place, I may assume that I already understand a story that comes from it. I may overlook details that someone without a personal attachment to that place notices immediately. An outside reader may ask about something that seems ordinary to me, and that question may open another way of reading. This is why I do not believe that being local automatically gives someone superior understanding. It simply provides a different position. A reader from Iloilo and a reader encountering Iloilo for the first time through a book may see things the other does not. Neither perspective needs to cancel the other.

This is where criticism becomes important. A critic should not become a gatekeeper who determines who is qualified to participate in a literary conversation, but neither should criticism be afraid to make difficult judgments about a work. For me, responsible criticism begins with an awareness that our tastes have histories. Our education, language, class, geographic location, and exposure to different literatures affect what we recognize as excellent, important, accessible, or difficult. This does not mean that everything is merely subjective and that standards no longer matter. It means that we should be conscious of the position from which we read and make judgments.

There is another dimension that is often overlooked: access to reading is unequal. It is easy to tell people that they should be open to different kinds of literature when they have money to buy books, libraries within reach, enough time to read, and an education that gives them confidence to enter literary spaces. But these conditions are not equally available in the Philippines. Some children grow up in homes filled with books, while for others, textbooks are the only books they regularly encounter. Some readers are comfortable with English, while others enter a story more naturally when it is written in Filipino or a regional language. Some people can walk into a bookstore whenever they want, while others depend on libraries, secondhand copies, digital access, or books passed from one friend to another. Readership, therefore, is not simply a matter of personal preference; it is shaped by material conditions.

This is also where publishing becomes part of the conversation. If we are serious about expanding literary culture in cities like Iloilo, it is not enough to produce good books. We also have to think about how those books reach the people who might read them. Distribution, libraries, schools, independent bookstores, community reading spaces, translation, affordable editions, and programs that do not assume that literary audiences already exist all matter. A book can be excellent and still remain invisible if it never reaches the places where potential readers are. In this sense, the problem of readership does not belong to readers alone; it is also shaped by the infrastructure that determines what people can easily find.

There is a danger in the opposite direction, too. When we want to support local literature, we can become overly protective and lose our critical distance. Not every work from Iloilo needs to be praised simply because it is Ilonggo, just as a work from Manila is not automatically more important because it is closer to national cultural institutions. A healthy literary culture should be able to love its own place without becoming blind to its weaknesses. If we genuinely value regional literature, we should subject it to the same intellectual seriousness we give literature from cultural centers. Support does not mean the absence of criticism; criticism can be a sign that we take a literature seriously.

This is why Antrobus’s observation matters to me, not because I believe every book is equally for everyone. Literature is not that simple. Some works require particular contexts, some experiences need to be approached with sensitivity, and some communities have legitimate reasons to challenge how their lives are represented. Openness to a work is not permission to appropriate another person’s experience. The challenge is to learn how to listen without claiming ownership of the voice we encounter. We can enter a world that is not ours while still recognizing that we are guests there.

In the age of algorithms, instant reviews, ratings, and personalized recommendations, this kind of literary openness becomes even more important. It has become remarkably easy to construct a reading life made almost entirely of familiar things: the same genres, themes, aesthetics, and worldviews. Recommendations are useful because they help us discover books, but they can also make discovery predictable. There is value in the book we were not looking for, the work we do not immediately understand, and the text we cannot neatly describe after the first reading. Not every reading experience needs to be transformative, but if we always choose only what we already know we will like, we lose one of literature’s essential possibilities: surprise.

This is why I do not want to remain with the simple argument that “fiction can be for everyone.” What interests me more is what happens between a book and its reader. A story from Iloilo may give me recognition, while giving another reader a sense of estrangement and curiosity. A novel from another country may make me feel like a stranger in the world I am reading, but that unfamiliarity can become the beginning of learning. Two readers do not have to respond to a book in the same way for it to be meaningful. In fact, part of a work’s value may lie in its ability to generate different readings without exhausting its possibilities.

As someone rooted in Iloilo, I do not want this place to become an exotic backdrop simply to make a story interesting. Neither do I want stories from here to be constantly explained to outsiders as though there were only one correct version of what it means to be Ilonggo. Iloilo is not a static cultural object. It changes with the people who leave and return, the families that evolve, the communities that arrive, the languages that overlap, and the old places that gradually transform. If literature is to speak honestly about this city, it must also be willing to accommodate its contradictions. Iloilo is a place with a deep memory and a changing present, and its literature should have enough room for both.

What I find valuable in Raymond Antrobus’s observation is that it gives me a reason to reconsider not only how I read but how we build literary culture. We do not need to abandon categories, audiences, genres, identities, or regional distinctions; we simply need to remember that these are ways of understanding literature, not its prisons. A Hiligaynon work can remain deeply rooted in Iloilo and still speak to someone who has never been here. A reader can begin with his or her own experience and end with a question about someone else’s life. For me, that is where fiction becomes meaningful: it does not have to erase the distance between people, but it gives us the opportunity to look across that distance with curiosity, humility, and enough imagination to recognize that a world that is not ours can still matter to us.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at the University of the Philippines Visayas. He teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He currently serves as faculty-in-charge of the UP Visayas Language Program Office and as secretary of the National Committee on Literary Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). His poetry has been recognized by the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.