Literary Colonization and Locating Avenues of Subversion in Bobby Flores-Villasis' Suite Bergamasque

This paper examines four short stories included in the collection titled Suite Bergamasque, written by multi-awarded Negrense playwright and fictionist Bobby Flores-Villasis. A materialist reading situates Villasis within the canon of Philippine literature in English and analyzes the way his stories formally render the class antagonisms of history through the interconnected narratives of Dumaguete City’s sugar elite. Finally, this paper also contends that the political imagination of Villasis’ work exhorts contemporary Dumaguete writers to critically examine inherited hagiographies in order to describe fully the conditions that have shaped the city into its contemporary formation, particularly the phenomena of gentrification and brain drain. Through this reading, this paper hopes to spark or contribute to the discourse surrounding the politics of Dumaguete City’s claim to be a “City of Literature.”