C A N VA S
Megan personally enjoys the aspect of creating by herself
and calls it “empowering”. She explains, “Everything is
straightforward and immediate—essentially, it is as simple as
making something and putting it out. It really gives us full
creative control which allows us to stay true to the work we want
to make. Mainstream publishing doesn’t afford us the same.”
While she acknowledges how “zines in general have
[recently] been improving in terms of quality”, she still thinks
that “what I’ve been doing so far through self-publishing would
be possible through mainstream publishing companies. It’s also
really important to note that this has always been the point, to
subvert the existing practices and conditions.”
“Genuinely collaborative”
The feminist-oriented, indie publishing group Gantala Press was
founded by Faye Cura in 2015. Today, the press is comprised
of women artists, editors, and writers who volunteers their
time and efforts into publishing books and holding activities
that tackle important subjects such as violence against women,
state repression of activists and farmers, food production and
land reform, war and internal displacement, lesbian invisibility,
migrant work, and workers' rights. Most of their recent works
have focused on engaging with communities that "do not have
the means nor the inclination (because they never thought it was
an option) to write their own stories and have their stories heard."
The collective explains, “We believe that everyone has a story
to tell and that sharing this story is a valuable contribution to the
collective action of speaking out, of claiming better living and
working conditions, of demanding for justice accountability, etc.”
They are currently in collaboration with the Amihan
National Federation of Peasant Women, and have previously
worked with the NAMASUFA union workers on strike and
KASAMA-LR, a group fighting for genuine land reform in
Cavite. Through these community writing projects, where
they immerse in communities to conduct workshops and
collate literary outputs directly from community members,
they hope “to document the lives of ordinary Filipina women
in their own words” and “encourage more women to speak
out against everyday forms of oppression and violence”. They
add: “We hope that these texts would serve as a valuable
resource for students, so that the scholarship on women, land,
and history would grow and more Filipinos would have
access to local knowledge and wisdom which will inform our
collective pursuit for a better life.”
Gantala Press is more interested in publishing “genuinely
collaborative, truly collectively written work rather than
individually authored”. She explains, “The more writers there are,
the more issues are discussed, or the more perspectives are offered
if there is only one issue at hand.”
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“[Independent publishing]
has helped me recognize
that if you’re involved
in any kind of art, you
can’t remain in a vacuum,
and that art-making
is senseless without
community.”
Members of Gantala Press taking part in
a demonstration against TRAIN Law.