A Necessary Beginning: An Interview

Abstract

N. V M. Gonzalez was born in 1915 in Romblon and moved to Mindoro at the age offive. The son of a school supervisor and a teacher, he studied at National University in Manila, but never obtained a degree. While in Manila, Gonzalez wrotefor the Philippine Graphic and editedfor the Evening News Magazine and Manila Chronicle. In 1948, he received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to Stanford and Columbia University, in New York City. After he returned to the Philippines in 1950, he began a long teaching career. In addition, he hosted thefirst University of the Philippines writers' workshop and was thefirstpresident of the Philippine Writers'Association. When he returned to California in the 1960s, Gonzalez taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara, California State University at Hayward, and the University of California at Los Angeles. Gonzalez publishedfourteen books and received many prestigious awards, including the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awardfor Literature, the Jose Rizal Pro Patria Award, and the City of Manila Medal of Honor. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Philippines in 1987, and in 1988 he became itsfirst international writer-in-residence. In the late nineties, he served as a regents professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Despite Gonzalez's travels, he never gave up his Filipino citizenship, and he resisted becoming part of the community of Filipino American writers. His most notable works include the novels The Winds of April, The Bamboo Dancers, and A Season of Grace; the short-story collections Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and The Bread of Salt and Other Stories; and the essay collections Work on the Mountain and The Novel of Justice: Selected Essays. He died in 1999 at age 84. Thefollowing conversation took place in Hayward, California, in September 1980.