Miguel Augusto Gabriel J. Syjuco: I’m kind of active on social media and I do respond to people in terms of debate. I can counter and interact with perspectives that are different from mine and I see that as magical. For example, I haunt message boards—not about my work but just about current events; I like Fox News. I guess I’m admittedly left-wing, so what I do is I read articles from the right wing and I read the message boards because I want to understand how other people think. I’m not one of those who will just stay in the echo chamber and read only articles that will affirm my own sense of self and my own beliefs.
I like challenging and rewarding my readers. I like to think that a lot of people who like my kind of writing read my book. Reading is a very personal thing, so I like to be able to connect with the right kind of people rather than just everybody—people who like a little bit of a challenge, who are willing to engage with the book cooperatively in the sense that if they don’t understand exactly where it’s going at all times, or if they come across words that they’ve never encountered before, they don’t just blame the author for their ignorance, or for their yearning for security; they’re willing to take a journey and learn new things. It’s because I also see reading as being collaborative. All too often, we read books because we want to escape, or we want to be taken by the hand and held along. I don’t see my work as that kind of work. That’s not what I want to write. I want to write work that gets people thinking, that leaves them with as many questions as answers. That’s what I look for in a book when I read, and those are the kinds of readers I hope to reach through my writing.
I try to understand these very prickly, abstract social problems and bring them down to the human level through my characters, in hopes that the reader will grapple with that as well and come out with a deeper understanding of these issues.
I try to understand the world, to help other people understand it. I don’t write to be loved at all [laughs]. In fact, if I’m upsetting people, I feel like maybe I’m doing something right. I’m trying to cast light on what is still hidden, to talk about things people refuse to talk about. I try to examine different aspects of inequality and censorship, and propriety is something I think artists really must wrestle with.
I don’t like living in places where I fit in or feel too comfortable. I find that you become a bit diminished and less aware of your surroundings.
I’m not part of the literary scene and I don’t go to poetry readings and I don’t blurb books, because I feel that does affect the work. It becomes more about the work being for other people than being something that is personal to you that you want to prepare and then share when it’s ready. I think that might be a little detrimental and that’s why I don’t stay in Brooklyn or Berlin.
I live a very hermetic life. I can target politicians, I can make fun of them, I can let them know that we’re watching.
