Gatekeeper of Philippine Culture: Linda Nietes-Little to Receive Banaag Award

In February Linda Nietes-Little, owner of Philippine Expression Bookshop in San Pedro received a remarkable letter from the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles informing her she is one of the recipients of the 2021 Banaag Award, as part of the Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas.

“This award does not belong to me alone,” Nietes said in her announcement. “It also belongs to all members of our Filipino American and Filipino communities all over the U.S. and in the diaspora, who have expressed their appreciation for the work I have been doing through Philippine Expressions Bookshop.”

The Banaag Award is bestowed on Filipino individuals or organizations for their contributions that have significantly benefited a sector of the diaspora, or advanced the cause and interest of overseas Filipino communities. The award is presented by the president during a ceremony at the Presidential Museum and Library, Malacañan Palace in Manila. 

While the ceremony and celebration are on hold until the pandemic subsides, the Philippine presidential elections are scheduled for May 9. Linda told Random Lengths News that President Rodrigo Duterte, who is part of that committee, won’t be president. Last October, Duterte said he was going to retire from politics when his term ends. 

For 50 years, Linda has been a cultural activist and gatekeeper of Philippine culture. Philippine Expression, which she opened in 2016, is just the latest bookstore she has opened.

Here, she has hosted many literary soirees since opening. Before the pandemic and subsequent closures hit, Linda was hosting poetry readings, book talks and book releases and music events practically every month. Native Philippine gong music and rondalla, an ensemble of plucked string instruments and music genre brought to the islands by Spanish colonizers, was often heard from her shop.

She started her personal collection of books in the 1960s when she graduated from college. She said she never thought that she would end up being a bookshop owner.

Linda, who is 85, said she will retire in December and someone may take over Philippine Expression’s online operation.

But her brain is still immersed in this business. Linda said she would like to establish small reading rooms in the Philippines — or book nooks. Her bookshop has virtual assistants, based in the Philippines, and “book scouts” who look for out of print titles for customers. Further, a prominent LA museum is interested in Linda’s indigenous art collection which is on view at Pinta*Dos Philippine Art Gallery, located directly across from her bookshop.

Young Filipina

Early in life, Linda experienced a tragic event that ultimately shaped her drive to persist and to foster knowledge in younger generations amid war and martial law. She contributed a letter to the Los Angeles Times’ Readers Remember about her experience during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. She said it was a very sad period in her life. 

At the age of seven, she lost both her mother and brother when the Japanese bombed an evacuation shelter in November 1944. Her mother died only a few yards from where she and her siblings sought shelter. In her letter Linda wrote: “The bomb seemed to have been directly aimed at our evacuation shelter. Since Papa was part of the underground guerillas who fought the Japanese it seemed like our family was a target!”

Linda’s father  later became a member of the First Congress of The Philippines. Linda said, more than anything, it’s her father who shaped her and her siblings’ experience. He said in war there are no winners. We’re all losers. 

“Some people go to war on instructions,” she said. “They don’t mean to kill but they are part of that group. But we can bear no hatred. That’s very important.” 

Upon her college graduation, Linda set out to make Japan the first country she traveled, “to know, what kind of people are they to bring devastation?” 

“We suffered,” she said. “So, I was intrigued by the fact that they are nice people, especially the old ones, so immersed in the aesthetics of life; the tea ceremony, their ikebana flower arrangement. You have to see behind the screen of war to be able to really know the people themselves.”

Manila

Linda opened her first bookstore in Manila the same year President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and ruled accordingly for the next nine years. Up until that point, Linda was a 35-year-old operations manager in Merrill Lynch’s Hong Kong offices. When people came to visit her, they saw her book collection and always asked her where she got them. Linda decided it was time to return home and experience what her countrymen were experiencing, rather than read about it from a distance.

At the time, Manila only had two major bookshops, which also sold all kinds of imports. Linda wanted her bookshop to be purely about the Philippines. 

She opened Casalinda Bookshop in Manila, but living and working under Marcos’ so-called “constitutional authoritarianism” proved to be a risk. 

Linda kept the bookstore open up until the final two years of Marcos’ reign. Military men under Marcos would regularly visit the bookshop. Linda said sometimes men in uniform were book lovers so, at first, she thought they were just perusing the books. She was happy when they first started to visit, but soon realized, “of course, they were scrutinizing every shelf.” Linda understood they were there for a purpose. 

“They wanted to see if there (were) subversive materials,” she said, “I guess they knew that I was friends with some people with different ideas. It made me think one time, after one of their visits, it’s not safe. Someone could plant materials and I could get called to the military court. It’s very ironic. I opened a bookshop because of martial law and I left the country and my bookshop because of it.” 

Linda came to the United States in 1984. She had no further repercussions from the occupation, after reaching the U.S. However, she was extra careful. One of the first things she did upon arriving in the states was to learn martial arts. She never had to use it, but Linda did know she had to stay one step ahead.

New and Ancient Culture

After arriving in the U.S., Linda moved to Westwood. At that time, she frequently rode the bus through the Wilshire corridor  full of shops and places for rent — a good location for a bookshop, she thought. Linda had no model to work from. It would be the first Philippine bookshop in the U.S. 

Linda opened Philippine Expression specifically to help inform young Filipinos of their culture. Of the 4.2 million Filipino Americans in the U.S., more than 500,000 live in Los Angeles as of 2019. She noted a large number of young Filipinos have never been to the Philippines.

In 1984, you could count on one hand the number of Filipino authors. Now there are many. The self-publishing trend too, she said, has helped. 

“You must love it with a passion to have a career as a bookseller, otherwise you won’t last,” she said. “I could have had another career in finance …  that’s my training. But that’s not really building a community.”

When she was in Westwood, Linda said UCLA students would come in for books — Americans of Philippine ancestry. The next time she saw them they would have PhDs and some worked in academia. They told her the books reinforced their feelings about being Filipino. That made it even more interesting to her because she’d like to feel she helped a lot, “in the literal sense,” the education of her people and making them engage in reading, in books and writing.

“[When the] Spaniards saw the beautifully tattooed inhabitants of the archipelago — not a republic — that’s why they called the Filipinos Las Pintates or The Painted Ones,” Linda said.  “[With] beautiful designs and different colors on their bodies, that only gives you the idea that even before the west came to the Philippines, we already had our sense of culture, our sense of ethics. And of course 350 years of Spanish colonization destroyed all that. Then the Japanese came, then the Americans and now we’re free but not totally free because there are remnants of colonization in the psyche of our people. 

“That’s why offering the books for the young people to read, to make them proud of their ancestry, I hope to build their self respect, well being and pride in their culture.”

Philippine Expressions Bookshop

479 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Open 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday and by appointment.

310-514-9139; www.philippinebookshop.com and info@philippinebookshop.com