For whom do writers write. For what? - Carlos Bulosan

MANILA - Filipino American poet Barbara Jane Reyes quotes Carlos Bulosan as saying ("Reading Carlos Bulosan: For Whom and About What Do We Write," 27 January 2011, barbarajanereyes.com):

Why should I write about labor unions and their struggle? Because a writer is also a worker. He writes stories, for example, and sells them or tries to sell them. They are products of his brain. They are commodities. Then again, the writer is also a citizen; and as a citizen he must safeguard his civil rights and liberties. Life is a collective work and also a social reality. Therefore, the writer must participate with his fellow man in the struggle to protect, to brighten, to fulfill life. Otherwise he has no meaning - a nothing.

Before the quote, Barbara says:

I really appreciate Bulosan's thoughts on the publishing industry, and what it means for him to be a writer, what his social and political role is, as a writer.

Barbara explains the passage in this manner:

The above excerpt is self-explanatory. I know of writers who disagree fervently with this, the social responsibility of the writer. It´s coercive, I´ve heard some complain, to expect writers to engage the real world and its sociopolitical realities. I don´t agree with these complainers, and indeed, my only potential complaint would be when the social responsibility is fettered within limited sets of aesthetics. Ultimately, I applaud Bulosan for his very clear, even defiant statement.

If I understand her correctly, I imagine Barbara saying that writers may be shirking their responsibility to the world, which is their own. Writers cannot ignore the world that feeds their stomachs and their minds, that entertains them, that informs and disinforms them. Even when or where they live on rarefied air, writers should not forget that they need the ground to stand on.

I explain this Carlos Bulosan excerpt this way:

A writer is a producer; his stories are his produce, and he offers them for sale. He works for himself. But the writer is also a citizen, so he must work for society, at the very least to protect civil rights and liberties.

The ultimate message of Bulosan in that quote lies in these words: "Therefore, the writer must participate with his fellow man in the struggle to protect, to brighten, to fulfill life." Fiction or non-fiction, to protect, to brighten, to fulfill life, even if sometimes it is only to write about the nutrition afforded by the fruits hanging by a trellis of a vegetable vine. (I took this photograph along Bulosan Avenue in Bulosan's hometown of Binalonan, Pangasinan on the centennial of his birth, 02 November 2011.) A writer must write anywhere within the hierarchy of the needs of man, to follow Abraham Maslow; otherwise, he writes nothing, or, he writes only for himself, his meaning is only for his own erudition. A writer must write not only about private lives. A writer must help fulfill life, and not only his own.