Contextualizing the Cebu Art Book Fair in the Era of Globalization
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This article was originally published in the Cebu Almanac 2019–2023: Pandemic Crisis and Recovery, launched by the University of San Carlos Publishing House on April 29, 2024. An Apparent Scarcity A little over a month after Supertyphoon Odette cleaved through the Visayas and parts of Mindanao, Cebu-born poet Lawrence Ypil posted on his Facebook timeline a link to an online literary folio that received a respectable amount of attention. Titled Odette in the Dark, the folio was envisioned as a “space” where Cebuanos could share their experiences of that night of the storm, and the long days, weeks, and months that followed. In his January 21 post, Ypil (2022) wrote, “We wanted to know how people fared in the storm’s aftermath. What they did in the dark in the light of candles. How many hours it took to get fuel, how many days it took before they drank iced water.” Odette in the Dark was an admirable endeavor because its namesake storm was a collective experience tha...