Editor’s note: These are remarks delivered by the author at the recent online launch of the book “Necessary Contexts: Essays for Our Times,” published by Gantala Press and Alfredo F. Tadiar Library.

As I begin, I thought of mentioning an important detail that caught my eye in Rosario
Garcellano’s first book, “Mean Streets: Essays on the Knife Edge.” On page 8, there is
information about the publication of the book; at the end of the page, it says: “Printed and
bound by Filipino Workers in the Republic of the Philippines.”
This message also appears in “Necessary Contexts,” but Rosario Garcellano also writes in
the last few pages: “It takes a village not only to raise a child but also to produce a book.”
We get to see a community behind the production of these fascinating essays, and perhaps,
this community shaped by progressive politics invites me to always take refuge in her work
and recognize the value of disseminating her beautiful prose in my classes.
Yet, in writing or composition classes, confronting the task of teaching craftsmanship in
writing an essay can be a conservative pedagogical concern, especially with all the political
critiques waged against formalists. The role of craft has been an unreliable subject, and it
seems the interests have been in the production of political platitudes.
However, Rosario Garcellano refutes this shibboleth and, instead, reveals how the
craftsmanship of an essay is a political practice and a revelation of an author’s insurgent
imagination. The craft poured into every sentence is a labor of commitment with the meaning
and value of every word, ensuring the stability and integrity of the signified of every signifier,
turning craftsmanship with words, not as a mere sign of privilege in education, but as a
construction of a stable system of meaning-making, which an author shares as a gift, hoping
to guide people on how to think about the world, making every reading experience as a path
to a progressive imagination of one’s future. 
Perhaps, the vision of a progressive future that I share with my students through “Mean
Streets” and now, “Necessary Contexts,” is also a horizon of thinking in which the creative
but also radical mind of Rosario Garcellano forms an arch, leading us to a historical path that
has evolved and been paved, dating back to 1991 with the publication of her first book, and
now 2022, the publication of her second.

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For decades, she has been providing a framework through which we can read and imagine a
practice of writing against a larger world that is perpetually changing, making writing less and
less committed to its political responsibility and historical tasks of providing handrails
towards social transformation. More so, it is a work that also brings back the question of
being human in a world that is becoming less and less humane. With the seeming reign of
the fascist forces, seeing death and disappearances as crucial strategies in state
governance, “Necessary Contexts” is a work that will be indispensable for our collective survival and political redemption.

Jomar Cuartero is a faculty member of Ateneo de Manila University’s English Department
and a holder of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in comparative literature from the University
of the Philippines Diliman. His research interests have revolved around the archive of
Isabelo de los Reyes, but he also explores such a body of work from an interdisciplinary
practice, navigating between the fields of anthropology and comparative literature. At
present, he is drawn to questions on the role of the archive, folk subject formation, the birth
of the working class in colonial Philippines, and the meaning of Europe by the turn of the
20th century. 

The book is available through Gantala Press Shopee and Puon Tadiar Library
([email protected]).