For their August issue, the American magazine The Atlantic sent social media into a frenzy as the cover read “The Age of Reading is Over.” It was accompanied by an essay by staff writer Rose Horowitch, which discussed the history of the written word and how society is currently evolving into video, leaving reading behind.
Rachel Arandilla, owner of independent bookstore Flora and Faun Bookshop in Cebu, is not really scared of that.
“What makes me happy is that reading and bookshops like this one get us talking again,” she says. “Touching grass. Discussing ideas in person. Finding people who care about the same thing.”
On paper, Flora and Faun is a bookshop. But the space is much more versatile. Every week, it livens up for magic workshops, crackles in snaps for poetry nights, and invites princesses and demon hunters in for kids’ book readings.
“I’ve always thought of a bookshop as a third space,” Arandilla explains the ethos behind expanding the store to cater to these local events. “When we built ours, the intent was never just a room to read in, like a library. It was a place for events, for gathering, for community.”
They couldn’t have chosen a better house for Flora and Faun than the historic Patria de Cebu. Arandilla says there “was no rational thought or logic” behind her decision to have it in Patria. She just “fell in love with the space.”
It seems fitting that her attempt to build a space for the community was, in turn, built by one. Established in 1954, the Patria de Cebu was a youth recreation center built brick by brick by young Cebuano men and women who recited a Hail Mary with each hollow block they made. It was an amusement spot for many, a budget-friendly lodging for some, and even a convent for nuns at one point.
In 1986, it lent its walls to the fight for a free election, the one that set off the EDSA Revolution, by providing office space to the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, the volunteer organization for watching the polls.
In 2019, plans to demolish the Patria drew pushback from many Cebuanos who saw its significance in preserving their heritage. It was redeveloped this year, ahead of Sinulog, keeping the building’s footprint and facade.
Arandilla already has two other bookshops under her name: Sincerely Books and Dear Reader. But she knew that downtown Cebu needed a bookshop of its own. Flora and Faun serves, whether intentionally or not, to continue the tradition of Patria as a space for recreation and culture.
The bookshop proudly shelves Cebuano books and authors. Big or small, she notes, “from major publishing houses to self-published authors, across every genre.”
She names a lot of Cebuano titles the shop is proud to host, but one in particular stands out as germane. In Flora and Faun, you can read “The Feast of the Santo Niño” by Cebu’s first National Artist for Literature, Resil Mojares.
Mojares was one of the country’s greatest thinkers. His passing in early September left a dent in the Filipino literary community. His work on the Santo Niño is a detailed historical account of Cebu’s relationship with the Child Jesus, whose original relic rests in the Basilica Minore del Sto Niño, a stone’s throw away from Flora and Faun.
This is the magic that you’ll find in this bookshop. Digging into one book can lead you to a statue, a place, a history of an entire province. Flora and Faun is a treasure map. All you have to do is dig.
“What started as ‘Why open a bookshop in this generation?’ [turned] to ‘Wow, we really do need spaces like these!’,” Arandilla professes.
She calls the market the shop attracts “interesting,” as its patrons are either from the older generations or the youngest ones. Either way, there is what she calls a “hunger” for spaces like these, whether people are actually there to read or not.
“It’s all about holding events and the people behind the stories,” Arandilla shares. “We want to meet them, put them in front of a room, and show others that it’s possible for them, too.”
The hunger for a good story is insatiable, it seems. History always has its tricks to tell it: orally, through writing, and now, as The Atlantic argues, through video.
The past few years have appeared to stretch the limits, whether for better or for worse, with artificial intelligence producing novels and movies out of thin air with little human input.
While Arandilla is not entirely against it (the “boring, routine, administrative work” is culled from her list of activities), she does have one hope.
“My hope is we leave the making of beautiful things to humans,” she shared. “A physical bookshop is a bet on exactly that: the book someone wrote, in a room with the people who want to read it.”
Photography Ethan Gipanao
