Kwento by Nica, a Living Memoir

Kwento by Nica is as a memoir but it is also a multi-modal memoir. Moving beyond the confines of print, this manuscript asserts that personal narratives can exist on the internet. This body of work has a unique purpose: to provide unheard voices a channel to get their stories known and accessible so they too can participate in the shaping of history.

Kwento by Nica draws inspiration from critical texts such as Roland Barthes's Death of the Author, T.S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent, and Antonio Gramsci’s Formation of the Intellectuals, as a way to articulate how memoir as art can challenge hegemony, invite co-creation with the reader, while challenging and following tradition.

Structurally, this memoir rejects a single, linear narrative, and instead adopts a fragmented layering of stories. Works by Anne Frank, Khalida Brohi, and Roberto Lovato demonstrate the genre's capacity for real-world activism and exposure of deeply influential histories such as the holocaust, tribal life in Pakistan, and the war in El Salvador. Kwento by Nica exposes the impacts of post-colonial elitism in Metro Manila and the challenges of a working life in California.

This memoir attempts to follow the footsteps of the avant-garde art movement, particularly Suprematism by Kazimir Malevich and Constructivism by Liubbov Popova making the Living Memoir an interdisciplinary scaffolding of new-age storytelling. Shapes, letters, threads, and staples are deeply embedded throughout the body of work.

Kwento by Nica is meant to articulate how a continuous "living" literary art form has the potential to spark change in the digital age.