NOEL Alumit is always on the way up.
Maybe it’s because he’s a Capricorn and was born in the Year of the Ram, he theorizes to Radar Online.
“I’m a mountain animal all the way! I look at this as reinforcement that I’m constantly aspiring to new heights,” he said to Radar.
Alumit is a well-known Filipino-American author and one of the most prominent gay rights activists in the Filipino and Asian American community.
He’s an award-winning writer and best selling author of two books: Letters to Montgomery Clift and Talking to the Moon.
He’s also a playwright and an actor, who has performed in his own theatre plays and has appeared in popular television shows like Beverly Hills 90210, and The Young and The Restless.
A well-rounded community leader
Mostly though, he is known for his work in the Asian American community and the Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community.
He is a founding member of the HIV Prevention Planning Committee, having worked in AIDS prevention for the past 20 years. He is a Steering Committee Member of API Equality-LA, and has been in the forefront in the fight for same-sex marriage, and equal rights for the LGBT community.
He also serves as a California Commissioner on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, where he speaks to the governor and legislatures about the community.
He sits on the Advisory Board for the UCLA Art/Global Health Center and serves as a Community Advisory Boardmember for the Childrens Hospital Healthy Young Men’s Study.
Family and educational background
Born in Baguio City, Philippines, Alumit migrated to the US with his family when he was four years old.
He grew up in Historic Filipinotown and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Southern California, before studying playwriting at the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute of East West Players in Los Angeles.
According to his bio, the PEN Center USA West awarded him an Emerging Voices Fellowship. He also received a Community Access Scholarship to UCLA’s Writers Extension, where he studied fiction and personal essay form.
Works as a novelist
In 2003, he wrote his debut book, Letters to Montgomery Clift and received much success.
The book explores the life of a young boy whose parents sent him to America to escape the Marcos dictatorship.
The book has received four to five star reviews from customers on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as several awards, including the Stonewall Book Award, American Library Association, Violet Quill Award, and Global Filipino Award, among others.
Alumit told the Oasis Journal in 2007 the book was difficult to write if it weren’t for the help of mentors and those supporting him.
“When I was working on Letters to Montgomery Clift, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, you know? What really helped, once again, was that mentoring program,” he said.
“Unfortunately they don’t have something like that in San Francisco, but it paired me up with a seasoned novelist who was able to look at my book and say, ‘This is what’s wrong with it. This is what you need to fix.’ Getting that kind of feedback was really important to me. It also allowed me to take classes at UCLA Extension, which introduced me to an array of people who were very beneficial to my career.”
“All of those things helped me put Letters to Montgomery Clift together. It was a combination of people, places, and things that somehow managed to work, which I think ultimately is what needs to happen when writing a novel: the stars need to align somehow,” he added.
He followed up that book with his second novel, Talking to the Moon, published in 2007.
It’s an eerie story that parallels a real-life situation about the death of Filipino postman Joseph Ileto by a radical. The book became a Los Angeles Times Bestseller.
“A stunner. Talking to the Moon: birth, death, crime, loss, great echoes of the best crime fiction and mystical realism. A terrific second novel that beats the sophomore curse hands down,” wrote James Ellroy, author of LA Confidential, Black Dahlia and The Cold Six Thousand, in his review.
Gay rights advocacy
Though he’s a well-versed and highly-respected author, most people know more about Alumit’s work for the LGBT community.
In 2002, Out Magazine listed him as one of the magazine’s “Out 100 for 2002” and named one of Genre Magazine’s “Men We Love.”
He’s an advocate for same-sex marriage and equal rights.
In previous interviews with the Asian Journal, he believes Filipino and other Asian American and Pacific Islanders need to come out and support their fellow LGBT brothers and sisters.
It’s been hard work and despite the back and forth, progress and setbacks the equal rights fight has gone through over the years, his fight for the community endures.
“Something I’ve learned from my family is the importance of strength and endurance,” Alumit told the Asian Journal in a previous interview.
“When my mom and dad brought us here from the Philippines, it was hard. I saw them work and sacrifice. I was a kid who massaged my mom’s shoulders when she came home from working double-shift, as a nurse. But she still kept going. I’ve learned from her to keep going and to keep hoping.”
For Alumit, he doesn’t just keep going — he rises to the top like the Capricorn he is.
