21st Century Literature

UNIT 1 Introduction to Literature
LITERATURE
manifests the truly creative genius of a race
a faithful reproduction of life, executed in an artistic pattern. It is the orchestration of the
manifold but elemental experiences of man, blended with harmonious and desired patterns
of expressions
as old as the civilization of man
embodies the expression of his soul and collectively, the soul of the nation
unknowingly records mans experiences as he progresses in time with and against the
varying elements of life
merely words used for a specific purpose. From simple words, writers create a variety of
stories, express a gamut of emotions and dissect a range of ideas.
as a body of words, it can determine the destiny of a nation, the thinking of a state and the
standard of life in a community. It can even shape mans thinking towards his afterlife.
popularly defined as a body of writings
comes from a Latin word LITERATURA meaning writing, learning from literatus,
learned, literate
both oral and written work characterized by expressive or imaginative writing, nobility of
thoughts, universality (irrespective of race or color), and timelessness or forever
LITERARY APPRECIATION
the expression of ideas and feelings gathered from a literary piece and becomes a
springboard for other ideas and activities
intelligent reading which implies a depth of understanding so that the new ideas are
developed and fresh approaches are generated to heighten the reading pleasure
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LITERARY PROGRESS:

1. geographic nature of the country
2. experiences of the people
3. aesthetic ideals of a particular group
WHY DO WE NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?

1. pleasures of reading
2. entering a new world
3. to know man as one important object:
a. Man has a dual nature: he is not only a doer of deeds but also a dreamer of dreams.
21st Century Literature
b. Literature records not only what man has accomplished but also what he has thought
and felt, how he looks on life and death, and what he loves and fears.
om the Philippines and the World1
THE LITERARY TECHNIQUES
I. Figurative Language
1. gives new meanings to ordinary words
2. writers do not have a special language all their own, they take everyday words and
combine them in new ways to create vivid sensory images for their readers to see, hear,
touch, feel and taste
3. cannot be interpreted in the literal sense to get at the meaning
Example: Poem by David McCord
Books fall open,

You fall in,
Delighted where
Youve never been.
Most Common Figurative Languages
1. Simile - is a stated comparison between two things that are actually unlike, but have
something in common.
- they are introduced by the word like or as.
Examples: dead as a dodo

sweet like chocolate
sure as day
2. Metaphor makes a direct comparison between two unlike things that have something in
common
- does not use like or as to make a comparison
- extended metaphor term used when the comparison is used fully and
consistently throughout the selection
Examples: Chun is the star that shines in my darkest night.

Her tears are pearls glistening as they fell from her eyes.
Memory is but a shadow of what was once.
3. Personification gives human qualities to non-human objects

- helps readers see ordinary things in a new and interesting way
Examples: Luck smiled at the happy couple.

Do you hear the wind sigh through your hair?
4. Symbolism uses objects to represent another person, place or idea.

- symbol an object or idea that has its own meaning; in literature, it is used
to suggest another meaning.
- is a way of explaining something using another object that is more familiar
and more readily understandable
Example: a bird in a cage can stand for someone without freedom
5. Hyperbole exaggerates an idea so vividly that the reader develops an instant mental picture
of it
- it is used to emphasize a poetic idea
- more often than not, it produces a humorous effect
Example: The only thing deep about him is the bottomless pit he calls his stomach.
Papas voice is so loud that when he whispers, some six or seven houses
could still hear him.
II. Imagery
When words are used in speech and writing, their most obvious purpose is to point at
something an idea or property. This is the words meaning. Words stimulate in the reader different
meanings and associations depending on how they are used alone, or in combination with others.
They create mental pictures and allow the readers to participate in a variety of experiences.
1. Denotation the direct and explicit meaning as defined in the dictionary.

- the denotative meaning the objective meeting that does not go beyond the
requirements of exact scientific definition.
Example: A dog is a four-legged animal coated by fur.
2. Connotation the meaning of a word that arouses particular emotional attitudes from the
hearer.
- it suggests meanings beyond its standard scientific or dictionary definition.
- the special emotional feelings vary according to the individual.
Example: When a man is called a dog, it could mean that he is rough.
3. Description a technique that tells about people, places, things or actions through the use of
adjectives.
- this helps the reader to picture the event, scene or character.
Example: Thick, overgrown bushes and climbing plants now cover what was once a
splendid castle whose magnificent structure used to tower over everything
else.
4. Onomatopoeia is a technique that uses words to imitate sounds. Writers use onomatopoeia
to give double emphasis to their work.
- a reader gets meaning from the printed word and receives additional
meaning from the sound of that word.
- ideas are also better remembered through this technique.
Example: bang, growl, screech, ring, swish, rumble, pop, wham, ka-blam
III. Recall
- readers need to remember what they have read.
- writers use certain techniques to help readers remember the points they
want to emphasize.
1. Repetition of letters, words and sounds create a certain pattern in writing.

- words that are repeated are important
Example: Dirt and

Clean them clean them clean them
2. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds at the start of words either sequentially or

intermittently.
- this gives the written work a musical quality and also helps create a particular
mood.
a. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the beginning of a series of words.
Example: Anna acts annoyed at Antonia about Amys assignment.
b. Consonance the repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning of a series of words.
Example: Verni vivaciously vacates Voltaires Volkswagen.
IV. Manipulation of Events

1. Foreshadowing a technique where the writer gives hints or clues to
indicate action that will
occur later in the narrative.
- it allows the reader to guess the ending of the story.
2. Flashback an interruption of the progress of the story.

- normally a plot progresses chronologically; however, a flashback interrupts the
order to tell the readers something that happened before the story began
3. Suspense is the excitement the reader feels about the outcome or solution to the problem
of the story.
- a technique that encourages the reader to finish the story.
4. Irony of situations entails events developing into the opposite of what would naturally be
expected.
5. In medias res - Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually

describes a narrative that
begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle
usually at some crucial point in the action.
- refers to a literary technique in which a story begins after the action has
already begun and the explanation of plot, character roles, the importance of
setting, and so on are left to be revealed via flashback, a character's thoughts
or dialogue, or a "reverse chronology" in which the story is told backwards
6. Deconstruction - a theory used in the study of literature or philosophy

which says that a
piece of writing does not have just one meaning and that the meaning
depends on the reader.
- suggests that all interpretation of a text simply constitutes further texts,
which means there is no outside the text at all. Therefore, it is impossible
for a text to have stable meaning. The practice of deconstruction involves
identifying the contradictions within a texts claim to have a single, stable
meaning, and showing that a text can be taken to mean a variety of things
that differ significantly from what it purports to mean.
V. Allusion
- a technique of referring to a person, place or event that has been mentioned or
written about earlier. These people and events are usually famous and the
meanings associated with them are carried over to the new one.
1. Literary allusion a reference to a famous story book character.
Example: With his numerous girlfriends, one can say Sam is a Casanova.
2. Mythical allusion a reference to a character from a myth regardless of its country of origin.
The more famous ones are from Greek mythology.
Example: It would take a Hercules to clean up this mess.
3. Historical allusion a reference to a famous person or event in local,

national or world history.
Example: That mean old curmudgeon Miss Minchin is Hitler incarnate.
4. Biblical allusion a reference to character, place or event in the Holy

Bible.
Example: The battle between the orcs and the elves is rather apocalyptic.
VI. Humor
1. Comical Humor makes use of jokes and situations that are funny
- the writer makes a conscious effort to make his readers laugh.
2. Amusing Humor is not obvious and is very discreet

- its humor can stem from the authors choice of words.
3. Satirical Humor is biting because it comments on the ills of society and pokes fun at
people and things that are products of that failure.
4. Absurd Jokes derive its humor from things and people that are incongruous or out of place
- if it were a painting, it could be known as surrealistic.
THE LITERARY GENRES

PROSE
Prose is divided into six general types namely: essay, prose drama, prose fiction,
biography and autobiography, letters, diaries, journals and other prose forms.
ESSAY
- is a prose composition which discusses a particular subject
Two General Classes:

1. Formal essay reflects the attitude and opinion of its author but written in a more objective
manner.
2. Informal essay suggests confidential talk, relaxation, and entertainment and the laughter
that comes of taking life not too seriously. This essay uses the pronoun I freely.
Classes:
1. Character Sketch a study of the appearance, character, and personality of a real or
imaginary person.
2. Descriptive Essay a picture of a place, building, object, etc. as seen through the authors
eyes and mind.
3. Familiar/Personal Essay an intimate or informal revelation of the authors own personality,
whims, tastes, and habits.
4. Reflective/Philosophic Essay a more serious discussion of deeper problems in life.
5. Editorial Essay a discussion (often argumentative) of current issues, such as what we find
in the magazines, giving not just the news but also a point of view toward it.
6. Critical Essay a review which passes judgment on a play, a movie, a book, a musical
composition or concert, a picture, or other works of art.
7. Narrative Essay an essay largely narrative in form but written for the idea, not the story.
8. Biographical Essay an analysis of the life of some important persons, not just narrating the
events but also explaining them and weighing their significance and influence.
Types of Essays
1. Expository attempts to explain or clarify something. It provides new or additional
information about a topic.
2. Analytical attempts to study certain topics or issues through investigation of its pros and
cons. It ends in a conclusion.
3. Speculative is more concerned with stimulating discussions through questioning about an
issue. It does not attempt to explain, answer or defend a topic.
4. Interpretative simplifies an article, a line or a statement previously made using a certain
yardstick or set of rules.
PROSE DRAMA
- has the same types as the poetic plays except that these are in prose form.
PROSE FICTION
- is a prose composition in which character, setting or events are imaginatively created. Prose
fiction is of various types, namely:
1. Prose allegory a narrative in prose form in which abstract ideas are personified.
2. Prose romance a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in
time or place and usually heroic, adventurous or mysterious.
3. Tale of adventure prose fiction dealing with something involving danger and unknown
risks or mans encounter with nature.
4. Novel a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length portraying characters, actions, and
scenes representative of real life in a more or less intricate plot.
5. Novelette a prose composition shorter than a novel, longer than a short story containing
the elements of plot, setting and character with its plot more complicated and the characters
more in number than a short story.
6. Short story a prose narrative of about 10, 000 words intended to be read in one sitting with
plot, setting and character contributing to achieve a unified or single effect.
7. Fable a prose narrative with animals or inanimate objects as characters and devised to
teach a moral lesson.
8. Parable a short prose narrative that teaches a spiritual truth or moral lesson. It differs from
a fable as it uses persons as characters. It has setting, characters and events.
9. Myth a prose narrative embodying the convictions of a people as to their gods and other
diving personages, their own origin and early history and the heroes connected with it or the
origin of the world or to explain a natural phenomenon.
10. Legend a prose narrative coming down from the past especially one regarded as historical
although not verifiable.
11. Folk tale a characteristically anonymous, timeless and placeless tale circulated orally
among a people.
12. Fairy tale a narrative of adventures involving fantastic forces and beings too good to be
true and almost always has a happy ending.
Characteristics of Fiction
1. Fiction is Dramatic it is an imitation of life
2. Fiction is concrete and specific embodied by dramatic symbols
3. Fiction is generally representative
4. Fiction instructs and entertains it broadens and extends our sympathies; it helps us
understand life and humanize ourselves
5. Fiction is related to life dependent upon its relationship to life
6. Fiction is creative and imaginative.
Elements of Fiction
1. Action and plot 5. Theme

2. Character 6. Narrator and point of view
3. Setting 7. Language
4. Atmosphere and tone 8. Allegory and Symbolism
BIOGRAPHY
- is an account of a persons life written by another.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- is an account of a persons life written by himself.
LETTER
- is a direct or personally written or printed message addressed to a person or organization.
JOURNAL
- is a prose composition published periodically for an exclusive readership.
DIARY
- is a daily record of personal activities, reflections or feelings written by a person for
posterity.
POETRY
Poetry is a literary composition in verse form having a regular rhyme, rhythm and meter and
divided into stanzas. It is of three kinds namely: narrative poetry which tells a story; lyric poetry
which expresses the ardent personal feelings of the poet on a subject and dramatic poetry which is
designed to be spoken and acted on stage.
Narrative poetry is of three kinds:
1. Epic a long narrative poem elevated in style and dignified in tone telling of the adventures
and achievements of a hero important to the history of his race or nation.
2. Ballad a simple narrative poem often meant for singing, characterized by simplicity of
language and usually dealing with basic subjects such as love, honor or death.
3. Metrical tale/romance a medieval tale in verse form dealing with heroic or marvelous
achievements of knights in shining armor and of fair ladies in distress.
Lyric poetry is of six types namely:
1. Ode a lyric poem about a subject written when the poet is at the height of his emotion.
2. Elegy a poetic lament for the dead.
3. Sonnet a lyric poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines rhymed according to a traditional
rhyme scheme. Sonnets are of two kinds:
a. English or Shakespearean sonnet the fourteen iambic pentameter lines are divided
into 3 quatrains plus a concluding couplet with the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef,
gg.
b. Italian or Petrarchean sonnet the fourteen iambic pentameter lines are divided into
octave rhyming abbaabba and sestet rhyming cdecde or cdccdc.

4. Song a lyric poem set to music.
5. Idyll a descriptive poem of rural or pastoral character which expresses the poets feeling
for his immediate landscape.
6. Simple lyric
Dramatic poetry is classified into:
1. Poetic plays, which in turn are of five types namely:

a. Comedy a dramatic play of light and humorous character, typically with a cheerful or
happy ending.
b. Tragedy a dramatic play portraying the struggle of a strong-willed protagonist
against fate, as predestined by mysterious, divine, social or psychological forces
culminating in disaster and usually death caused by a flaw in the protagonists
character.
c. Dramatic history dramatic play dealing with a past historical event.
d. Farce a light dramatic composition marked by broadly satirical comedy and
improbable plot.
e. Melodrama a dramatic composition characterized by extravagant theatricality and by
the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization.
2. Masque a short allegorical dramatic entertainment popular with courtly audiences in 16 th
century and 17th century England originally consisting of pantomime and dancing, but later
characterized by elaborate staging and costuming, the use of dance and song and very little
dialogue.
3. Dramatic monologue a dramatic composition is verse form having one speaker only.
Characteristics of Poetry
1. Rhythm the musical quality produced as words are stressed and unstressed in one poetic
line
2. Meter the measured and patterned arrangement or grouped syllables according to stress
and length.
Free Verse not following the pattern but instead more on or according to the natural
rhythm of his thoughts and feelings.
Verse one line of a poem
3. Rhyme the regular occurrence of similar sounds at the end of the line.
4. Imagery the sum total of mental pictures created as words as used with special meanings.
5. Sense of meaning the subject matter of the poem which may be implicitly or explicitly
expressed.
Elements of Poetry
1. art beauty
2. emotion core, meat, subject
3. rhythm succession of the stressed and unstressed syllables 21st Century Literature
UNIT 2 Development of Philippine
Literature
The diversity and richness of Philippine literature evolved side by side with the country's
history. This can best be appreciated in the context of the country's pre-colonial cultural traditions
and the socio-political histories of its colonial and contemporary traditions.
The average Filipino's unfamiliarity with his indigenous literature was largely due to what has
been impressed upon him: that his country was "discovered" and, hence, Philippine "history" started
only in 1521.
So successful were the efforts of colonialists to blot out the memory of the country's largely
oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are trying to correct this inequity by
recognizing the country's wealth of ethnic traditions and disseminating them in schools and in the
mass media.
The rousings of nationalistic pride in the 1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change
of attitude among a new breed of Filipinos concerned about the "Filipino identity."
PRE-COLONIAL TIMES
Owing to the works of our own archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists, we are able
to know more and better judge information about our pre-colonial times set against a bulk of
material about early Filipinos as recorded by Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and other chroniclers of the
past.
Pre-colonial inhabitants of our islands showcase a rich past through their folk speeches, folk
songs, folk narratives and indigenous rituals and mimetic dances that affirm our ties with our
Southeast Asian neighbors.
The most seminal of these folk speeches is the riddle which is tigmo in Cebuano, bugtong in
Tagalog, paktakon in Ilongo and patototdon in Bicol. Central to the riddle is the talinghaga or
metaphor because it "reveals subtle resemblances between two unlike objects" and one's power of
observation and wit are put to the test.
The proverbs or aphorisms express norms or codes of behavior, community beliefs or they
instill values by offering nuggets of wisdom in short, rhyming verse.
The extended form, tanaga, a mono-riming heptasyllabic quatrain expressing insights and
lessons on life is "more emotionally charged than the terse proverb and thus has affinities with the
folk lyric." Some examples are the basahanon or extended didactic sayings from Bukidnon and
the daraida and daragilon from Panay.
The folk song, a form of folk lyric which expresses the hopes and aspirations, the people's
lifestyles as well as their loves. These are often repetitive and sonorous, didactic and naive as in the
children's songs or Ida-ida (Maguindanao), tulang pambata (Tagalog) or cansiones para
abbing (Ibanag).
A few examples are the lullabyes or Ili-ili (Ilongo); love songs like
the panawagon and balitao (Ilongo); harana or serenade (Cebuano); the bayok (Maranao); the
seven-syllable per line poem, ambahanof the Mangyans that are about human relationships, social
entertainment and also serve as a tool for teaching the young; work songs that depict the livelihood
of the people often sung to go with the movement of workers such as
the kalusan (Ivatan), soliranin (Tagalog rowing song) or the mambayu, a Kalinga rice-pounding
song; the verbal jousts/games like the duplo popular during wakes.
Other folk songs are the drinking songs sung during carousals like the tagay (Cebuano and
Waray); dirges and lamentations extolling the deeds of the dead like the kanogon (Cebuano) or
the Annako (Bontoc).
A type of narrative song or kissa among the Tausug of Mindanao, the parang sabil, uses for
its subject matter the exploits of historical and legendary heroes. It tells of a Muslim hero who seeks
death at the hands of non-Muslims.
The folk narratives, i.e. epics and folk tales are varied, exotic and magical. They explain
how the world was created, how certain animals possess certain characteristics, why some places
have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, flora or fauna and, in the case of legends, an explanation of
the origins of things. Fables are about animals and these teach moral lessons.
Our country's epics are considered ethno-epics because unlike, say, Germany's
Niebelunginlied, our epics are not national for they are "histories" of varied groups that consider
themselves "nations."
The epics come in various
names: Guman (Subanon); Darangen (Maranao); Hudhud (Ifugao); and Ulahingan (Manobo).
These epics revolve around supernatural events or heroic deeds and they embody or validate the
beliefs and customs and ideals of a community. These are sung or chanted to the accompaniment of
indigenous musical instruments and dancing performed during harvests, weddings or funerals by
chanters. The chanters who were taught by their ancestors are considered "treasures" and/or
repositories of wisdom in their communities.
Examples of these epics are the Lam-
ang (Ilocano); Hinilawod (Sulod); Kudaman (Palawan); Darangen (Maranao); Ulahingan (Livunga
nen-Arumanen Manobo); Mangovayt Buhong na Langit (The Maiden of the Buhong Sky from
Tuwaang--Manobo); Ag Tobig neg Keboklagan (Subanon); and Tudbulol (T'boli).
THE SPANISH COLONIAL TRADITION

While it is true that Spain subjugated the Philippines for more mundane reasons, this former
European power contributed much in the shaping and recording of our literature. Religion and
institutions that represented European civilization enriched the languages in the lowlands,
introduced theater which we would come to know as komedya, the sinakulo, the sarswela, the
playlets and the drama. Spain also brought to the country, though at a much later time, liberal ideas
and an internationalism that influenced our own Filipino intellectuals and writers for them to
understand the meanings of "liberty and freedom."
Literature in this period may be classified as religious prose and poetry and secular prose
and poetry.
Religious lyrics written by ladino poets or those versed in both Spanish and Tagalog were
included in early catechism and were used to teach Filipinos the Spanish language. Fernando
Bagonbanta's "Salamat nang walang hanga/gracias de sin sempiternas" (Unending thanks) is a fine
example that is found in the Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (Guidelines for the
Christian life in the Tagalog language) published in 1605.

Another form of religious lyrics are the meditative verses like the dalit appended
to novenas and catechisms. It has no fixed meter nor rime scheme although a number are written in
octosyllabic quatrains and have a solemn tone and spiritual subject matter.
But among the religious poetry of the day, it is the pasyon in octosyllabic quintillas that
became entrenched in the Filipino's commemoration of Christ's agony and resurrection at Calvary.
Gaspar Aquino de Belen's "Ang Mahal na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon natin na tola"
(Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Verse) put out in 1704 is the country's earliest
known pasyon.
Other known pasyons chanted during the Lenten season are in Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag,
Cebuano, Bicol, Ilongo and Waray.
Aside from religious poetry, there were various kinds of prose narratives written to prescribe
proper decorum. Like the pasyon, these prose narratives were also used for proselitization. Some
forms are: dialogo (dialogue), Manual de Urbanidad (conduct book); ejemplo (exemplum)
and tratado (tratado). The most well-known are Modesto de Castro's "Pagsusulatan ng Dalawang
Binibini na si Urbana at si Feliza" (Correspondence between the Two Maidens Urbana and Feliza)
in 1864 and Joaquin Tuason's "Ang Bagong Robinson" (The New Robinson) in 1879, an adaptation
of Daniel Defoe's novel.
Secular works appeared alongside historical and economic changes, the emergence of an
opulent class and the middle class who could avail of a European education. This Filipino elite
could now read printed works that used to be the exclusive domain of the missionaries.
The most notable of the secular lyrics followed the conventions of a romantic tradition: the
languishing but loyal lover, the elusive, often heartless beloved, the rival. The leading poets were
Jose Corazon de Jesus (Huseng Sisiw) and Francisco Balagtas. Some secular poets who wrote in
this same tradition were Leona Florentino, Jacinto Kawili, Isabelo de los Reyes and Rafael
Gandioco.
Another popular secular poetry is the metrical romance, the awit and korido in Tagalog.
The awit is set in dodecasyllabic quatrains while the korido is in octosyllabic quatrains. These are
colorful tales of chivalry from European sources made for singing and chanting such as Gonzalo de
Cordoba (Gonzalo of Cordoba) and Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird). There are numerous metrical
romances in Tagalog, Bicol, Ilongo, Pampango, Ilocano and in Pangasinan. The awit as a popular
poetic genre reached new heights in Balagtas' "Florante at Laura" (ca. 1838-1861), the most famous
of the country's metrical romances.
Again, the winds of change began to blow in 19th century Philippines. Filipino intellectuals
educated in Europe called ilustrados began to write about the downside of colonization. This,
coupled with the simmering calls for reforms by the masses gathered a formidable force of writers
like Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Emilio Jacinto and Andres Bonifacio.
This led to the formation of the Propaganda Movement where prose works such as the
political essays and Rizal's two political novels, Noli Me Tangere and the El filibusterismo helped
usher in the Philippine revolution resulting in the downfall of the Spanish regime, and, at the same
time planted the seeds of a national consciousness among Filipinos.
But if Rizal's novels are political, the novel Ninay (1885) by Pedro Paterno is largely
cultural and is considered the first Filipino novel. Although Paterno's Ninay gave impetus to other
novelists like Jesus Balmori and Antonio M. Abad to continue writing in Spanish, this did not
flourish.
Other Filipino writers published the essay and short fiction in Spanish in La Vanguardia, El
Debate, Renacimiento Filipino, and Nueva Era. The more notable essayists and fictionists were
Claro M. Recto, Teodoro M. Kalaw, Epifanio de los Reyes, Vicente Sotto, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera,
Rafael Palma, Enrique Laygo (Caretas or Masks, 1925) and Balmori who mastered the prosa
romantica or romantic prose.
But the introduction of English as medium of instruction in the Philippines hastened the
demise of Spanish so that by the 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish writing. During the
language's death throes, however, writing in the romantic tradition, from the awit and korido, would
continue in the novels of Magdalena Jalandoni. But patriotic writing continued under the new
colonialists. These appeared in the vernacular poems and modern adaptations of works during the
Spanish period and which further maintained the Spanish tradition.
THE AMERICAN COLONIAL PERIOD
A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature. New literary
forms such as free verse [in poetry], the modern short story and the critical essay were introduced.
American influence was deeply entrenched with the firm establishment of English as the medium of
instruction in all schools and with literary modernism that highlighted the writer's individuality and
cultivated consciousness of craft, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.
The poet, and later, National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa used free verse and
espoused the dictum, "Art for art's sake" to the chagrin of other writers more concerned with the
utilitarian aspect of literature. Another maverick in poetry who used free verse and talked about
illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her time.
Despite the threat of censorship by the new dispensation, more writers turned up "seditious works"
and popular writing in the native languages bloomed through the weekly outlets like Liwayway and
Bisaya.
The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated modernism
in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses in the 1960s such as
Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.
While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language, Filipinos
seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the Philippines Free Press,
the College Folioand Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez Benitez's "Dead Stars" published in 1925
was the first successful short story in English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and
Manuel E. Arguilla showed exceptional skills with the short story.
Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the provinces.
Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Pea and Patricio Mariano were writing minimal
narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction called dali or pasingaw (sketch).
The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences in the
adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa who also penned Ang Palad ni
Pepe after Charles Dicken's David Copperfield even as the realist tradition was kept alive in the
novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar, among others.
It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the novel in the
vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines like Liwayway, Bisaya,
Hiligaynon and Bannawag.
The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920's to the present. Some leading
essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura Santillan Castrence, etc. who
wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the delectation by Filipinos.
Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were Ignacio
Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez's criticism that grabbed
attention when he won the Commonwealth Literay Award for the essay in 1940 with his "Literature
and Society." This essay posited that art must have substance and that Villa's adherence to "Art for
Art's Sake" is decadent.
The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine literature in
English at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical aesthetics, made writers pay
close attention to craft and "indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude" towards vernacular
writings -- a tension that would recur in the contemporary period.
THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
The flowering of Philippine literature in the various languages continue especially with the
appearance of new publications after the Martial Law years and the resurgence of committed
literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.
Filipino writers continue to write poetry, short stories, novellas, novels and essays whether
these are socially committed, gender/ethnic related or are personal in intention or not.
Of course the Filipino writer has become more conscious of his art with the proliferation of
writers workshops here and abroad and the bulk of literature available to him via the mass media
including the internet. The various literary awards such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial
Awards for Literature, the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Home Life and Panorama
literary awards encourage him to compete with his peers and hope that his creative efforts will be
rewarded in the long run.
21ST CENTURY PHILIPPINE WRITING

Philippine writing in the 21st century has taken a new turn. The works are seen as sensitive
to gender, alludes to technology, show culture as plural rather than singular, and questions
conventions and supposedly absolute norms.
Writing by women continues to flourish. They have a feminist stance that questions the
centrality of the patriarchy (male-centered viewpoints). Forbidden Fruit: Women Write the Erotic
edited by Tina Cuyugan and Kung Ibig Mo, love poems edited by Joi Barrios show that a womans
map of dreams and desires is better drawn by a woman writer herself. Gone were the days when
female characters only came from the imagination or fantasy of men.
Technology is also an important part of this literature, centered on the rise of the city and
anchored on globalization. The economic boom, albeit benefiting only the elite, has led to the
opening of the Philippines to diverse economic interests. Writings on Filipinos abroad and of
Filipinos abroad also add to this more cosmopolitan, if not more consumerist, attitude of the 21st-
century Filipino.
Moreover, writings from the regions have served notice that imperial Manila is no longer
the only fountain of ideas. We have to thank Ateneo de Naga Publishing House, National
Commission on Culture and the Arts, UP Press, and University of San Agustin Publishing House,
among others. The Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature has opened its magisterial
doors to writing from the regions. Ateneo de Manila University Press and UST Publishing House
are both in fine form, publishing important works from Katipunan and Espana.
Nowadays, writers are no longer made to feel guilty if they write in English. In true
subversive fashion, they now write not just in English or Filipino but in both languages. Some
books show poems printed enface: one side in English, the other in Filipino. The twains have met,
and you can no longer detect which is written first, and which is the translation, for there is equal
facility and fluency in both. This recalls the verbal legerdemain of our ladino poets in the 17th
century.
Moreover, Marjorie Evasco has been translating her poems in English into Cebuano, J.
Iremil Teodoro writes lyrical stories in Kinaray-a and translates them into English, Peter Nery slides
from English to Hiligaynon in his erotic poems, Kristian Cordero and Victor Nierva write works in
Bicolano and in the next breath, translate them into elegant English. Surely, the vessels that contain
Philippine literature are no longer one, or two, or even three, but as many as the different languages
in our archipelago.
What about the English being written? Trinidad Tarrosa Subido coined the phrase language
if [our] blood. Dr. Gemino H. Abad has used it as framework in his three anthologies on Philippine
poetry in English. He said that we have colonized English and have made it our own, and the poems
are now wrought from English.
It is no longer the very proper English from the old textbooks, or the Americanese in books
copyrighted in New York. It is now a language filtered by our regional languages and by mass
media printed, seen, broadcast as well as shaped by social media, by the fragmentation of text
language, by sound bites, anime, graphic novels, and cosplays (costume plays).
Thus, we no longer find a poem about a poem; or a poem with Greek or Roman allusions; or
a story set in Greenwich Village. There is now a certain historicity; allusions to Philippine myth and
fable, lore and legend; astringent satires of popular culture and political foibles. Anglo-American
writers are still being read, but now they are hyphenated and seem like dispatches from the global
village. Works, in translation, of African, Asian, and Latin American writers are being devoured.
There is the shock of recognition in reading about postcolonial experiences similar to ours, and
fears and dreams coming from the same socio-political conditions.
The internet has also made the Filipino writer less insular or old-fashioned. Bob Ong started
a blog, Bobong Pinoy and parlayed it into bestselling books. Other blogs have become popular
books and even box-office-hit movies, i.e., Ang Diary ng Panget. Celebrities are now supposedly
writing, while radio anchors are turning their zany scripts into books. Senator Miriam Defensor
Santiagos book, Stupid isForever, is the doyenne of them all: it has been the bestselling book since
December.
Pimply teenagers can upload their stories in Wattpad, watch them viewed 15 million times,
and now get contracts for a TV series or a romance film. Ghost stories are selling, and so do
childrens books and graphic novels. Young-adult novels are being written, for a generation on the
run (or eyes glued to their gadgets).
The Filipino public has begun to read and we are all the better for it.

UNIT 3 21st Century Literature from
Western Visayas
POETRY: Ang Ulod sa Mansanas by Alice Tan Gonzales
About the Author:
Alice Tan Gonzales was born on June 24, 1954 in Bacolod City. She finished AB English at
University of St. La Salle-Bacolod, MA in Literature at Ateneo de Manila University, and Ph.D. in
English Studies at University of the Philippines-Diliman. Currently, she is a full Professor in
English and Literature in UP Visayas, Iloilo.
She has received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Literature Grants four times: Short
Story (1990), Novel (1991), Play (1994), and Childrens Play (1995). She has won the Palanca
Awards for Short Story in Hiligaynon several times: Isa Ka Pungpong nga Rosas (A Bunch of
Roses, 1997); Mga Luha para kay Tatay Jose (Tears for Tatay Jose, 1997); Ang Likum sang Isla
San Miguel (The Secret of Isla San Miguel, 1999); Sa Taguangkan sang Duta (In the Womb of
the Earth, 2002); at Dawata Anak (Receive, My Child, 2008). Some of the plays she had written
which were performed onstage were the sarswela Pinustahan nga Gugma (Betted Love) and the
musical Juanita Cruz. In 2009 her collection of Hiligaynon short stories Sa Taguangkan sang
Duta kag iban pa nga Sugilanon (In the Womb of the Earth and Other Stories) was published, and
in 2015 her binalaybay (poetry) collection Ilongga: Madamo nga Guya (Ilongga: Her Many Faces)
was published.
ANG ULOD SA MANSANAS

Alice Tan Gonzales
Ang ikaduha nga angkab kag indi ang una

Ang nagpukan sa tawo sa paghigugma

Ang angkab ni Adan amo ang nagbaylo
Sang dalan nga pagaagyan sang tanan nga tawo.
Ang daku nga ulod nga nagakabod sa sanga

Naibog sa kalipay nanday Adan kag Eva
Nagtuyo magwasak sang ila paghigugma
Gani ang anak nga diutay ginsulod sa bunga.
Ang ulod sa mansanas natulon ni Adan

Kag nagkamang paulo halin sa iya tiyan
Nag-ut-ot sang utok tubtob nangunod
Kag ang utok ni Adan nangin daku nga ulod.
Nag-uriod ang ulod sa iya bagol

Kag ang una nga angkab iya ginbasol
Nalimtan sing dayon nga ang dason nga angkab
Tanang nga bunga sang iya kaasab.
Pagtambok sang ulod nanginwala si Adan

Nga sila ni Eva gintuga sang dungan.
Si Eva gintuga sang Diwa sa kamatuoran
Apang si Adan sa mansanas nagikan.
Bugalon nga ulod nga sia nagdumdum

Nga ang Mahal nga Diwa lalaki sang bayhon
Kag sang trono sia sang Diwa ginbilinan
Agud si Eva paludhon sa iya tiilan.
Sang malumos ang tawo sa katawhan

Ang Anak sang Diwa nanaug sa kalibutan.
Ang bugal ni Adan ilabi nga naglala
Sang iya makita nga lalaki ang Bata.
Kag paano kon bayhon sang babaye ang ginpili?

Ang linahi ni Adan indi mamati.
Balaan nga Pulong sa hangin ila ipakabit
Wala sing lalaki nga makapalangit.
Linibo ang nagligad nga mga dinag-on

Kag si Eva nagtindog sa pagluhodon
Mabaskog nga gasinggit sa kabanwahanan
Ang tingog galanog sa bukid kag kagulangan.
Sa pagbalik sang Anak sang Diwa nga Bugtong

Sia magapili na sang babaye nga bayhon
Magatindog sia sa ibabaw sang kalibutan
Kag ang ulod sa ulo ni Adan iya tapakan.
Sa ulo ni Adan dayon magabuskag

Ang bulak sang paghidait kag kasanag
Iya ihalad ining bulak sa kay Eva
Kag ang kalibutan mangamyon sang paghigugma.
SHORT STORY: Donato Bugtot by Peter Solis Nery
About the Author:
Peter Solis Nery (born 6 January 1969) is an award-winning Filipino poet, fictionist, and
author. Writing in his native Hiligaynon language, he has won such prestigious literary contests as
the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)
Literary Grant, and the All-Western Visayas Literary Contest of the National Commission for
Culture and the Arts (NCCA). He was inducted into the Palanca Awards Hall of Fame in 2012.
Diversifying into English and Filipino, he has authored over 20 books, and wrote
screenplays that won the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize of 1998, the 1998 Film Development
Foundation of the Philippines Screenwriting Contest, the 2001 Cinemanila International Film
Festival Scriptwriting Competition, and the 2012 Film Development Council of the Philippines
First Sineng Pambansa National Film Competition. He wrote and edited wide circulation
newspapers in Iloilo City before becoming a nurse in the United States. As a screen actor, Peter
briefly appears in Tikoy Aguiluzs film on cybersex, www.XXX.com (Maverick Films, 2003), of
which he was also the Assistant Director. He also has a cameo performance in Gugma sa Panahon
sang Bakunawa (Graydonnery Artists and DreamWings Productions, 2012), the first full-length
feature film that he wrote, directed, and produced.
Peter worked as an orthopedic nurse in Los Angeles, California for seven years before
moving to Reisterstown, Maryland, where he now lives. He continues to write in English and
Hiligaynon.
DONATO BUGTOT
Peter Solis Nery
Una nga ginbun-ag ang akon kapid. Gin-utdan sia sang pusod, ginhampak sa buli,
gintinluan, ginputos sa lampin, kag gindaho sa akon iloy. Dayon, ang paltera nagsiyagit sa kakibot,
Ay, may paaman! kag nagdalhay ako halin sa taguangkan ni Nanay paggua sa kalibutan.
Natawo ako nga bugtot, kulang-kulang sa bug-at, lipid ang ulo, kag kulakig nga daw palito
sang posporo. Tungod linubag ang akon dagway, namangkot ang paltera kon buhion pa ako. Wala
nagsabat ang akon iloy. Naghibi lang sia kag nagnguyngoy.
Ambot kon ginhangop sang paltera nga Silence means yes, apang ginhingagaw nya ako.
Gin-utdan sang pusod, ginhampak sa buli, gintinluan, ginputos sa lampin, kag gindaho man sa akon
iloy.
Sang tatlo na ako ka adlaw, ginsulod ako sa karton sang sapatos kag ginbilin sa hagdanan
sang kumbento ni Padre Tino. Nasapwan ako sang kusinera-mayordoma nga si Nay Tiling. Sia ang
nagbatiti kag nagsapupo sa akon. Ihatag man kuntani ako ni Padre Tino sa DSWD; apang may lakip
nga sulat sa ginbilin nga karton, gani gin-ayop na lang ako sang tigulang nga pari.
Sa belasyon para kay Padre Tino, nagsiling si Nay Tiling nga bisan kuno malaw-ay ako kag
bugtot, naghatag man ako sang kalingawan sa mal-am nga pari. Sa huna-huna ko lang, Kasubong
sang tutoy ni Father Richard.
Ginpadaku ako ni Nay Tiling. Tubo-tubo kami sang iya kinagot nga si Bimbim. Ambot kon
ginpasuso man ako ni Nay Tiling sa iya titi nga daw mga kalubay, apang nahagop ako sa iya nga
daw ato bala nga sia ang akon iloy. Sang may pamensaron na ako, ginpamangkot ko sia. Wala sia
nagsabat sang tadlong. Siling nya, nagdaku kuno ako sa su-am kag tsa.
*
Sang bata pa ako, nabatian ko gid nga gin-akigan ni Nay Tiling si Bimbim sa kusina sang
kumbento.
Hinugay mo gani away inang si Dondon, ha? Grasya ina sia sa aton.
Ano nga grasya man? Kalaw-ay sa iya kag bugtot pa! Indi angayan sa iya ang ngalan nga
Donato, dapat Boogie tungod bugtot sia.
Bimbim, ang baba mo!
Tuod man.
Bal-an mo kon ano ang matuod, ha? Kon indi tungod kay Dondon, indi ka makaangkon
sang mga hampanganan. Para mo mahangpan, ginatiblian ako sang sobra ni Padre Tino tungod kay
Dondon. Kon ginabaklan ka monyeka sang pari, ina bilang pasalamat sa pagpadaku ko kay Dondon.
Gani, kabigon mo nga daw utod si Dondon.
Indi ko ya. Kalaw-ay sa iya!
Madamu lang sang kauslitan ang maldita nga si Bimbim sang mga bata pa kami. Sang una,
ako ang ginadala ni Nay Tiling sa ila balay. Sang ulihi, ginapaupod na lang niya si Bimbim sa
kumbento agud may kahampang man ako. Pagkatapos dagyang, nagabulig kami ni Bimbim sa mga
hilikuton sa kusina, kag sa pagpaninlo sang kumbento. Apang kon may disgrasya, ako pirme ang
ginapasibangdan nya. Kon may mabuka nga baso o pinggan, ako ang may sala; kon mabatok ang
tinig-ang, ako ang may sala; kon malimtan punpon ang hinalay, ako gihapon ang may sala.
Bisan ginamaltrato ako, kag ginahimo nga kaladlawan ni Bimbim, indi ko mahimo nga
magtanum sang dumot kag kaakig sa iya. Tungod sia lang ang bestfriend ko. Sia lang ang akon
kahampang, ang kaedad nga sarang ko mahambal.
*
Sang nagnobyo-nobyo na si Bimbim kay Macmac, ako ang iya tsaperon. Ginapasugtan sila
ni Nay Tiling nga magdeyt-deyt basta upod ako. Ako ang paaman, daw liso sang kasuy.
Kon magpabaybay, hambalan ako ni Macmac, Palayo-layo ka lang anay, Bogs, kay kalaw-
ay gid sa imo. Ginaguba mo ang view.
Sikulon sia ni Bimbim, dayon makadlaw sila. Dayon, pangilayan lang ako ni Bimbim, kag
mahangpan ko na.
Kon mangulabo, ginaupod man nila ako agud may magsaka sang lubi.
Abaw, tan-awa bala ang payatot nga bugtot kon magtaklas sang lubi daw tuko. Dayon,
maharakhak si Macmac.
Kon kaisa, ginaapinan man ako ni Bimbim. Mas mapuslan siguro si Dondon sang sa imo?
Apang sin-o ang mas gwapo?
Nahangpan ko man ang amon mga papel sa kabuhi. Kilala ko sanday Quasimodo,
Esmeralda, kag ang maambong nga si Captain Phoebus. Nagabasa man ako sang mga libro kag
komiks.
Ginpamana ni Bimbim ang gwapo nga si Macmac. Ako, nagpabilin nga nangalagad sa
kumbento. Antes nagretiro si Padre Tino, ginpangabay niya nga tagaan ako empleyo sa simbahan
bilang dyanitor kag kampanero. Soltero na ako sadto, natan-awan ko na ang The Hunchback of
Notre Dame, kag nabatian ko man ang Kampanerang Kuba ni Vilma Santos. Naanad na ako sa
mga sunlog, libak, kag yaguta.
Sang nakasal sila ni Bimbim, nagbuot si Macmac sa akon. Ginpamaninoy pa gani nila ako sa
ila subang nga ginhingalanan namon Esmeralda. Apang Bogs man gihapon ang tawag nya sa
akon, short sang bugtot.

*
Bag-o nagtaliwan si Padre Tino, gintuad kag ginsaysay nya ang pagkapulot sa akon.
Ginpabasa nya ang sulat nga nalakip sa karton, kag ginhatag sa akon ang kulintas nga, suno sa
sulat, ginpanag-iyahan sang akon iloy isa ka Marita de los Reyes.
Wala ko napunggan ang pag-agay sang akon mga luha para kay Padre Tino, ang pinaka-
Kristiyano nga tinuga nga nakilala ko. Ang mga ulihi nya nga laygay sa akon daw gikan sa Siete
Palabras Palanggaa sila. Ilabi na gid ang mga nagatamay sa imo.
Wala ko na ginpangita ang akon matuod-tuod nga iloy. Wala ako nakahibalo kon ang De los
Reyes apelyido niya nga kasado, o sa pagkadalaga. Kag daw wala man sia ginapangita sang akon
ginhawa.
Dayon, sang nagligad nga tuig, sa pagsugod sang novenario sang Aguinaldo, samtang
nagapaninlo ako sang simbahan, ginpalapitan ako sang isa ka babaye, mga kwarentahon ang edad,
may hitsura, kag daw may-ikasarang sa kabuhi. Namangkot sia parte kay Padre Tino, kag sang
nakita nya ang kulintas nga ginasuksok ko, nangusisa man sia nahanungod sa akon.
Siyam ka kaagahon sia nga nagtambong sang simbang-gabi. Sa huna-huna ko, May
ginapangayo sia sa Paskwa nga ini.
Pagkatapos sang Misa sang Pagkatawo, ginpangita nya ako sa kumbento. Nagpakilala nga
sia kuno ang akon iloy. Wala ako nakibot. Wala man ako natublag. Daw bato lang ako; daw gin-igo
sang kilat, kag nangin bato.
Gin-agda nya ako nga mamaskwa sa siyudad. Nangindi ako. Para ano? Nagpakitluoy sia,
halos maluhod sa atubang ko, tubtub wala na ako nakapamalibad.
Ginpasugtan man ako ni Father Richard.
*
Nagsulod kami sa Sarabia Hotel para manyaga, apang wala man kami sang ginkaon didto.
Nanghalawhaw ako sa hotel, apang wala gid ako nagpamulalong nga ginakulbaan ukon namanulan.
Nag-order sia sang iced tea. Coke kuntani ang gusto ko, apang ambot kon ngaa ice tea man ang gin-
order ko. Sang nag-order sia sang pagkaon, pareho man sang iya ang gin-order ko. Indi man abi ako
pamilyar sa menu.
Donato gali ang ginhingalan sa imo ni Padre Tino. Matahum nga ngalan.
Donato de los Reyes.
Nagpanagitlon si Mrs. De los Reyes. Naglag-ok sang ice tea. Madugay-dugay nga wala sia
sang tinimuk-timok. Daw nagahulat nga matunaw ang yelo. Ginpamalhas ang baso.
Daw ginahulat nya ako maghambal, gani ginsaysay ko sa iya ang paathag ni Padre Tino
sang akon ngalan, Ginkuha sa Italyano nga Donatello, nga ang buot-silingon, ginhatag. Bugay
kuno ako sang Makaako.
Nagyuhum si Mrs. De los Reyes. Kumusta ka na? Hamtong ka na gid subong.
Bente-kwatro sang nagligad nga Setyembre.
Nagtango sia. Nahibal-an nya. Of course, nahibal-an nya.
Pasayluha ako, Don. Dise-otso lang ako sadto, wala sang hinalung-ong sa akon mga
ginpanghimo. Siling sang paltera, may depekto ka, sarang ka mapatay sa pila lang ka adlaw. Damu
kuno kasamaran ang imo dagway, basi maayo pa nga indi ka na mag-antus. Apang nabuhi ka.
Nabuhi nga bugtot, lipid ang ulo, putot, kag kulakig gihapon nga daw palito. Bisan anhon
ko nga panginaon, wala gid ako nagdaku. Bisan ano nga hilot ni Nay Tiling sang akon ulo, lipid
man gihapon. Daw sinumpa ako. Bugtot na, law-ay pa. Daw pinipi nga luy-a!
Nag-abot ang pagkaon. Beef stroganoff, siling sang weyter. Careful, the plate is hot.
Nagsugod tulo ang mga luha ni Mrs. De los Reyes.
*
Kon ikaw ang akon iloy, sin-o ang akon amay?

Pasaylo, Don. Wala mo na sia nakilala. Naaksidente si Danny, napulo na katuig ang
nagligad. Wala sia sang hinalung-ong nahanungod sa imo.
Ako naman ang nagpanagitlon.
Antes ako nanganak, nag-away kami ni Papa mo. Naglayas ako, nanago sa tiya ko sa
Barotac Nuevo tubtub nakabun-ag. Dayon ginbilin ko ikaw sa simbahan sang San Dionisio
tungod tungod
Nagpisngu-pisngo sia, daw ginakataro nga indi makahambal. Daw naluoy man gani ako sa
iya.
Tungod indi ko mabatas ang imo kahimtangan.
Indi mo mabatas ang akon dagway!
Siling sang paltera, sarang ka mapatay.
Apang nabuhi ako.
Siling nya, kon mabuhi ka, magaantus ka lang.
Indi sia ang Dios. Indi man ikaw.
Pasayluha ako, Don. Apang nahibaluan ko nga magaantus ka lang sa luyo sang imo amay.
Kilala ko si Danny. Madayaw sia nga sahi sang tawo. Indi nya mabaton nga may depekto ka.
Amay ko sia.
Naghibi pa gid si Mrs. De los Reyes. Nagpaindis-indis agay ang iya mga luha.
Nadulaan ako sang gana. Wala sang nagtandog sang pagkaon.
May kapid ka, Don.
Didto ako nakibot. Abi ko anay, ang naigo sang kilat, indi na maigo liwat. Siling nila,
lightning never strikes the same place twice. Indi matuod.
Kilala mo si Jed Belvis? Ang bokalista sang Tunog Amakan?
Huo, e. Indi bala sia ang nagdaug sa Star in a Million nga kontest sa TV?
Sia ang kapid mo. Apelyido ko ang ginagamit nya nga stage name. John Edward Belvis de
los Reyes ang bug-os nya nga ngalan.
Daw liwat ako nga ginkilatan. Ang maambong, talented, kag kilala nga si Jed Belvis
kapid ko?
*
Una sia nga ginbun-ag. Dayon, ikaw. Paaman, siling sang paltera. Kon napat-ud ko lang
nga batunon ka ni Danny, wala ko ikaw ginbilin sa kumbento. Apang kilala ko ang batasan ni
Danny, mas pasulabihon nya ang mapagrus mo nga kapid. Nabal-an ko gid nga sika-sikaon ka lang
nya. Magaantus ka lang.
Ngaa? Luyag ko ipamangkot kon ngaa ginbalikan niya ako. Ngaa subong. Ngaa subong
lang.
Sa nasiling ko na, wala sa hinalung-ong ko ang mga ginpanghimo ko sadto. Wala ako
nakahangop sang akon mga opsiyon. Ano ang sarang ko mapilian? Ginhimo ko lang ang sa
pamatyag ko labing maayo. Ginbilin ko ikaw sa simbahan. Bantog ang kaayo ni Padre Tino.
Nahibaluan ko nga indi ka niya pagpabay-an. Sa imo kahimtangan, siling ko, mas maayo ang
maabtan mo sa luyo sang pari sang sa DSWD.
Ngaa nagbalik ka? Ngaa subong lang?
May pangayuon kuntani ako sa imo, Don.
Magluwas sa kapatawaran?
Mahangpan ko man kon magpamalibad ka. Apang indi ini para sa akon. Para ini sa imo
kapid. Ginpahiran ni Mrs. De los Reyes ang iya mga luha. Kinahanglan ni Jed sang kidney
transplant. Ginadialysis na lang subong si Jed. Wala na si Danny. Indi ako tissue match; sa dugo pa
lang, Type AB ako, Type A si Jed. Nagapasimpalad lang ako. Siling ko

Type A ang dugo ko. Kag basi matuod ako ang iya tissue match. May nahibaluan man ako
nahanungod sa kidney tranplants, may mga nabatian. Indi tungod bugtot, wala na ako sang nabal-
an. Gintudluan ako ni Padre Tino, ginpaathagan sang mga balita sa peryodiko kag telebisyon,
ginkabig nga may kaalam kag ihibalo. Siling ni Padre Tino, daw espongha kuno ang akon utok.
Bilib man sia sa akon.
Nagtango si Mrs. De los Reyes. Nagtulo liwat ang iya mga luha. Daw tun-og nga nagdalhay
sa baso sang ice tea.
Naghipus lang ako.
Sang ulihi, ginhatagan nya ako sang calling card. Tawgi ako kon magbaylo ang pensar
mo.
Gin-inom namon ang ice tea. Ginpaputos nya ang beef stroganoff. Nagpamilit sia nga dal-
on ko ang pinutos. Ginkup-an nya ako, kag nagpaalam. Nasaw-ahan ako sa iya paghakus.
Pagkagua sa hotel, ginhatag ko sa mga bata nga nagapakalimos ang pinutos nga beef
stroganoff.
*
Gintuad ko ang tanan kay Father Richard.
Treyntahon lang si Father Richard, apang lagting sia nga pari, gani sia ang gintal-us nga
kura-paruko sang nagretiro si Padre Tino.
Makatilingala ang mga pamaagi sang Dios. Ikaw, ang bato nga gin-etsa-pwera sang mga
manugtukod, ikaw subong ang sadsaran sang kaluwasan. Ikaw ang paaman, ikaw subong ang
sugpon nga kabuhi sang imo kapid. Ginhingalanan ka nga Donato, nagakahulugan ginhatag sang
Dios, apang ikaw subong ang ginatawag nga maghatag.
Siling naman iya ni Macmac, Bogs, indi ka magpasugot. Ara na kay Jed ang tanan. Ngaa
subong ikaw ang kinahanglan nga magsakripisyo?
Tugda naman ni Bimbim, Gin-ubos ni Jed ang lugar kag pagkaon sa taguangkan sang imo
iloy gani nangin lipid ang ulo mo, bugtot ka, kag kulakig. Sia ang gwapo, nami tingog, kag
manggaranon. Sia ang nagpaayaw sa pagtamod kag pagpalangga sang imo mga ginikanan.
Dugang pa ni Macmac, Bogs, indi pag-ihatag ang imo bato-bato. Itigana ina. Kay kon may
tagaan ka gid man, ayhan sa ihada mo na lang sa pila ka adlaw. Damu ka na bala utang nga regalo
sa iya. Wala mo naman sia ginpaskwahan sang nagligad.
Sang nakapamat-ud na ako, gintawgan ko si Mrs. De los Reyes. Gintestingan ako, madamu
nga mga eksamen kag iskrining: sa dugo, ihi, tissue matching, x-ray, ultrasound, stress test, CT
scan, kag kon anu-ano pa. Napasaran ko tanan. Siling sang duktor, ako ang perfect tissue match.
Ako ang perfect donor para kay Jed.
*
Gin-estorya ako liwat ni Mrs. De los Reyes.
May dapat ka mahibaluan. Nasamad ang bato-bato ni Jed tungod nag-inom sia sang
Racumin nga hilo para sa mga ilaga. Kag sang daw kulang pa, nagtomar pa gid sia sang madamu
nga Tylenol kag aspirin.
Naghandum sia nga magpakamatay?
Akig si Jed sa akon. Papas boy sia. Sang nagtaliwan si Danny, ako ang iya ginbasol. Pirme
na lang kami nagabangigay. Nagbarkada sia. Nagbanda-banda. Nagbisyo. Nagdrugs. Masami nga
ginasukma sa akon ni Jed, indi ko sia kuno palangga. Wala gid sia kuno nakabatyag sang
pagpalangga gikan sa akon.
Apang sia ang ginpili mo. Ang ginpasulabi.
Nagkanervous breakdown ako pagkatapos nga ginhatag ko ikaw sa simbahan.
Sa huna-huna ko, Ginbilin mo ako, wala ginhatag!
Siling nila, post-partum depression. Apang wala lang sila nakahibalo sang sulod sang akon
konsensya. Halos ko tandugon si Jed. Indi ko sia makungkong. Halos indi ko sia pagtan-awon. Ikaw
ang ginapanumdum ko kon makita ko sia. Nagalain dayon ang buot ko. Kabug-at. Kapiut.
Nagakahidlaw ako sa imo.
Sa huna-huna ko, Ti, ngaa wala mo ako ginbalikan?
Wala na ako nakabalik sa San Dionisio. Nahadlok ako. Paano kon wala ka nabuhi? Kag
kon nabuhi ka gid man, ano ang himuon ko? Ano ang hambalon ni Danny? Basi maguba ang diutay
namon nga pamilya. Sang nagtaliwan na si Danny, tin-edyer na si Jed. Nagkahangawa naman ako
nga indi ka niya mabaton. Apang subong, kinahanglan ka ni Jed. Indi ko luyag nga pati sia madula
man sa akon. Nadula na sa akon si Danny. Nadula ka na sa akon sang ginbilin ko ikaw kay Padre
Tino.
Luyag ko makita si Jed.
*
Si Jed Belvis ang gina-amba sang mga pederast nga mamalaybay kon ginasaulog nila sa
mga tinaga ang mapagrus nga mga butkon, malaba nga mga batiis, mabukod nga abaga, makitid nga
hawak, mala-porselana nga panit. Anghel ang kaanggid sang nawong ni Jed. Mataas ang iya ilong,
nagabawod sa kalaba ang mga amimilok, mahulutyugon ang mga mata, matibsol ang makakilinam-
kinam nga mga bibig, mapino ang supat, wala punggod, wala bukol-bukol.
Indi sia lipid, o bangian ang guya, o kurapa kasubong ko. Indi sia bugtot, ikig-ikig, o daw tiki nga
masami ginasunlog sa akon. Daw mahangpan ko kon ngaa sia ang ginpili ni Mrs. De los Reyes sang
sa akon.
Ikaw ang madonate sang kidney para sa akon? May namutikan ako nga pagpangyaguta sa
tono ni Jed. Pila ang ginbayad sa imo ni Mama?
Kabubut-on ko nga ihatag para sa imo ang isa ko ka bato-bato.
Ngaa? Ano na naman nga drama ina? May kwarta kami.
Maldito si Jed. Luyag ko na gid ituad sa iya nga ako ang iya kapid apang ginpunggan ako
sang pakitluoy ni Mrs. De los Reyes. Basi kuno maghurumentado si Jed kon mabal-an nya nga
may kapid sia.
Ano ang baylo sang imo kidney? Luyag mo magsakay sa popularidad ko? Luyag mo
makilala? Mangin sikat? Ang bugtot nga naghatag sang iya kidney kay Jed Belvis! Amo ina ang
gusto mo?
Jed, ngaa akig ka sa kalibutan?
Ako, akig? Hoy! Panumduma kon sin-o ang kahambal mo, ha? Indi lang ikaw ang may
kidney sa kalibutan!
Luyag ko na gid iburuka sa iya, Apang ako ang imo perfect match! Ako ang perfect donor.
Tungod ako ang imo kapid. Ang lawas kag dugo nga igaula sa kapatawaran sang mga sala. Mga
sala sang aton pamilya. Sang sala ni Danny, sala ni Marita, sala mo! Apang indi ako makahambal.
Ayhan, sa tuman nga kaakig, kaugot, kag kaluoy.
Naluoy ako kay Jed. Ano ang natabu sa iya? Ngaa nagtilaw sia nga mag-utas sang iya
kaugalingon? Ngaa tuman ang iya kaugot sa kabuhi?
Nagharakhak si Jed. Nagapangyaguta.
Indi ka dapat maluoy sa akon, Bugtot. Maluoy ka sa kaugalingon mo. Wala ka nakatilaw
sang tanan nga kapritso nga naaguman ko. Wala ka pa gani siguro nakanobya tungod sa kalaw-ay
mo, ano? Nakatilaw ka na sang babaye?
Padayon nga nagharakhak ang demonyo. Ginapossess si Jed Belvis. Pauli ka kag
magpaukoy. Indi ko luyag makita liwat ang itsura mo. Makaluluoy ka man, Bugtot. Ginsumpa ka
sang kapalaran!
Ginpamahulay ako sang makagua sa kwarto ni Jed. Mayami nga mga balhas.
Demonyo ang batasan ni Jed. Sia nga ginbugayan sang katahum kag mala-anghel nga
hitsura, napun-an sang kalain kag kalaw-ay. Garuk! Makangilil-ad sia; kag makatalagam, tungod
makatiliplang. Hitsura nya lang ang mabuot, apang ang sulod, dukot.
*
Pebrero 14, Valentines Day. Adlaw sang mga tagipusoon.
Igsakto nga singkwenta ka adlaw sumugod sang nagpakilala si Mrs. De los Reyes bilang
akon iloy, gintigayon ang kidney transplant para kay Jed.
Namat-ud ako nga ihatag ang isa ka bahin sang akon lawas sa akon kapid. Indi tungod
ginpangayo nya. Kundi tungod kinahanglan nya.
Kag tungod luyag ko.
Kinahanglan ni Jed ang sugpon nga kabuhi para sa kahigayunan nga makabag-o. Makabalik
sa Dios. Kag luyag ko nga ako ang maghatag sang tsansa sa iya. Kon sarang lang mahatag sa iya
ang akon kasing-kasing agud mabag-o man ang iya tagipusuon, himuon ko. Indi tungod Donato ang
ngalan ko, kundi tungod kapid ko sia.
Ayhan, matuod ang ginhambal ni Bimbim nga si Jed ang nag-ubos sang pagkaon kag lugar
sa taguangkan ni Nanay nga para kuntani sa amon nga duha. Apang kon balikdon ang tanan, wala
ako ginpatay sang akon kapid sa madulum nga taguangkan ni Nanay kon diin mahapus ang pagpipi
kag pagdugmok sa akon. Sa baylo, ginbilinan nya ako sang tsansa nga mabuhi.
Ginbilinan nya ako sang tsansa nga mabuhi!

BLOG POST: Pavia Carabao Carroza Festival by Edgar Siscar
Side Note!
What is a blog?
A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological
order from the most recent post (or entry) at the top of the main page to the
older entries towards the bottom. Blogs are usually (but not always) written by
one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always)
written on a particular topic there are blogs on virtually any topic you can
think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to
hobbies blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine.
Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting
people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn,
share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar
interests from around the world.
About the Author:
Edgar Hubero Siscar was born in the town of Pavia, Iloilo (1953). He currently lives in
Cadena de Amor Street, Don Francisco Village, Jaro, Iloilo City. He finished the course AB English
with Philosophy as Minor Field of Concentration at Maryhurst Seminary in Baguio (1974), and
Master of Management, Major in Public Mangament (MMPM) at University of the Philippines
Visayas (1997). He now works as Division Chief, Administrative & Records Division of Iloilo City
Treasurer's Office. He was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Literary Grant for
short story writing in Hiligaynon (1993), First Prize Winner in the Quin Baterna Short Story Writing
Contest in Hiligaynon (1993), and Third Place Winner, Yuhum Magazine Sugilambong (1990). At
present, he is keeping Hiligaynon alive through Pahina Hiligaynon which showcases in the internet
the culture and lifestyle of the Ilonggos.
PAVIA CARABAO CARROZA FESTIVAL

(http://newedgarsiscar.blogspot.com/2016/02/pavia-carabao-carroza-festival.html)
Edgar H. Siscar
Celebrated annually every 3rd of May and consistently since 1973 in Pavia, Iloilo, this
Festival showcases Pavias ingenuity and of
their being an indigenous people. Included in
the Calendar of Activities of the Department
of Tourism, Carabao Carroza Festival attracts
many foreign and domestic tourists, guests,
and visitors all over the region. The festival
which highlight the celebration of the town
fiesta is being participated by the eighteen

(18) barangays of the municipality and
consists of three (3) main attractions namely;
the
a.) Carabao Carroza Parade
b.) Carabao Carroza Race and
c.) Search for Carabao Carroza Queen.
History
It was on May 3, 1973 that the

Carabao Carroza Festival was
conceptualized by Former Mayor
Nelson G. Gumban together with Mr.
Rodolfo Claparols, then Field
Tourism Officer of the Department of
Tourism and the late Timoteo G.
Jumayao, then Museo Iloilo curator.
The venue for the First
Carabao Carroza Race was the
riverbed of Aganan River. The First
Carabao Carroza Parade had the
carrozas decorated with the
barangays farm produce and the
Barangay Muse wearing the bakya, patadyong and kimona typical of a Filipina. The First
Festival Queen Search was done on May 3, 1975 with Lourdes Golez de Asis as the First Festival
Queen.
The festival had evolved from its simple celebration to what it is now. The parade has now
become a contest of the Most Gaily Decorated Carabao Carroza with the carrozas decorated
beautifully and donning the carabaos also. The race is now being held at the Pavia National High
School grounds and the Search for the Festival Queens had produced a lot of beauties who made
best as TV Hosts and Entertainers. Pavia is blessed with town leaders who unselfishly commit their
leadership to the place and the people they serve. The festivals concept and objectives had been
carried through the years with the change of time and leadership and will continue to serve as a
venue to showcase what Pavia is and who Pavianhons are.
Carabao Carroza Parade
Eighteen (18) gaily decorated

carrozas and carabaos with their
muses clad in Filipiana costumes start
their way parading from Brgy. Ungka
I down to Pavia National High
School. Each vies for the Most Gaily
Decorated Carabao Carroza, and the
carroza being the float bears a motif
depicting the barangays noted
industry or the barangays

agricultural products. The muses vie
for the title of Carabao Carroza
Festival Queen.
Carabao Carroza Race
The race consists of the carroza (free from any attachments and decorations) being pulled by
carabaos with their riders minus the muses is
made on a 110 meter lane at Pavia National
High School Grounds.Three (3) elimination
rounds complete for the final race. A winner is
then declared from the six (6) finalists.
Search for the Carabao Carroza Festival

Queen
The search is made among the eighteen

(18) muses through various competitions like;
Miss Photogenic, Best in Talent, Miss
Congeniality, Best in Summer Wear, Best in
Evening Gown, Best in Production Number, and Best in Interview. This is being held in the evening
of May 3 at the public plaza.

SHORT STORY: Binukot by Alain Russ Dimzon
About the Author:
Alain Russ Dimzon was born on October 31, 1963 in Jaro, Iloilo City. He finished Bachelor
of Science in Biology Sciences at West Visayas State University; and Bachelor in Local
Government Administration (BLGA) at Iloilo State College of Fisheries (2009). He became a
fellow of UP Los Baos and 7th Iligan National Writers Workshop (2000) at Mindanao State
University. He won 3rd prize for his short story Binukot in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards
for Literature (2012); his poetry collection Ang Bakunawa kag iban pa nga mga binalaybay
gained recognition from Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (2007); Ang Manunulat kag Ang
Pendulum was his first book published by Fray Luis de Leon Competitive Book Writing Grant
(2006); he also received Gawad Emmanuel Lacaba for Best New Writer in Hiligaynon from the
National Commision for Culture and the Arts (2000).
BINUKOT
Alain Russ Dimzon
Ginpamiud ni Leonita ang mga pinanid sang katsa. Sa isa ka patadyong, ginputos niya ang
mga dagum kag may nagkalainlain nga duag sang mga hilo. Ang iban sa mga katsa nasugudan na
niya bilang mga panubok nga amo ang paghingalan sang mga Bukidnon sa pagborda sang mga
bagay kag mga hitabu. May mga bagay kag mga hitabu nga nasugdan na sa pagborda. Apang ini
nga idihon nga sugidanon ni Leonita wala gid mahibaloan sing bisan isa ka Bukidnon. Para sa iya,
maduagon ini nga sugidanon, apang nahibaloan man niya nga ini indi maduagon para sa mga
Bukidnon.
Pat-ud nga matingala ang mga Bukidnon nga wala siya makapakigbahin sa Binanog.
Nahibaloan niya nga maaligmat si Lola Telya sa iya pagkadula. Sa ini nga hitabu, siya ang mangin
una nga Bukidnon nga makabuhat sang iya ginabuko. Palangga siya ni Lola Telya. Wala man
nagkulang ang pagtatap kag pagtudlo sang tigulang sa iya sang mga kamatuoran para sa iya bilang
isa ka babaye nga Bukidnon. Si Leonita makabig nga pinaka-huwaran kag pinaka-maalam.
Nagdaku siya sa sabak ni Lola Telya nga labi nga ginatahod. Siya makabig nga manunubli ni Lola
Telya. Siya ang may pinaka-madamu nga nasaulo nga mga sugidanon. Siya ang may pinakadaku
nga kahigayonan nga makasaulo sang Hinilawod, ang malaba nga binalaybay nga may sugidanon
nahanungod sa pagpasimpalad kag paghigugma sang mga Bukidnon. Si Leonita man ang
pinakamatahum nga Bukidnon. Kon kaharian ini nga tribu, isa siya ka prinsesa nga manug-reyna.
Matandaan pa niya sang siya nagpangtipon sang mga dahon sang kamangyan nga ginalubak para
gamiton nga bulong sa madamu nga sahi sang balatian, kag nagtalang siya kag wala makabalik
gilayon sa ila payag ni Lola Telya. Bilog nga tribu ang nagpangita sa iya katulad lang nga
nagpangita ang iban sa ila sang pinakamabaskug nga anting-anting.
Karon, nagtigpasaw ang iya mga tiil sa sapa nga nagakihad sang talon kag kakahoyan sa
duta sagwa sang mga ini.
Sa iya panghunahuna, dugangan niya sang isa ka sugidanon ang mga Bukidnon. Dugangan
niya ang Hinilawod sang iya kaugalingon kag matuod-tuod nga sugidanon pananglit iya ini
mahimo. Ini nga sugidanon hatagan niya sang mga laragway paagi sa panubok.
Nagbalikid si Leonita sa talon kag kakahoyan. Wala sing gal-um sa ibabaw sang mga ini. Sa
kalayuon, mahinay nga mabatian ang tunog sang mga tambur, agung, kag kahoy nga ginabasal. Ini
ang mga kasangkapan nga ginapatunog sa pagsaut sang Binanog, ang saut nga nagasunod sa hulag
sang banog ukon pispis nga dapay. Mahinay na nga mabatian ang mga tigbato sang pag-amba sang
ta-ta. Ang ta-ta ang pinakamatagsing kag pinakamagahod nga bahin sang Binanog. Herlikita!
Herli! Herli! Herlikita! Nahibaloan niya nga padayon ang pagsaut sang tribu.
*****
Lamunon sang higante nga man-og nga si Bakunawa ang iya iloy nga si Ugsad.
Magabangon si Bakunawa nga nagabaruron sa idalum sang dagat sa diin ginbilin kag
ginpatumbayaan siya ni Ugsad. Nagdaku siya nga nakaangkon sang kalabaon nga makatabid sang
langit kag dagat. Sa kalain sang iya balatyagon, luyag magtimalus ni Bakunawa kay Ugsad, nga iya
iloy. Nagalutaw sa hangin ang pangayaw nga nagpulong sini kay Leonita.
*****
Mangin masiri ang mga lalantawon gikan sa putokputokan sa diin malapit sa dagat. Dala ni
Leonita ang mga pinanid sang katsa, mga dagum, kag hilo nga may nagkalainlain nga duag.
Magabuhat siya sang panubok nga magalaragway sang paglamon ni Bakunawa kay Ugsad. Hinali
matabu, ini nga panubok indi niya mahimo nga mahigot sa iya agtang bilang sampulong ukon puni
sa tagsa ka pagsaut sang Binanog. Indi ini iya sang mga Bukidnon. Iya ini sang isa ka pangayaw.
Laban nga maakig si Lola Telya bangud batuk sa kinaandan sang mga Bukidnon ang
pagabuhaton ni Leonita nga may kakulba. Malayo ang talon kag kakahoyan sa dagat. Ginatawag
man sila nga mga Sulodnon bagud nagapuyo sila sa sulod sang talon kag kakahoyan.
*****
Ang pangayaw nagalutaw sa hangin. Isa ka gab-i, nagtuhaw siya samtang nagatamwa si
Leonita sa ugsad kag nagahuyop sang tulali santu sa huni sang mga pispis nga punay. Sa siga sang
ugsad, ang pangayaw naka-sarwal lang nga human sa daw may tuman kagagmay nga mga mata nga
lambat nga lanot. Wala ini sing may ginasul-ob nga bayo. Indi tuman kadalagku apang bayhonan
ang iya dughan kag mga butkon. Ang iya mga mata nagalaragway sang kaalam kag kaisog. Malaba
nga bangkaw nga ang punta sini may tagub nga may dagway sang isda kag napunihan sang pilak
ang nahigot sa iya likod.
Para kay Leonita, indi ini sayup nga pagpalatihan. Ini kamatuoran sagwa sang mga
kamatuoran nga nagapalibot sa mga Bukidnon. Lamunon sang higante nga man-og nga si
Bakunawa ang iya iloy nga si Ugsad. Magabangon si Bakunawa nga nagabaruron sa idalum sang
dagat sa diin ginbilin kag ginpabayaan siya ni Ugsad. Nagdaku siya nga nakaangkon sang kalabaon
nga makatabid sang langit kag dagat. Magatimalus si Bakunawa kay Ugsad.
Si Leonita naghamtong nga wala nakakilala sang iya iloy. Wala man niya makilala ang iya
amay. Si Lola Telya nga wala man mapat-ud kon matuodtuod niya nga lola ang nagbatiti sa iya
bilang ginikanan. Si Lola Telya ang pinakatigulang nga babaye sa tribu. Sunu sa mga huring-huring,
si Leonita anak sang mga pangayaw nga nagtalang sa ginsakpan sang mga Bukidnon. Likom sa
tanan, ini nga sugilanon ginpamatian ni Leonita nga may daku nga pagpati. Apang wala gid niya
ang iya pagpati ginpahibalo sa mga Bukidnon. Wala gid niya ini ginpamangkot bisan kay Lola
Telya.
*****
Sa putokputukan, daw halos lab-uton ni Leonita si Ugsad. Nagpangita siya sing daku,
malapad, kag matapan nga bato. Didto niya ginhumlad and mga katsa kag ginbutang ang mga
dagum kag mga hilo nga may nagkalainlain nga mga duag. Ano ang duag ni Bakunawa?
pamangkot ni Leonita.
Para kay Leonita, matuod ang pangayaw. Naghambal pa ini nga awayon kag patyon niya
si Bakunawa para mauntat na ang paghandum sini nga magtimalos sa iya sini nga iloy nga si Ugsad
para mauntat na ang pagtublag sini sa pangabuhi sang mga taga-dagat bangud tagsa ka paglukso
kag pagtupa ni Bakunawa sa iya handum nga malamon si Ugsad nagataub kag nagadalagku ang
mga balod.
Nagpati si Leonita sa sugilanon sang isa ka pangayaw. Maakig sa iya si Lola Telya. Apang
yari na siya sa putokputokan. Nahumlad na niya ang katsa sa matapan nga bato. Nahanda na niya
ang mga dagum kag hilo.
Malagas ko ayhan sa pagtubok ang kadasigon sang mga mahimo matabu? Tandaan ko kag
amo dayon ang pagtubok. Ano kalawig nga mahuman ko ang panubok sang akon sugidanon?
pamangkot naman ni Leonita.
Ang paglamon ni Bakunawa kay Ugsad kag ang pagpatay sang pangayaw kay Bakunawa
ipakita ni Leonita paagi sa panubok. Pananglit makita sang mga Bukidnon ang mga laragway sa
panubok, matingala sila kag mamangkot. Ang pangayaw, si Bakunawa, kag Ugsad indi kinaandan
para sa mga Bukidnon.
Karon, indi na mabatian ang tunog sang tambur, agung, kahoy nga ginbasal kag ta-ta.
Bangud nga natapos na bala ang Binanog ukon bangud na ini sa kalayuon sang talon kag
kakahoyan? dugang nga pamangkot ni Leonita.
May liwan nga lumay ang pangayaw. May kinalain ang iya sugidanon. May kinalain ang
iya kaambong. Katulad sang lana nga ginsimpon sa duga sang ginlubak nga dahon sang kamangyan
nga nagailig sa dughan kag mga butkon sini ang manipis niya nga balhas. Daw ginabutong sang iya
kaambong si Leonita. Liwan nga pagpalangligbos kag kainit ang mabatyagan niya. Ang iya mga
tinaga sugod sang una siya mabatian ni Leonita nagadala sang kamatuoran nga daw indi ni Leonita
mahimo duhaduhaan.
Mahimo ka mag-upod sa akon kon mapatay ko si Bakunawa. Mapuyo kita upod sa akon
tribu, nagabalikbalik sa pamatin-an ni Leonita ang mga ginpulong sang pangayaw.
Nagtulok si Leonita kay Ugsad. Ginhulat niya ang pagpakita kag paglukso ni Bakunawa
halin sa dagat kag paglamon sini kay Ugsad.
Wala na ang paghuni sang mga punay. Indi na niya makita ang mga bukol sang mga tanum
nga labog. Ginhulat niya ang pagpakita sang pangayaw.
Nagtanog siya sang mapulapula nga hilo. Nagtubok siya sang dughan pagkatapos sang mga
butkon. Gindugangan niya ini sang ulo. Gintapos niya ang lawas kag ginbutangan ini sang mga tiil.
Ang lalaki may malaba nga bangkaw nga ang punta sini may tagub nga may dagway nga isda nga
napunihan sang pilak nga nakahigot sa iya likod.
Nagtulok si Leonita kay Ugsad. Wala pa nakapakita ang pangayaw. Ginpadayon ni Leonita
ang pagtubok. Nagdugang siya sang kayumanggi nga hilo. Ginhuman niya sa pagtubok ang isa ka
babaye nga hublas kag nagadupa sa atubang sang pangayaw.
Ginpadayon ni Leonita ang pagtubok sing isa ka wala matapos nga laragway. Sa ini nga
laragway yara si Leonita kag ang pangayaw nga may ginadapit nga gamay nga bata. Indi mapat-ud
ni Leonita ang nawong nga bahin sang bata nga ila ginadapit. Gindihon niya ang lawas sini nga may
panit nga mapulapula katulad sang panit sang pangayaw.
Sa isa naman ka katsa, may payag. Ila ini payag sang pangayaw bilang mag-asawa. Luyag
niya ibutang ang laragway sang talon kag kakahoyan. Apang nagaagaw sa iya panghunahuna nga
ibutang ang laragway sang dagat. Pananglit magdayon siya nga mag-upod sa pangayaw, indi na
siya makabalik sa sulod sang talon kag kakahoyan.
Apang indi man siya makabalik sa mga Bukidnon, matuman niya ang wala matuman nga
pagtingub sang iya pamilya nga yara ang iloy, amay, kag ila anak. Siya ang magahatag sang unod
kag dugo sa naglipas nga kabuhi sang iya pamilya nga wala matuman sa iya panghunahuna.
Hatagan niya katumanan ang nagligad bangud nga ginakabig niya ang iya kaugalingon nga isa ka
babaye nga pinasahi. Sa tribu sang mga Bukidnon, wala pa mabun-ag ang isa ka lalaki nga mahimo
pasugtan sang mga katigulangan sang tribu nga makapangaluyag kag makapangasawa sa iya. Sa
tribu sang mga Bukidnon halos indi siya mapalapitan sang mga lalaki. Ikabuhi niya sagwa sang
tribu sang mga Bukidnon ang kabuhi nga wala matuman sang iya mga ginikanan sa iya
panghunahuna.
Nagtubok siya sang dagat sa katsa. Ginapanan-aw niya ang mahimo matabu pananglit mag-
upod siya sa pangayaw.
Makagalanyat ang pangayaw. Indi niya mahangpan ang gahum sang pagkagalanyat sini.
Katulad sang lana nga ginsimpon sa duga sang ginlubak nga dahon sang kamangyan nga nagailig sa
dughan kag mga butkon sini ang iya manipis nga balhas. Daw ginasuyop sang kaalam kag kaisog sa
iya mga mata si Leonita. Ang tinaga sang pangayaw nagadala sang kamatuoran nga mabudlay
duhaduhaan.
Mahimo ka mag-upod sa akon pagkatapos ko mapatay si Bakunawa. Mabatian ini ni
Leonita nga katulad lang nga yara sa iya atubang ang pangayaw.
Sunu sa mga Bukidnon, duha ka napulo ka tuig ang nagligad sang ginbun-ag si Leonita
sa talon kag kakahoyan. Apang ini mahipos niya nga wala ginpatihan. Mas nagapati siya nga isa
lang siya ka pangayaw sa mga Bukidnon. Luwas sa mga ini, naghamtong siya nga isa gid ka tunay
nga Bukidnon. Nangin sampaton siya sa pagsaut sang tinigbayi nga bahin sa Binanog. Masaulo niya
ang tunog sang mga barasalon nga ginagamit sa paglanton upod sa pagsaut: ang tambur, agung,
kahoy nga ginabasal kag ang mga ginamitlang nga mga tigbato sa ta-ta. Karon, indi na niya
mabatian ang tunog sang mga ini. Nadula na ang mga ini sa iya pamatin-an.
Liwan na nga kalibutan ang pagaatubangon ni Leonita. Liwan ang pangayaw. May kinalain
siya nga lumay. Tuhay ang iya sugidanon.
Katulad sang lana nga ginsimpon sa duga sang ginlubak nga dahon sang kamangyan ang
nagailig sa dughan kag mga butkon sang pangayaw ang manipis sini nga balhas. Duga ini nga
makabulong sang kauhaw sa paghandum ni Leonita karon.
Nag-untat si Leonita sa pagtanog. Wala siya makahibalo sang duag ni Bakunawa. Halos
magaampo na si Leonita sa paghulat. Nagaduhaduha na siya nga hinali indi na magpakita ang
pangayaw.
Wala sing kinalain nga lumay ang pangayaw! Wala sing kinalain ang iya sugidanon! Wala
sing kinalain ang iya kaambong! Makita man ini tanan sa mga Bukidnon, sa mga lalaki nga
Bukidnon! Wala sing mga mata nga makapaamag sa akon! Nagsinggit si Leonita. Wala sing
kinaalam kag kaisog nga makapaamag sa akon! Tanan ini yara sa mga Bukidnon! Ang mga tinaga
lang sang mga Bukidnon ang kamatuoroan! Wala na sang kamatuoran nga mahimo duhaduhaan!
Ang kamatuoran, amo ang kamatuoran lang sang mga Bukidnon.
Nagdaguob ang tingug ni Leonita gikan sa putokputokan.
Mahimo ka mag-upod sa akon pagkatapos ko mapatay si Bakunawa ! Ini nga mga tinaga
sang pangayaw iya na nga kalimtan.
Ginpiud ni Leonita ang mga katsa. Ginhimos niya ang dagum kag mga hilo. Magabalik siya
sa sulod sang talon kag kakahoyan.
Nagbaskug ang hangin. Naglantaw si Leonita sa palibut. Hinali nagtuluhaw ang mga dahon
kag bukol sang mga labog. Nagsugod sa pagtunog ang mga barasalon nga ginagamit sa Binanog.
Nagsigabong ang mga tambur. Naglanug ang mga agung. Naglinagapak ang mga kahoy nga
ginabasal. Naglagsing ang mga tigbato sang pag-amba sang ta-ta. Herlikita! Herli! Herli! Herlikita!
Makita niya ang iya kaugalingon sa tunga sang Binanog. Makita niya si Lola Telya nga nagapiyong
kag nagamitlang sang mga sugidanon, sugidanon sang magkahagugma nga naangut sa pagtuga
sang mga kasangkapan sa paglanton katulad sang kubing nga ginalanton sunod sa hangin sa sulod
sang bukas nga baba, tulali nga ginahuyop, kag suganggang nga ginahampak sa kamut kag
nagapagana sa pagsaut sang Binanog. Ini ang mga sugidanon nga iya nahamut-an sa duha ka
napulo ka tuig niya nga pang-edaron.
Nagsaut siya sang tinigbayi nga bahin sang Binanaog. Katulad siya sang isa ka banog ukon
dapay nga nagalupadlupad sa nagaagaway nga amihan kag habagat. Nagkiaykiay siya sa wala.
Nagkiaykiay siya sa tuo. Nakasul-ob siya sang pula nga patadyong kag puti nga bayo nga may
panubok sang mga bulak sang labog.
Sang magtulok si Leonita sa kalangitan, nagtuhaw sa nawong ni Ugsad ang pangayaw.
Naglupad nga tuman ka dasig ini palapit sa iya atubang. Nagsulod sa panghunahuna ni Leonita nga
nagbutig ang pangayaw. Ang pangayaw kag si Ugsad isa lang. Indi tanan nga ginhambal sang
pangayaw matuod. Dapat ini pamatud-an ni Leonita.
Nagbaylo ang palibut. Nadula ang mga barasalon sang Binanog. Nadula ang tunog sang mga
tambur, agung, kag kahoy nga ginabasal. Nadula ang mga tigbato sang pag-amba sang ta-ta.
Ang lawas sang pangayaw luyag ni Leonita matandug. Luyag niya ini pamatud-an. Luyag
niya mahaplos ang balhas nga daw ginsimpon nga lana kag duga sang ginlubak nga dahon sang
kamangyan sa dughan sini. Luyag niya ini mapamatud-an. Luyag niya mauyatan ang baslay sini kag
pamatud-an nga indi ini panan-awan lang. Mahimo lang, luyag niya nga pilason ang iya pagka
babaye nga ginakabig nga Bukidnon sang bangkaw sang pangayaw para indi siya magduhaduha nga
ini indi matuod. Luyag niya nga makita ang pagtulo sang dugo sang iya pagka-babaye nga una
ginpilas sang isa ka pangayaw. Luyag niya mapamatud-an ang kasakit kag kadalag-an sang
pagkapilas sang kaisganan sang iya pagkababaye. Sa unod nga inagyan sang tinulo sang iya dugo
magahalin ang bag-o nga tinuga nga magapadayon sang isa ka bag-o nga sugidanon.
Lamunon sang higante nga man-og nga si Bakunawa ang iya iloy nga si Ugsad! Karon,
nagadaguob na ang tingug sang pangayaw.
Apang diin si Bakunawa? sabat ni Leonita.
Nakita mo na si Bakunawa! Iya iloy ang iya ginhalinan. Indi niya ini mahimo malamon.
Wala sing may makalamon sa iya ginhalinan!
Ano ang duag ni Bakunawa?
Nahibaloan mo na ang duag ni Bakunawa. Katulad ini sang duag sang iya iloy.
Ipakita sa akon si Bakunawa.

Ipakita ko sa imo si Bakunawa kag magaupod ka sa akon?
Ipakita sa akon si Bakunawa kag magaupod ako sa imo.
Ang duag mo, duag sang imo ginhalinan. Ang duag ni Bakunawa, duag sang iya iloy nga
iya ginhalinan! Nagadaguob ang tingug sang pangayaw.
Naglupad pabalik kay Ugsad ang pangayaw. Gintinghuwaan nga lagson siya ni Leonita.
Ginlakad ni Leonita ang mga talaytay. Sa iya pamatyag, ginalakad niya ang mga panganod.
Lambuton niya ang pangayaw nga karon nangin isa upod kay Ugsad. Hinali nga ginlamon sang
kasanag ni Ugsad ang pangayaw. Daw ginalakad ni Leonita ang mga panganod. Lambuton gid niya
ang pangayaw. Lambuton niya ang pangayaw nga karon nangin isa kay Ugsad. Lambuton niya
karon si Ugsad. Daw ginalakad niya ang mga panganod.
Ginlagas ni Leonita si Ugsad tubtub si Ugsad ginlamon sang kaagahon. Apang natiplang
siya sang pangayaw. Ang pangayaw, si Ugsad kag si Bakunawa isa lang ka tinuga.
*****
Ginpahigda ni Lola Telya si Leonita sa iya mga paa. Ginkuha sang isa ka siglo kag duha ka
tuig nga mga kamut ni Lola Telya ang mga katsa nga may mga panubok ni Leonita. Ginpahid ni
Lola Telya ang isa ka katsa nga may panubok nga laragway ni Leonita kag sang pangayaw kag sang
wala mahuman nga bata sa nawong ni Leonita.
Nagkuha si Lola Telya sang lana nga ginsimpon sa duga sang ginlubak nga dahon sang
kamangyan. Ginbanyosan niya ang mga butkon kag ulo ni Leonita. Nabatyagan ni Leonita ang
pagsuyop sang kainit kag pagkadula sang pagpalanugnaw nga naglikop sa iya bilog nga lawas.
Naghugot ang paghakos ni Lola Telya kay Leonita. Ginpiyong sang tigulang ang iya mga
mata. Nadumduman ni Lola Telya nga sadto may nagtuhaw man nga isa ka pangayaw sagwa sang
iya bintana. Nagdala ini sang sugidanon nahanungod kay Bakunawa nga luyag maglamon sang iya
iloy nga si Ugsad. Nadumduman ni Lola Telya nga sa siga sang ugsad, naka-sarwal lang ini nga
human sa daw may tuman kagagmay nga mga mata nga lambat nga lanot. Wala ini makasul-ob
sing bayo.
Matahum lantawon ang dughan kag mga butkon sini sa diin nagailig ang manipis nga balhas
nga daw katulad sang ginsimpon nga lana kag ginlubak nga dahon sang kamangyan. Ang mga mata
sini nagapakita sang kaalam kag kaisog nga tuhay sa iya sang mga Bukidnon. Malaba nga bangkaw
nga ang tagub sini may dagway nga isda kag napunihan sang pilak ang nahigot sa iya likod.
Mahimo ka mag-upod sa akon pagkatapos ko mapatay si Bakunawa, pulong sang
pangayaw Kay Lola Telya.
Nagsugod si Lola Telya sa pagmitlang sang mga tinaga. Daw halos wala nagatunog ang
pagmitlang ni Lola Telya sang mga tinaga. Daw nagakutibkutib lang ang iya mga bibig kag sa ini
lang nga kahigayonan nga indi ni Leonita mahangpan ang buot silingon sang ginapangmitlang ni
Lola Telya.
Nagbangon si Leonita kag nagtipon naman sang mga pinanid sang katsa, mga dagum, kag
mga hilo nga may may nagkalainlain nga mga duag. Nagsugod siya sa pagtubok sang dagway ni
Ugsad nga diin katulad ini sang isa ka salaming sa diin makita ang ulo sang pangayaw nga
nakatabid sa lawas sang isa ka higante nga man-og. Pagkatapos niya sa pagtubok sang pangayaw,
kay Ugsad kag kay Bakunawa, nagtubok naman siya sang isa ka bag-o nga laragway. Sa
laragway, isa siya ka tigulang nga may pangedaron katulad ni Lola Telya karon. Sa laragway,
nakapungko siya sa ulunan sa tunga sang salog sang payag ni Lola Telya. May tupad siya nga isa ka
dalaga nga may pangedaron katulad niya karon. Sa laragway, nagapiyong ang iya mga mata kag
nagamitlang siya sang mga tinaga sang isa ka sugidanon.
*****
Sa masunod nga pagpakita ni Ugsad, mahipos nga ginhagad ni Lola Telya si Leonita nga
magkadto sa sapa nga nagakihad sang talon kag kakahoyan kag sang duta sagwa sini. Sa isa ka
bahin sang patag nga kahilamunan, nagpungko si Lola Telya katulad sang iya pagpungko kon siya
ang magmitlang sang mga tinaga sang mga sugidanon sa sulod sang iya payag. Nagsugod siya sa
pagmitlang sang mga tinaga sang isa ka sugidanon. Matigda ang pagmitlang ni Lola Telya kag labi
nga mahangpan ni Leonita ang mga tinaga. Nagpungko si Leonita sa tupad ni Lola Telya katulad
sang iya ginahimo tagsa nga yara sila sa sulod sang payag samtang nagapamati siya sa mga
sugidadon ni Lola Telya. Karon, makita ang pagkakibot, pagkatingala, dayon pagkalipay sa
nawong ni Leonita.
Pagkatapos ni Lola Telya sa pagmitlang sang sugidanon, nagpagwa siya kag naghumlad
sang mga panubok. May yara nga may laragway ni Leonita, sang pangayaw kag nahuman nga bata
nga may duag sang pangayaw. May yara man nga ay laragway sang isa ka payag .
May isa ka panubok sa mas malapad nga katsa. Sa ini nga panubok, may yara sang
laragway sang babaye kag lalaki nga indi mga Bukidnon. Ginhangop ni Leonita nga pangayaw ang
mga ini. May lapsag nga ginadahu ang babaye kag lalaki sa isa ka tigulang nga babaye nga
Bukidnon. Ang panapton sang babaye indi katulad sang panapton sang mga Bukidnon nga babaye.
Ang lalaki naka-sarwal nga nahuman sang may tuman ka gagmay nga mga mata nga lambat nga
lanot. Wala ini makasul-ob sang bayo. Malaba nga bangkaw nga ang punta sini may tagub nga
may dagway sang isda kag napunihan sang pilak ang nahigot sa iya likod.
Gindaho niya kay Leonita ang mga panubok. Ginhimutadan ni Leonita ang mga ini.
Gilayon nga naglakat si Leonita. Naglakat siya padulong sa ginahamtangan sang dagat nga wala
sing pangduhaduha ukon kahadlok. Wala gid siya nagbalikid sa talon kag kakahoyan. Si Lola Telya
naman naglantaw sa nagapalayo nga Leonita tubtub nadula ang dalaga sa mga talaytay kag mga
panganod.

POETRY: Ang Baboy by John Iremil E. Teodoro
About the Author:
John Iremil Erine Teodoro (born November 14, 1973 in Maybato Norte, San Jose de
Buenavista, Antique, Philippines) is a Filipino writer, literary critic and cultural scholar. Born to a
middle-class family in Antique province, Teodoro gained early recognition as a creative writer since
his college years. He writes in four languages, namely English, Filipino, Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a.
He is a member of the Alon Collective and the Tabig/Hubon Manunulat Antique. Many of his
literary works have been published some of the country's leading journals, magazines and
newspapers. He is a five-time awardee of the Palanca Awards and has published countless books of
fiction and poetry. He obtained his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of San
Agustin in Iloilo City and completed a master's degree in creative writing from the De La Salle
University-Manila with high distinction.
ANG BABOY
John Eremil E. Teodoro
Sugot takun nga mangin baboy

Kon ang tangkal ko mga butkun mo.
Basta damogan mo lang ako
Kang imo nga yuhum kag haruk
Aga, hapon.
Dali man lang ako patambukun.

Ang pangako mo man lang
Nga indi ako pagpabay-an
Amo ang bitamina nga akun
Ginatomar.
Kag kon gabii gani

Ang mga apuhap mo man lang
Sa akun likod kag dughan
Ang makapahuraguk kanakun.

ONE-ACT PLAY: Children of the Sea by Glenn Sevilla Mas
About the Author:
Glenn Sevilla Mas (born 1968) is a Filipino teacher, theater artist, writer, and nine-time
winner of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Mas is currently a Fine Arts professor
at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Glenn Mas hails from San Jose de Buenavista, Antique. He studied in Antique Christian
Center, St. Anthony's College, Oton Elementary School, Antique National School, West Visayas
State University, and The Catholic University of America.
He is the contributing editor for drama in English of the website A Critical Survey of
Philippine Literature and the drama editor of Literatura, an online magazine of Philippine literature.
His plays have been published in Tony, the literary journal of St. Anthonys College in San Jose de
Buenavista, Antique; SanAg, the literary journal of the University of San Agustin in Iloilo City and
Ani, the literary journal of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Glenn has won nine times in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. He
won first place for Her Fathers House (2004), "In the Land of the Giants" (2005) and The
Death of Memory (2006), second place for In the Dark (2001), Children of the Sea (2005)
and Games People Play (2007), and third place for The Feline Curse (1996), Birth of Flight
(2003), and Rite of Passage (2004).
CHILDREN OF THE SEA

Glenn Sevilla Mas
Characters
Manding Soling an old woman Corazon Osmar and Estrellas daughter, 14

Osmar her son, 35 The men and women of Caluya
Estrella Osmars wife, 33
Setting
The stages walls are made of katsa (sack or muslin cloth). To the right is Manding Solings
bedroom. Here, an old bamboo bed occupies most of the space. Near it is an old table with a lighted
candle. To the left is a small kitchen with its requisite table and chairs. In one corner is a bamboo
cupboard. Near it is the sink with an earthen jar filled with potable water. On the other side of the
kitchen is an old cabinet filled with old clothes. Suspended above the stage is a huge fishing net that
is dangerously threatening to collapse.
Time and Place

A stormy month in the province of Antique, Philippines. The island municipality of Caluya.
The farthest from the capital town of San Jose de Buenavista, Caluya and its nine other islands can
only be reached by motorized pump or ferry boat. In Kinaray-a, a native language of Antique, the
word kaluya literally means lonely.
The Play
The sound of angry waves is heard. Soon, thunder roars and the wind howls. At the
foreground of the stage, Estrella and Corazon are worriedly looking out to the sea. Light comes
from the kerosene lamp that Estrella carries.
ESTRELLA Do you see anything, Corazon?
CORAZON Ano abi ay your tatay insisted gid to go to Sibay and look for your Tiyo Bendo there.
But this weather
(The two women stare helplessly at the angry sea.)
ESTRELLA O, ta. It is late run, Corazon. Your lola must be worried already.
CORAZON You go ahead rulang, Nay. I will wait for tatay here.
ESTRELLA Corazon.
(Corazon once again looks out to the sea.)
ESTRELLA Corazon! Linti nga
(Corazon reluctantly follows her to offstage.)
(In a while, a dim light reveals Manding Soling sleeping on the bed. The waves become even
angrier and she is disturbed. The bed creaks as she tosses and turns in her sleep. The flickering
images of a grim shadow play are then projected on the katsa walls: a boat being tossed at sea a
man desperately trying to save his boat and his life the waves becoming even angrier as the man
slowly loses control of the boat the boat suddenly getting hit by a big wave the man bravely
facing death as he frantically prays the Maghimaya ikaw, Mariya.)
MAN Maghimaya ikaw, Mariya buta ikaw ti grasya ipangamuyo mo kami kadya kag sa tion
kang amun kamatayun
(Another wave, bigger and more fatal, hits the boat. The man screams. The flickering images
disappear as another dim light reveals the rest of the stage. Estrella and Corazon enter the kitchen.
Estrella places the lamp on the dining table, Corazon sits in one of the chairs.)
MANDING SOLING Bendor! (Pulls herself up and clutches her rosary.)
ESTRELLA Nay? (She hurriedly enters Manding Solings room.)
ESTRELLA You dreamed of Bendor again. (She gently massages the old womans back.)
ESTRELLA Corazon? Corazon! Abi bring a glass of water anay here for your lola.
CORAZON Dali lang, Nay! (She gets a glass of water from the cupboard and fills it with drinking
water.)
ESTRELLA The Lord has mercy, Nay. He will surely take pity on Bendor.
MANDING SOLING Is Osmar home already, Estrella?
ESTRELLA Not yet gani, Nay. We wanted to wait for him longer daad but it was getting late
already. Im worried man gani.
MANDING SOLING I hope he arrives with some news about Bendor soon.
(Corazon enters the room and hands over the glass to Manding Soling. The old woman drinks from
it slowly.)
CORAZON Nay, Id like to go back to the shore daad and wait for tatay there.
ESTRELLA Abi stop adding to our problems man anay, Corazon. You know how worried your lola
and I are tapos here you are asking permission to go back to the shore, alone? Abi be
considerate man! Linti nga
CORAZON But, Nay. I just want to be there daad so when tatay arrives
ESTRELLA (Overlapping. Stands up.) What? What will you do gid haw man when your tatay
arrives, ha, Corazon? You know very well that he will get angry lang with us if he sees
you waiting for him there alone! Indi bala? Abi use your head man once in a while,
Corazon, ay! And stop this foolishness at once abi! Bwisit nga Abi go to the kitchen
rulang gani and make yourself useful there.
(Manding Soling hands over the glass to Corazon who then goes to the kitchen and sits in one of the
chairs, sulking.)
MANDING SOLING Dont you think youre a little too harsh on Corazon, ha, Estrella? She is a big
girl now. Soon, I am sure nga she will assert herself more.
ESTRELLA Assert herself more? In other places siguro, Nay, that is possible. But here? In Caluya?
We cant even assert ourselves gani in this house mong. No one listens to us here! Indi
bala, Nay? Except ourselves man e.
(A moment of silence.)
ESTRELLA And that child is becoming stubborn as she grows older, Nay. Indi bala? She had
better do something about it if she wants a good man to marry her. Otherwise, who will
look after her and take care of her bay? We cant always be there for her!
(Another gust of wind is heard. Estrella sighs. In the kitchen, Corazon gets up and hurriedly leaves
for the shore. Estrella sits beside Manding Soling.)
ESTRELLA Nong Kardo sacrificed a chicken gali this afternoon, Nay. He said he did it to appease
the spirits of the sea. (A beat.) I guess theyre asleep. Its taking a long time for the
sacrifice to work.
MANDING SOLING Estrella! He is a good man, your Manong Kardo. He also lost two sons to the
sea many years ago so he understands what we are going through now.
A moment of silence.
ESTRELLA Im sorry, Nay. Im sorry gid but I do not know what to do run abi. I have a favor
to ask of you gani daad.
MANDING SOLING What favor, Estrella?
ESTRELLA Please talk to Osmar abi later, Nay. He wont listen gid to me abi. He insists in leaving
for Mindoro the moment he arrives from Sibay. It is important that he go there kuno to
get ice for the island. I keep telling him gani to wait daad until the weather gets better
but he wont listen to me gid. Nong Nestor kuno promised to pay him extra pesos if he
leaves tomorrow with Berto. Sibay, at least, is not that far. But Mindoro?
MANDING SOLING I dont know, Estrella, but all right. For your sake, I will try. But you know
how he is.
ESTRELLA For my sake? For my sake lang, Nay? What about you tana bay, Nay? Dot you want
your son haw to stay here anay until the weather gets better? Nay.
MANDING SOLING You know very well he doesnt listen to me man, Estrella. And I have
accepted that many years ago run. When he was younger, yes, he listened to me. But the
day he became taller than me, he started doing things on his own run. Like his tatay. And
his other brothers.
ESTRELLA But, Nay
MANDING SOLING Through the years, I have learned to accept many things run, Estrella. Even if
I cant understand them man. And one of them is to keep my opinions to myself. I also
didnt believe my nanay when she told me that many, many years ago. But shes right,
indi bala? Thats just how things are here. I keep hoping gani that things will be a little
different when its Corazons turn run to get married. But with the way things are
(She smiles sadly.)
MANDING SOLING After I talk to him and he still decides to leave, ti kundi we cannot do
anything run but pray for his safety rulang. (She takes Estrellas hand.) But the Lord has
mercy and he will take pity on us. Osmar will be home soon.
(Another gust of wind is heard.)
ESTRELLA I dont know, Nay. I no longer know what to believe. Ill go back to the shore rulang
anay siguro. I will wait for him there. Im worried run gid abi.
(Manding Soling doesnt answer.)
ESTRELLA Sige, Nay. Corazon? Corazon! (Gets up and goes to the kitchen.) Abi go with me to
the shore anay. We will wait for your tatay there! Corazon! Ay sus (Returns
immediately.) Your granddaughter, Nay. She went ahead run gali. I pity gid the man
who will choose her for his wife. Well be back as soon as Osmar arrives.
(She goes to the kitchen and gets the kerosene lamp. She leaves. Manding Soling stares after her. In
a while, she prays.)
MANDING SOLING Maghimaya ikaw, Mariya, magkalipay ikaw, buta ikaw ti grasya; ang
Ginuong Dyos rugyan kanimo. Nahamut-an ikaw labaw sa tanan ng mga babayi kag
nahamut-an man ang bunga kang imo busong nga si Hisus
(Lights out. Estrella soon reaches the foreground area of the stage. There, she sees Corazon sitting
on the shore and looking out to the sea. The sound of angry waves is still heard.)
ESTRELLA Sus, Corazon, you shouldnt have gone ahead. You should have waited for me daad.
(Corazon doesnt answer. Estrella sits near her.)
ESTRELLA Ay, your tatay, Corazon. I hope he is safe out there.
(And the two women stare silently at the sea, waiting. In a while, the sound of an approaching
motorized pump boat is heard. The two get up.)
ESTRELLA Ginuo ko. (My God.) Thats your tatays boat, indi bala? Thats his boat, indi bala,
Corazon?
(Corazon rushes forward and tries to see more clearly.)
CORAZON I think it is his boat gid man, Nay. Tay! (Looks at Estrella.) Its tatays boat gid man,
Nay!
ESTRELLA Diyos ko, salamat. Osmar!
(The women anxiously wait for the boat to reach the shore. In a while, a wet and every tired Osmar
enters. He has with him a weather-beaten knapsack. Estrella rushes to meet him.)
ESTRELLA Sus, Osmar! Thank God you are safe. Weve been very worried gid about you. Ti did
you find out anything about Bendor? Has anyone seen him, or heard anything about him,
in Sibay, ha, Osmar? Nanay had another one of her bad dreams abi. She dreamed about
Bendor again and she dreamed that
CORAZON (Overlapping.) is that Tiyo Bendors bag, Tay?
(Estrella notices the knapsack.)
ESTRELLA Ginuo ko. Thats Bendors bag, isnt it, Osmar? Where did you
OSMAR Someone found it floating near the shore of Sibay yesterday. He gave it to me when I said
it looked like Bendors.
ESTRELLA You mean you havent Ti shall we open it now, Osmar? Because if thats really
Bendors
OSMAR (Overlapping.) Im tired, Estrella. Lets talk about this some other time. (hands over the
knapsack to Estrella.) You keep this anay. (Estrella silently accepts the knapsack.)
OSMAR Dont show it anay to nanay until we are sure what really happened to Bendor.
ESTRELLA But, Osmar, if this bag is really Bendors
OSMAR (Overlapping.) Estrella.
ESTRELLA I mean, dont you want to open this now, Osmar? Indi bala nga Im sorry but indi
bala nga weve been waiting for something like this to turn up? And now that we have
this, dont you think its a good idead for us even just us lang anay, Osmar to look
at this now?
(Osmar doesnt acknowledge Estrellas suggestion.)
OSMAR How is your lola gali, Corazon?
(Estrella sighs.)
CORAZON Shes okay lang man siguro, Tay.
ESTRELLA Shes still trying to be brave about all this man. Shes been waiting for something like
this gani to
OSMAR (Overlapping.) Have you had supper run, Corazon?
CORAZON Not yet, Tay. But its ready run. Nanay said we should eat together mong.
OSMAR Ta. Im hungry run gid man.
ESTRELLA Osmar!
OSMAR Lets go home run, Estrella. Im sure youre hungry, too. Weve all had a long day.
(Estrella just stares at Osmar.)
OSMAR Estrella.
(And they slowly head for home. A dim light again reveals the house. Still clutching her rosary,
Manding Soling is now sitting on the edge of her bed anxiously waiting for Osmars arrival. The
sound of angry waves is still heard. Soon, Osmar, Estrella and Corazon enter the kitchen.)
OSMAR Nay?
MANDING SOLING Osmar? Osmar, is that you run? (Stands up and rushes to meet Osmar who
hurriedly enters her room.)
(In the kitchen, Estrella places the lamp on the dining table. She goes to the cabinet and
momentarily stares at the knapsack. Corazon sits and watches her silently. Soon, Estrella hides it
inside the cabinet. At the same time )
OSMAR Bisa ko, Nay. (Kisses the right hand of Manding Soling.)
MANDING SOLING Bless you, my son. (Embraces Osmar.) Thank God you are safe, Osmar! Ano
abi ay I had this bad dream kaina (a while ago). I really thought But you are safe. And
thats whats important. Ti have you any news about Bendor? Has anyone seen him, or
heard anything about him, in Sibay? Ha, Osmar?
OSMAR No, Nay. But Ill continue looking for him when I return from Mindoro.
(Estrella enters Manding Solings room.)
OSMAR I wont stay there long man, Nay. Berto and I will just load the blocks of ice from Manlor
Ice Plant and then well immediately go back here. (Sits on Manding Solings bed.)
Corazon? Corazon!
CORAZON Tay?
OSMAR Abi bring a clean shirt for me anay here. The one I have on is very dirty run gid.
CORAZON Dali lang, Tay!
(She gets up and goes to the cabinet. She searches for a clean shirt but her attention is clearly on
the knapsack. Outside, a gust of wind can be heard. Corazon gets the bag and carefully opens it. At
the same time )
OSMAR Dont worry, Nay. Bendor cannot just disappear man, indi bala? He is bound to turn up
somewhere soon. And for all we know, Bendor just might be in another island, worried
man about us. We never know, indi bala?
ESTRELLA Or he could be floating lifeless somewhere out in the sea. We also never know, Osmar,
indi bala?
OSMAR Estrella!
ESTRELLA Your brother has been gone nine days run, Osmar. Nine days! And we havent heard
anything about him not a single thing we could pin our hopes on! Tapos you tell us to
still hope and not worry?
OSMAR Ti what do you want me to say bay, Estrella? Ha?

ESTRELLA I cannot go through another nine days of hoping and not knowing anything, Osmar.
(In the kitchen, Corazon carefully closes the knapsack and returns it to its hiding place. She gets a
clean shirt and closes the cabinet. At the same time )
ESTRELLA You will not leave for Mindoro. At least, not now, Osmar.
OSMAR Estrella! We talked about this run, indi bala? Didnt we talk about this run yesterday? Ha?
And you agreed that Ill leave for Mindoro the moment I arrive from Sibay!
ESTRELLA What are you saying I agreed, Osmar! I didnt! You just assumed that I did but I didnt!
OSMAR But our talk ended with you not saying anything about it anymore! It ended with me
saying that Ill leave for Mindoro today, indi bala?
ESTRELLA Osmar, my not saying anything anymore didnt mean I agreed!
OSMAR (Exasperated.) Sus! (Turns to Manding Soling.) Nay, abi talk to her anay and put some
sense into her head, abi.
ESTRELLA It is you who should put some sense into your head, Osmar! Abi listen to reason man
ay! How can you possibly go back to the sea when the weather has not improved at all?
Listen to it bala! And look at yourself man abi, Osmar! Have you seen yourself lately?
Ha? You look like death itself! Rest, Osmar! Rest anay abit. Even for just a night lang.
Just one night lang, Osmar. Rest!
(Corazon slowly enters the room.)
CORAZON Tay. (Hands over the shirt to Osmar. Osmar accepts the shirt but doesnt put it on.)
MANDING SOLING Corazon and I had better prepare supper anay siguro. You must be hungry
run, Osmar. (Manding Soling does not look at Estrella.)
ESTRELLA Nay!
MANDING SOLING Ta, Corazon.
(Manding Soling and Corazon go to the kitchen. Estrella stares after them. Soon, Manding Soling
and Corazon prepare the dining table.)
ESTRELLA I am sorry but I cannot let you tempt death again, Osmar.
OSMAR But, Estrella
ESTRELLA (Overlapping.) You just dont know lang but each time you leave this house to look for
Bendor each time I watched you leave this house to look for your brother, Osmar I
always felt like I was seeing you for the last time! And I am afraid that you will end up
just like your tatay! And your brothers! But I kept quiet lang, Osmar. Because even if it
was difficult to do, I still somehow understood. But to get ice for the island?
OSMAR I already gave my word to Nong Nestro, Estrella. He is counting on me to be on that boat
to Mindoro.
ESTRELLA Listen man abi to me, Osmar, ay! Nay!
(Manding Soling hears Estrella but makes no move to return to the room.)
OSMAR Estrella, I begged Nong Nestor for this job! And if I dont take that boat ride to Mindoro,
he will give the job to someone else. And you know very well there are many in this
island who will gladly take my place, indi bala! Ti if that happens, where am I going to
get money bay so you will have something to eat? Ha, Estrella? You know of any other
way haw of earning money? Abi tell me. Tell me, Estrella, and I will gladly not leave for
Mindoro now! You know why? Because you are right! I am tired! I am very tired run,
Estrella!
ESTRELLA But we can do without money for a few days more, Osmar. And even if we eat
tangkong and ginamos and pinakas everyday, no one is complaining man, Osmar, indi
bala? And we will all go on eating tangkong and ginamos and pinakas for as long as they
are the only things you can afford! You will never hear us complain, Osmar. Just please
stay. Please.
OSMAR Lets talk about this some other time, Estrella. I am tired. And I still have a job to do. For
now, I need you to understand me lang anay. Please. (Estrella doesnt answer.) This is
my job, Estrella. This is my only job. And right now, I am the only man left in this
family, indi bala? If I lose this job, our already miserable life will become even more
miserable. I cant allow that to happen. Thats why I have to leave. (Estrella still doesnt
answer.)
ESTRELLA Your supper is waiting for you.
(And she hurriedly goes out. She goes to the table and puts food on her plate. She looks at
Corazon.)
ESTRELLA O, Corazon? What are you waiting for pa?
(Corazon slowly goes to the table. She also puts food on her plate. Soon, the two of them eat quietly.
Manding Soling just looks at them. In a while, she slowly goes to her room.)
MANDING SOLING Are you not going to eat, Osmar? (Osmar doesnt answer.) I dont want to
interfere daad, but Estrella has a point, indi bala, Osmar?
(Osmar still doesnt answer. He changes his shirt.)
MANDING SOLING Do you really have to go, Osmar?
OSMAR (Mlldly irritated.) Nay.
MANDING SOLING Your tatay abi didnt listen to me man when I begged him to stay the night we
saw him last. Remember? I told him to wait daad, even for just another day. He just said,
But dont you always tell me that, Soledad? And dont I always go back to the island
man, tired but safe? Hay, Osmar. Abi mo (You know what), I didnt sleep that night. I
stayed awake listening lang to the angry waves. I kept imagining your tatay out there
in the sea, helplessly facing its fury alone.
OSMAR But the sea has also been kind man to us, indi bala, Nay? It has always provided us with
food. And money.
(Manding Soling sits near Osmar.)
MANDING SOLING But it also claimed man the life of your tatay and your three brothers.
OSMAR (Softly.) Nay.
MANDING SOLING I have stopped hoping run, Osmar. I just want your brothers body to be
found so we could give him a proper burial. And Estrellas right. What good is a few
pesos more if the price is the life of my only surviving son?
OSMAR I will be very careful, Nay. I will be very careful gid.
BERTO (From outside.) Osmar? Osmar!
OSMAR Berto? Is that you run?
(Estrella and Corazon stop eating.)
BERTO (From outside.) Yes, Osmar! We might have to leave for Mindoro siguro run bay! The sea
is not as angry as it was kaina mong so we might as well take advantage of it. What do
you think haw?
(Osmar looks at Manding Soling.)
BERTO (From outside.) Osmar?
OSMAR You go ahead lang anay to the boat, Berto! Ill join you in a while!
BERTO (From outside.) Sige a! Ill just wait for you there rulang, Osmar! Ill prepare the boat run!
OSMAR Sige, Berto! Corazon? Corazon!
CORAZON Tay?
OSMAR Abi get me another shirt anay to bring to Mindoro!
CORAZON Yes, Tay! Dali lang gid!
(She gets up and goes to the cabinet. She opens it and gets another shirt. Estrella stares at the
cabinet quietly. Corazon closes it and goes to Manding Solings room.)

CORAZON Tay. (Hands over the shirt to Osmar.)
OSMAR (Accepts it.) Thank you, Corazon. And if I have time, Ill buy you a new dress in Mindoro,
ha?
CORAZON Sige, Tay. Thank you man.
(Osmar gets up.)
OSMAR Nay.
(Manding Soling embraces Osmar.)
MANDING SOLING I really pray you are making the right decision, Osmar. Ti take care gid. I will
be praying rulang for your safety.
OSMAR Sige, Nay. You take care lang anay of things here. Ill go back immediately man a.
MANDING SOLING Dont worry about us, Osmar. Well be just fine.
(Osmar goes to the kitchen. Manding Soling and Corazon slowly follow him there.)
OSMAR Estrella.
(Estrella doesnt answer. She resumes eating.)
OSMAR Estrella, please.
OSMAR Im leaving anay, Estrella.
ESTRELLA Of course. Youve made that clear kaina pa, indi bala? So sige. No one can stop you
man ayhan.
OSMAR Ill be back immediately, Estrella. Well talk then.
ESTRELLA Why bother, Osmar? After all, in this house, only your opinion matters, indi bala? Lets
not waste our time.
(A gust of wind is heard.)
ESTRELLA You might be late run, Osmar. Berto might become impatient and leave you behind.
(Osmar angrily leaves. Estrella just goes on eating. Manding Soling sits facing her. Estrella gets up
and brings her plate to the sink. She washes it.)
MANDING SOLING Estrella. It might not be a good idea to let your husband leave like that. If
something happens to him
ESTRELLA (Overlapping.) If he stayed here tonight, Nay, nothing will surely happen to him.
ESTRELLA I thought you were going to talk to him, Nay.
MANDING SOLING But I did, Estrella! Or at least, I tried!
ESTRELLA No, Nay, you didnt. You listened to him and agreed to everything he said! If you
insisted that he stay here daad, he might have listened to you pa and we wouldnt be
worrying about him now! Hes your only son left, Nay.
MANDING SOLING Thats why God will take care of him, Estrella.
ESTRELLA Nay! You lost your husband and sons to the sea run and you still believe that God will
take care of the only one left?
MANDING SOLING Estrella!
ESTRELLA There is no God out there in the sea, Nay! I know because Ive been there several
times run. Out there, theres just you and the endless water. And once the sea gets angry,
Nay, there is nothing you can do but hope that it will at least be a quick end! I lost my
only brother to the sea years ago man, Nay! He was a fisherman who insisted he knows
everything about it. So he left even if we begged him not to. And he didnt return, Nay!.
I even went with Tatay to look for him gani mong. We searched for him for days! And
you know what, Nay? We never found him! And you tell me God will look out for
Osmar because hes the only one left?
(Gusts of wind are again heard. Soon, thunder roars.)
MANDING SOLING Ginuo ko! It might not be too late pa man siguro, Estrella, indi bala? Nestors
boat might not have left pa man siguro, indi bala?
ESTRELLA But you have to hurry siguro, Nay, if you want to prevent Osmar from leaving. Berto
was in a hurry nga daan to leave kaina, indi bala?
MANDING SOLING Dont you want to go with me to the shore haw, Estrella?
ESTRELLA But hes angry with me, Nay. You saw how we parted ways kaina. And my being there
might force him pa gani to leave even more, indi bala? Corazon.
CORAZON Nay?
ESTRELLA Abi go with your lola anay to the shore. Hopefully, your tatay hasnt left pa man for
Mindoro.
CORAZON Yes, Nay.
ESTRELLA And bring that lamp dayon so he will immediately see you approaching.
CORAZON Yes, Nay. (Gets the kerosene lamp.)
MANDING SOLING Sige, Estrella. Pray that we will reach Osmar in time.
ESTRELLA I will, Nay. Now, hurry!
MANDING SOLING Ta, Corazon.
(And the two women hurriedly leave. Estrella watches them for a moment. In a while, she goes to
the cabinet and takes out the knapsack. Lightning strikes and another thunder is heard. Soon, there
is rain. Estrella goes to the table and hurriedly opens the bag. She takes out its contents: a bonnet
and a dried out, plastic-covered prayer book. She inspects the shirt and the bonnet but doesnt see
any identifying mark on them. She picks up the prayer book and looks at its cover. She sees
Bendors name on it.)
ESTRELLA Bendor!
(Lightning strikes again. From afar, a woman wails.)
ESTRELLA Nay?
MANDING SOLING (From outside). Estrella! Ay, Ginuo ko, Estrella!
ESTRELLA Nay!
(Estrella is about to rush out when Manding Soling and Corazon, both soaked, hurriedly enter the
house.)
ESTRELLA Nay! Whats wrong, Nay? Was that you who screamed?
MANDING SOLING Estrella (She wails again.)
ESTRELLA Nay? (Her tears start to fall as she realizes why the old woman is inconsolable.)
MANDING SOLING Ay, he is gone run, Estrella! My last sone is gone run! And I saw it happen
gid. Ay, Ginuo ko, but I saw it happen gid, Estrella! Lightning struck so I clearly saw it!
ESTRELLA Saw what, Nay?
(And the grim images of the shadow play are again projected on the katsa walls. The angry waves
are again heard.)
MANDING SOLING His death, Estrella! Osmars death! Ay, his boat was way out in the sea run
when a big wave, bigger that the ones that were tossing it around, suddenly hit it. And it
was so big it turned the boat over, Estrella! Ay, Ginuo ko, but it turned the boat over gid!
And I saw Osmar trying desperately to stay up in the water. He is a good swimmer, indi
bala, Estrella? He is a very good swimmer and so is Berto who is a very good swimmer,
too. But another wave hit them! And it was just as big as the one before it! And then I
couldnt see them anymore. And then I couldnt see them anymore, Estrella! And he is
the only one left! He is my only son left! (Wails.)
(The shadow play ends.
ESTRELLA But it was dark, wasnt it, Nay? Maybe you didnt Maybe your eyes were just

MANDING SOLING But I saw it gid, Estrella! Ay, I saw it gid abi.
ESTRELLA But, Nay Nay!
(Her knees fail her and she falls to the ground. Corazon rushes toward her.)
CORAZON Nay!
ESTRELLA Your tatay, Corazon. Your tatay left us run kuno, Corazon.
CORAZON Yes, Nay. I saw it. I saw it man, Nay!
(Estrella cries. Corazon comforts her.)
ESTRELLA Ano abi ay he wont listen gid to me! He wont listen gid to me abi mong! Ay, Osmar.
(Gets up.) Corazon. Let us go to the shore ow. I need to be with your tatay. I need to see
your tatay now. Osmar! Nay?
MANDING SOLING I cannot bear to look at the sea right now, Estrella? Lets just wait for him
rulang here. I am sure the men of the island will soon bring him here.
(Estrella wails. Manding Soling notices the knapsack on the table and rushes toward it. She takes
Bendors things in her hand.)
MANDING SOLING These are Bendors things! These are Bendors things, indi bala, Estrella?
These are his, I am sure gid!
ESTRELLA Osmar said someone found the bag floating near the shore of Sibay yesterday, Nay.
He brought that with him kaina but he told me not to show it to you anay. At least, until
he learns what really happened gid to Bendor, he said. He wanted to spare you daad from
more pain, Nay. Ay, who knew he would suffer the same fate, indi bala, Nay? And
cause us even more pain! Ay, Ginuo ko, Osmar!
MANDING SOLING This bag, Estrella. Bendor bought this in Libertad two years ago, indi bala?
For the fiesta! He attended with Osmar and Berto, remember? And this shirt and this
cap have been with him for years run. I washed these myself pa gani two weeks ago.
And his prayer book! Ay, I gave him this prayer book for his birthday last year, Estrella.
He was so happy when I gave this to him. He was so happy he told me hell bring this
with him everywhere he goes so hell always be safe. So hell always be safe, that what
he said, Estrella!
ESTRELLA What will happen to us run bay, Nay! There are three of us left rulang. And all
women! Ay, what are we going to do, Nay?
MANDING SOLING Well take care of ourselves e, Estrella. You, me and Corazon. Well take care
of each other e. In the meantime, we have things to attend to anay. (Arranges Bendors
things on the table.) One of us should go to the convento tomorrow to ask help from
Padre Miguel. You might want to do that, Estrella. He helped us before with Manuels
funeral so Im sure hell help us again. I will go tana to the munisipyo and ask for
plywood that we can use for Osmars coffin. And go to your Manding Miling man gali
tomorrow, Corazon. Tell her we will borrow anay her playing cards and mahjong set for
the wake. And the tolda tana, your Manong Kardo will surely help us with that. Ay, we
have so many things to do but many will surely help us get them done man.
PADRE MIGUEL (From outside.) Manding Soling? Estrella! Manding! This is Padre daad!
ESTRELLA Theyre here run, Nay!
(Corazon assists Estrella in getting up.)
MANDING SOLING Padre?
(Padre Miguel enters with some women. Just like Manding Soling and Corazon, they are also all
wet from the rain.)
MANDING SOLING Padre.
PADRE MIGUEL Estrella. Manding. (Holds Manding Solings hands.) I am sorry gid to be the one
to tell you this but
MANDING SOLING We already know, Padre. Corazon and I saw it kaina. We were on our way to
him daad to plead that he not leave for Mindoro anay but we were late run. By that
time, he was already out in the sea with Berto, Padre. And we saw it gid. Ay, Corazon
and I saw it gid, Padre!
PADRE MIGUEL We have his body run outside, Manding.
ESTRELLA Ay, Ginuo ko, Osmar!
(The men bring in the body of Osmar. Estrella and Corazon rush to it, wailing.)
CORAZON Tay!
ESTRELLA Osmar! Ay, forgive me gid, Osmar. Forgive me! I didnt mean what I said gid kaina!
Osmar!
(The women attend to Estrella and Corazon while the men bring Osmars body to the bedroom.
They lay it gently on the bed.)
MANDING SOLING Rest well, my child. Now, you no longer have to worry about working so
hard. Dont worry about us, Osmar. Soon, we will be all right man. Soon, everything will
be all right man.
(She kisses his forehead. Padre Miguel then sprinkles Holy Water over Osmars body. Soon, the
visitors move quietly to the kitchen. Corazon goes with them and gets a towel and washbasin. She
goes back to the room and gives these to Estrella. In a while, Estrella cradles Osmars body and
gently cleanses it.)
ESTRELLA I pray you are at peace run, Osmar. Watch over us lang, ha? So we wont be too
helpless. Ay, I do not know what will become of us run. But dont worry. God will take
care of us man siguro. And forgive me again, Osmar. Ay, forgive me. Forgive me.
(Manding Soling and Corazon watch this scene quietly. In the kitchen, Padre Miguel leads a
prayer.)
PADRE MIGUEL AND THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CALUYA Maghimaya ikaw, Mariya,
magkalipay ikaw, buta ikaw ti grasya; ang Ginuong Dyos rugyan kanimo.
(The lights slowly fade out. In the dark, the barrios prayer becomes one with the relentless and the
angry waves of the sea.)
PADRE MIGUEL AND THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CALUYA Nahamut-an ikaw labaw sa tanan
nga mga babayi kag nahamut-an man ang bunga kang imo busong nga si Hisus. Santa
Mariya, nanay kang Dyos, ipangamuyo mo kami nga makasasala. Kadya kag sa tion
kang amun kamatayun.
The end.

ESSAY: Weaponizing Social Media by Miriam Defensor
Santiago
About the Author:
Miriam Palma Defensor Santiago (15 June 1945 29 September 2016) was a Filipino
politician and judge, who served in all three branches of the Philippine government: judicial,
executive, and legislative. Some of her alma maters are University of the Philippines, University of
Michigan, Oxford University, Maryhill School of Theology, University of California, Harvard
University, and Cambridge University. Santiago was named one of The 100 Most Powerful Women
in the World in 1997 by The Australian magazine.
In 1988, Santiago was named laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government
service, with a citation "for bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government
agency.
In 2012, Santiago became the first Filipina and the first Asian from a developing country to
be elected a judge of the International Criminal Court. She later resigned the post, citing chronic
fatigue syndrome, which turned out to be lung cancer. In 2016, she became part of the International
Advisory Council of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), an
intergovernmental body that promotes the rule of law.
Santiago served three terms in the Philippine Senate. On 13 October 2015, Santiago declared
her candidacy for President of the Philippines in the 2016 elections after her doctors from the
United States declared her cancer 'stable' and 'receded', but lost in the elections. Following her
death, she was called by her supporters as "the best president we never had".
Santiago was known as the Dragon Lady, the Platinum Lady, the Incorruptible Lady,
the Tiger Lady, and most popularly, the Iron Lady of Asia.
WEAPONIZING SOCIAL MEDIA

(excerpt from the speech delivered at the UP Manila on 12 Feb 2013)
Miriam Defensor Santiago
The campaign period has begun. All kinds of characters want to run for public office. We,
the 52 million Filipino voters, are bored with their antics. We are aghast at their resumes. Some of
them are not even high school graduates. They resort to all kinds of cheap gimmickry, hoping to
provide entertainment for free. They should not be called candidates; they should be called clowns.
In the Philippines, politics is dominated by two kinds of clowns: rich clowns; and poor
clowns hoping to become rich. Fortunately, we are at the cusp of a new ominous wave of change in
the political beach. This wave is called the social media. In the Philippines, nobody knows how to
control or manage social media. Rich clowns used to bribe press and broadcast journalists so that
they could gain added illegal advantage over their competitors. But now, the rich clowns are
beginning to discover that it is not possible to bribe the leaders, much less, all the netizens in
cyberspace. If the first Edsa revolution was a "Xerox revolution, and if Edsa 2 was a "text
revolution, then the next revolution against political corruption should be called the "Net
revolution.
The ideal UP student always gives the world a shock. I ask each one of you to give the
mindless political candidates a shock, by demoting TV, which used to be the king of political
advertising, and instead elevating as political campaign weapons the tablet and the smart phone.
In terms of social network use, the Philippines is ranked among the top countries. This could
be the precursor of the participatory democracy of the future. Facebook is the premier social media
service in the world. Twitter is an online social networking and micro-blogging service. YouTube
provides a forum for the distribution of video content, particularly eyewitness features of political
protests. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the so-called big three social media services. These
services enable large numbers of people to be easily and inexpensively contacted via a variety of
services.
Social media lowers traditional socio-economic barriers to commanding the spotlight. The
power of the rich politicians becomes more porous and the political warlords have less control. It
has been said that text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the Internet have given rise to a
reservoir of political energy. Digital technologies enforce the formation and activities of civil
society groups: mobs, movements, and civil society organizations.
CHALLENGE TO UP STUDENTS
The ideal UP student is not interesting per se. What is interesting is what the ideal student
does with his life after graduation from UP. As a rule, any UP graduate will always be characterized
by academic excellence and by the courage to take social justice to the next level. If you are to serve
your nation, I am here to testify that it will be a rough, contentious, and spirit-crushing journey.
But as a true UP graduate, I insist that I have a role to perform. This role is to stand as one of
gazillion bricks in the cathedral of governance. No one will remember me if I suddenly drop dead
tomorrow.
But generations after you and me, would be able to put behind them the culture of
corruption, and build a new shining nation with leaders who are neither dazzled by the material
world, nor confused about their purpose in life.
Hence, I have risen from my sickbed to issue you this challenge: For Gods sake, save this
country.
Use social media during this three-month campaign period to ensure that our people shall be
led to choose deserving national leaders. Allow me to make some recommendations on how to
weaponize social media against the corrupt, the clueless, and the clowns. I am paraphrasing from an
article in the Net issued by Craft Media Digital and written by Brian Donahue.
Weaponize social media during the campaign by providing content that not only informs, but
also entertains and motivates. You need to develop skills in creative design, emotionally riveting
visuals, and content that inspires action. We can not weaponize by simply issuing a statement, a
newsletter, or a Facebook post. We need to enlist the work of more graphic designers, creative
writers, videographers, and musicians.
Weaponize social media during the campaign by embracing targeted messaging strategies.
You cannot rely on single-issue national messaging. You have to send custom messages to specific
audiences online. It is said that in todays digital age, data is the most precious commodity. Hook up
with math students in the Diliman campus. Ask our math scholars to build algorithms for matching
data. This will develop demographic models that will help you to identify valuable voter behavior.
For example, refer to Facebook OpenGraph.
Weaponize social media during the political campaign by delivering content so engaging
that individual netizens will be motivated to share it. I see in the current campaign that the most
egregious error of the candidates is that they treat social media as if it were TV or radio, where they
simply transfer information to the masses. The strength of the web is information sharing among
social netizens.
Weaponize social media in the political campaign by accepting that the future of political
warfare will take place online. For example, a comparative database that provides information on
each candidates age, residence, highest academic degree, and highest professional achievement,
would be a sufficient counterbalance to the tendency of the low middle-class voter to sell his vote or
to vote for the cute personality.
Social media should be used as a showcase for intangible movement or energy, and a
medium of information to motivate people to vote for or against a particular candidate.
Conclusion
I share one unbreakable linkage with you. At one time I was your age and like all UP
students, I wanted to change the world. Maybe I have. But the world also changed me. Now I am
old enough to have seen the world and have all my illusions shattered.
Am I disillusioned? No, because as the poet said:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

UNIT 4 Other 21st Century Literature
from the Philippines
BLOG POST: Bakit Nga Ba Laging Nakaupo Si Mabini? by
Lourd de Veyra
About the Author:
Lourd Ernest Hanopol de Veyra (born February 11, 1975 in Leyte, Philippines) is
a Filipino musician, emcee, poet, journalist, TV host, broadcast personality and activist who became
famous as the vocalist of the Manila-based jazz rock band Radioactive Sago Project. De Veyra went
to Quirino Elementary School for grade school and to Colegio de San Juan de Letran for high
school. He then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Santo
Tomas. He has thrice been a recipient of a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature -
A third prize in essay (English division) in 1999, a second prize in the same category in 2003, and
a first prize in teleplay (Filipino division) in 2004.
BAKIT NGA BA LAGING NAKAUPO SI MABINI?

from This is a Crazy Planets (http://www.spot.ph/this-is-a-crazy-planets)
Lourd de Veyra
When forced to pick between truth and legend, print

the legend. John Ford
Mas natutuwa ako na ang pinag-uusapan natin

ngayon ay ganitoat hindi lang pinag-uusapan kundi
pinupuripelikula, na walang superstar, walang
celebrity endorser, walang nakakasulasok sa pagka-
obvious na product placement, at higit sa lahat,
walang kinalaman sa mga kabit, sirena, aswang, pilit
na pagpapatawa, pang-iinsulto sa tao base sa kanyang
pisikal na anyo o kapansanan ('wag lang sanang
pagtripan si Mabini). Mabutit nagkataon na nagkaisa
ang lahat sa opinyon at panlasa. Or at least until the
next Star Cinema, uh, masterpiece comes along.
Puwede naman pala. Sa mga producers at sa
direktor ng pelikula, congratulations at hindi ninyo
pinilit na magpakita ng superhero movie. Walang kilig
moments (puwera lang kung kinikilig ka sa ulong
sumasabog), walang kinompromisong mga sitwasyon

o mga pagkakataong mag-exploit ng eksena a la Seiko Films. Puwede naman pala.
Higit sa lahat, mas nakakatuwang isipin na nagkaroon ng panibagong interes sa history.
Hindi siguro singlaki ng audience ng Aldub, pero we have to start somewhere.
Sa totoo lang, ang kasaysayan ng Pilipinas ay sumasambulat sa mga karakter at eksena
na mas kontrobersyal, mas shocking, mas mahalay, mas madugo, mas nakakabaliw. Ngayon
naiisip ko na lang: paano nagagawang tanggalin ng mga guro ang pawis, libag at libog sa pagtuturo
ng history. Una siguro ay itigil na ang paghahanap ng positibong inspirasyon sa nakaraan
maliban na lang kung ang leksyon ay iwasang ulitin ang mga mali. Siguro 'wag na ring ituring
na mga perpektong superhero o mga santo ang mga bayani natin. Pangalawa, 'wag ikahon ang
kasaysayan sa pag-memorize ng mga petsa, pangalan, at lugar.
Pagkatapos manood ng pelikula at magpalakpakan, sana ang sumunod na hakbang ay
ang magbasa ng kasaysayan.
Inamin naman ng pelikula sa simula: paghahalo-halo ng fact and fiction. Sa dulo naman
ay may muling paalala na ang ilang bahagi ng pelikula ay kumuha ng inspirasyon mula sa aklat ni
Vivencio Jose, The Rise and Fall of Antonio Luna (1972). Bago natin husgahan ang mga bagay-
bagay, dapat sabihing ang aklat ni Jose ay isang bersyon lang ng mga pangyayari. Ang
kasaysayan ay binubuo ng maraming kuwento, karamihan dito ay magkakasalungat.
Sukatin naman natin ngayon ang ilang eksena sa pelikula gamit ang ilang references,
pangunahin dito ang libro ni Alfredo B. Saulo na Emilio Aguinaldo: Generalissimo and President
of the First Philippine Republic (1983, Phoenix Publishing House). Bilang honorary Caviteo,
obvious naman ang tono ng chapter na Antonio Luna: Death by Invitation. Sa chapter na ito rin
ay isa-isang tinitibag ni Saulo ang mga salaysay ni Jose.
Q. SI AGUINALDO BA TALAGA ANG NAG-UTOS NA PATAYIN SI LUNA?
A. Grabe, ganun pala si Aguinaldo! Mukhang magkakaroon ng mga susunod na
henerasyon na ganap na negatibo ang tingin sa taong itoparang anak sa labas ni Lucifer ang
unang pangulo ng republika. Bakit ka pa magpapaka-Tarantino? Sa totoo lang, dapat may gumawa
ng gangster film na base sa buhay ng unang presidente ng Pilipinas na hindi si ER Ejercito. Mala-
Michael Corleone na karakter si Aguinaldo (panoorin niyo rin ang El Presidente ni Mark Meily para
may paghahambing).
At malamang, lalo pang titindi ang pagkamuhi pag nakita mo ito:
So sa mapanghusgang mundo ng social media,

ang instant na hirit ay COLLABORATOR! Totoo na
noong panahon ng Hapon, si Aguinaldo ang isa sa
maraming Filipino na iprinesenta ang sarili na
pamunuan ang puppet government (kasama dito si
Benigno Aquino, Sr., lolo ni Kris at P-Noy; si Jose P.
Laurel ang pinili ng mga Hapon).
Bukod pa diyan, hanggang ngayon, tingin ng
kasaysayan na may bahid ng dugo ni Bonifacio ang mga
kamay ni Aguinaldo. Sa Pact of Biak-na-Bato noong
1897, binenta niya rin daw ang Rebolusyon laban sa
mga Kastila sa halagang 800,000 pesos (Kalahati raw
nito ay kanya!).
1964 namatay si Aguinaldo. Isipin niyo na lang:
inabutan niya ang Beatles.
Sabi ng isang historyador, isang malaking
pagkakamali ni Aguinaldo ay ang mabuhay nang
matagal. At higit sa lahat, apo niya si Joseph Emilio

Traffic is Not Fatal Abaya.
Pahiwatig sa pelikula na si Aguinaldo talaga ang nag-utos ng pagpatay kay Luna. Pero
mariin itong itinanggi ni Aguinaldo noong buhay pa siya (ibang usapan ang sa magkapatid na
Bonifacio).
Sa isang panayam sa historyador na si Teodoro Agoncillo, depensa ni Aguinaldo: Kung
gusto niya raw ipapatay si Luna, ang dali-dali namang mag-utos sa isang kawal na bumaril sa
gitna ng digmaan at sisihin ang mga Kano. Nasa kumbento rin sa Cabanatuan ang pamilya
Aguinaldobakit naman daw siya mag-uutos ng katayan dito? (Dapat ring banggitin na
nagkasigawan si Vivencio Jose at si Teodoro Agoncillo sa isang conference dati.)
Argumento ng aklat ni Saulo: After Luna had insulted Aguinaldo, the man whom all
Caviteos idolized, uttering 'derogatory words' in the course of his verbal tussle with Buencamino,
what could he expect from the Presidential Guards? Many of these guards had been with
Aguinaldo since the day he became teniente abanderado of Kawit, even before Luna was
arrested and banished to Spain, and fought the enemythe Spaniards in the beginning and
later the Americanscontinuously and most of the time without pay.
Ano nga ba raw ang sabi ng imbestigasyon? The result of the official investigation showed
that the Luna killing was not 'premeditated' as alleged by Alejandrino, nor the result of a trap laid
by the autonomists, as claimed by Jose, but a simple armed clash between Luna and the Kawit
men who, acting on primitive instincts, fought back to repel the formers aggression. It was an
unfortunate case of indiscipline on the part of Kawit soldiers.
Sa totoo lang, wala ni isang record na nakakita ng notoryus na telegramang nagpapunta kay
Luna sa Cabanatuan. Nag-deny din si Aguinaldo na nagpadala siya ng telegrama. Pero malaking
bagay ang mga dokumentong ipinautos na kunin ni Buencamino mula sa bangkay ni Luna. Ano nga
kaya ang nilalaman ng mga papel na yun?
Sino ang nag-utos? Maraming naging personal na kaaway ni Luna. Sandamakmak ang
mga posibleng mastermind na may motibo. Hindi lang sila Felipe Buencamino at Pedro Paterno,
hindi lang si Tomas Mascardo at Pedro Janolino.
Kung meron mang kailangang sisihin sa pagkamatay ni Antonio Luna, wala nang iba
siguro kundi si Antonio Luna rin mismo. Sinulat ni Nick Joaquin sa A Question of Heroes, If
character is destiny then Antonio Luna was his own violent fate.
Pero ayon sa interview ng historian na si Antonio Abad sa kanyang interbyu kay Pedro
Janolino (played by Ketchup Eusebio) nagpanic lang daw siya kaya niya lang nataga si Luna.
Akala niya ay sasaktan siya. Pero hanep din sa panichindi bababa sa 40 ang sugat ng heneral
(kasi nga naman ay pinagtulungan siya ng mga taga-Kawit).
Siya nga pala, baka sakaling pag-initan niyo si Ketchup kapag nakasalubong ninyo, heto ang
hitsura ng totoong Pedro Janolino alyas Pedrong Kastila.
"Si Antonio Abad habang kinakapanayam

si Pedro Janolino ukol sa pagkamatay ni
Heneral Antonio Luna. Mula kay Dr. Vic
Torres." (From XiaoChua.net)
Q. GANOON BA TALAGA KA-

HENYO SI ANTONIO LUNA?
A. The Greatest general of the

Philippine revolution sabi ng historian
na si Gregorio Zaide. The best general

ever produced by the war against the
Americans, sabi naman ng kapwa
heneral na si Jose Alejandrino (na nakasama rin ni Rizal sa Belgium). Pero may pambasag naman si
Teodoro Agoncillo: Si Antonio Luna raw ay the hero who never won a battle. Paano nga ba
naman siya magiging greatest or best kung wala nga naman siyang ipinanalo kahit isa?
Fifteen years old siya nang grumadweyt sa Ateneo with honors. Sa edad na 19 sa kanyang
second year sa UST ay nanalo ng premyo ang kanyang scientific paper. Sa edad na 21 siya ay nag-
aral sa Barcelona ng pharmacy. Habang nagsusulat para sa La Solidaridad sa alyas na Taga-Ilog,
contributor din siya sa ibat-ibang scientific journals.
Chemist sa municipal laboratory ng Maynila si Antonio Luna nung pumutok ang
Rebolusyon nung 1896. Gaya ni Rizal, itinakwil ni Luna ang Rebolusyon ng 1896 at nag-chuchu pa
noon sa mga sangkot sa Katipunan. Ang resulta: maraming nakulong at binitay (at damay din daw
kahit mismong si Rizal). Pero ang kuwento ni Alejandrino, nagawa lang daw yun ni Luna dahil
tinorture siya ng mga Kastila at sinabihan kunwari na ikinanta na rin siya ng mga kababayan niya.
Eh pikon nga.
Pero dahil mataas ang estado sa lipunan ay ipina-deportkasama ang utol na si Juansa
Spain at doon ikinulong. Pero pagkatapos ay nagbasa nang nagbasa tungkol sa military science sa
maraming library sa Europa. In short, self-taught military man si Luna. Wala pa naman kasing PMA
noon.
Bukod sa pagiging siyentipiko, fencer, sharpshooter, at journalist, si Heneral Antonio Luna
ay ang premyadong gitarista noong panahon niya. Walang henyo sa digmaan na walang sining sa
katawan. Si Mao Zedong at si Ho Chi Minh ay mga mahuhusay na makata. May isang eksena
sa pelikula nagpapakita ng dunong sa musika ng direktor: habang tumugtog ng gitara si Luna, at
nakaharap sa bilog na bilog na buwan (Luna nga ehget it?), kasabay ng kaskas at bagsak ng
kuwerdas ay ang tila pagsabog ng kanyon sa kanyang imahinasyon.
Maganda ang metafora o metaphor na ginamit ng National Artist na si Nick Joaquin sa
kanyang sanaysay kay Luna. Bilang mahusay na chemist, ang hangad niya ay hubog, porma, at
synthesis o yung pagsasanib ng ibat ibang sangkap at elemento. Malas lang niya: ang kemikal na
sinubukan niyang hawakan ay maligalig at sumabog sa mismong mga kamay niya.
May mga tumawag kay Luna na baliw. Pero may kasabihan din nga: There is a thin line
between genius and madness. Pikon at mainitin daw ang ulo ng Heneral at ang kanyang kapatid.
Kung ganito nga naman ang mga sundalo mosino ba naman ang hindi masisira ang ulo?
Maraming napabilib nang i-recruit ni Luna para sa revolutionary army ang mga beteranong
opisyal na nagsilbi sa ilalim ng mga Kastila, kasama na ang mga nasa preso. Nung mga panahong
yun, sabi ni Nick Joaquin, ay wala pa tayong pambansang hukbo kundi mga pinagtagpi-tagping
mga grupo na kung ngayon ay tipong private armed group sa iba-ibang rehiyon. Si Luna ang nag-
ambisyong pag-isahin ang mga ito, isa sa mga unang hakbang ay magkaroon ng iisang uniporme
para sa lahat.
Q. KUPAL NGA BA TALAGA SI LUNA?
A. Puwedeng sabihin na masyadong naro-romanticize ang pagiging strikto ni Luna. O
sa mga panahon ngayon kasi na parang walang in control ay hinahanap natin ang isang
maglalatag ng pangkalahatang disiplina. Pero sa dami nang mga binadtrip niya, hindi naman
katakatakang may maghiganti sa kanya.
Pero heto ang ilan sa mga mga kuwento:
Maghagupit ka ba naman ng mga pamilya para pababain mula sa trensa harap mismo ng
presidente.
Sinampal ni Luna si Felipe Buencamino, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, na 55 anyos na noong
1899. Si Luna ay 33 lang. Unang nilabag raw ni Luna ang kaugaliang Pinoy tungkol sa paggalang
sa mga nakakatandaat mas mabigat pa ito dahil ginawa rin sa harap ng Pangulo ng Pilipinas.
Isipin mong si Antonio Trillanes o Alan Peter Cayetano na sinampal si Alberto del Rosario sa harap
ni P-Noy (kung tutuusin, kung meron mang dapat sampalin sa kabinete ay si Joseph Abaya para sa
kapalpakan ng MRT).
Dagdag pa: May pinabaril siyang Chinese sa Bocaue, Bulacan na walang paglilitis. May
pinapatay daw siyang Frenchman na nagngangalang Don Marrais. Sabi ni Mabini ay nag-utos
daw si Luna sinumang hindi sumunod sa kanyang utos ay babarilin na walang trial-trial. Marami rin
siyang pinahuli at tinaggalan ng armas. Harsh raw talaga ang mga methods ng heneral.
Q. TOTOO NGA BANG NAGPIPISTA SI MASCARDO AT JUMA-JACKSON NG
TSIKS SI JANOLINO NOONG HUMIHINGI SI LUNA NG REINFORCEMENTS?
A. Sa eksenang pagsuway ng hukbong Kawit ni Capt. Pedro Janolino a.k.a. Pedrong Kastila:
May instructions daw na sa presidente lang mismo susundinat sabi ni Saulo ay posibleng
nagmula raw ito sa telegramang pineke ng mga espiyang bayaran ng Amerikano. Ang mga
sundalo ni Janolino ay naka puwesto na sa area malapit sa bakbakan (totoong giyera, sa Tuliahan, sa
may Balintawak, hindi bakbakan sa kama gaya ng pinakita sa pelikula). Ang resulta, dinisarmahan
ni Luna ang mga taga-Kawit. Siyempre, malaki raw ang posibilidad na napahiya ang mga ito,
na marami sa kanila ay beterano na (isang isyu din kasi na ang mga beterano ng unang phase
ng Rebolusyon ng 1896 ay iba ang turing sa mga biglang sumulpot lang mula kung saanisa
na rito si Luna).
Kathang-isip din malamang ang eksenang pagpiga ni Luna sa etits ni Janolino.
Kay Tomas Mascardo naman (siya yung dinalhan ng kabaong), mas intriguing ang dahilan:
posibleng babaeng taga-Pampanga raw ang tunay na ugat ng kanilang hidwaan. Guwaping daw
itong si Mascardo at ang description ni Saulo sa dating school teacher ay a young, energetic
brigadier general na may charming personality that made him irresistible to the young ladies.
Bukod pa diyan, mahigit 25 na engkwentro na ang pinanalo niya laban sa mga Kastila at lagi pang
sugatan.
Samantalang ang tawag kay Luna ng mga kapwa Pinoy sa Espanya ay cafre. Hindi
siguro dahil sa bigote niya pero dahil sa ugali niya.
Trivia: abroad, muntik nang magduwelo si Jose Rizal at Antonio Luna dahil sa isang
tsikas na nagngangalang Nellie Boustead. Buti na lang at hindi natuloy. Kung hindi ay walang
Luneta ngayon.
Q. TOTOO NGA BANG NAGPLANO SI LUNA NG KUDETA LABAN KAY
AGUINALDO?
A. May nabanggit raw si Luna na mahina at indecisive si Aguinaldona totoo naman
at ilang beses na itong napatunayan. Suggestion ni Luna bago pa ganap na pumutok ang Fil-Am
War: bakbakan na natin ang mga Amerikano habang konti pa lang sila. Payo rin ni Luna na magtayo
ng defense line mula Kalookan to Novaliches at humukay ng mga trenches. Walang nangyari.
Pinakita sa pelikula na plano niyang magtayo ng baluarte sa hilagang Luzon at gumamit
estratehiyang guerilla. Anyare? Nganga. Kung nakinig lang daw sila kay Luna noon pa lang, ay
hindi na kinailangan pang kumaripas si Aguinaldo at sila Gregorio Del Pilar sa Cordillera na
parang mga daga.
Kung nakinig lang sila Aguinaldo sa payo noon ni Luna na sagupain ang mga
puwersang Amerikano habang puwede pang talunin, malamang ibang iba ang tadhana natin
ngayon. What if? Sa ibang usapan, what if Aguinaldo captured Manila on that fateful period na
puwedeng-puwedeng na sanang sakupin ng mga Pinoy ang Intramuros noong June-July 1898? What
if Luna was not murdered? Puro "what-if what-if." Ika nga ng mga historyador: There are no ifs in
history. There is no I in team. But there is an I in Aguinaldo and Cavite.
Q. MGA TRAYDOR NGA BA TALAGA SA BAYAN SINA PEDRO PATERNO AT FELIPE
BUENCAMINO?
Tinawag si Buencamino ng isang historyador na perhaps the Philippines foremost

student activitist. Nung siya ay 23 years old na law student pinangunahan niya ang isang kilusan
na ilipat sa gobyerno ang pamamahala ng Unibersidad de Santo Tomas mula sa mga frayle. Clerk
lang si Mabini noon sa isang opisina sa Maynila, ginagalang na abogado na si Buencamino. Noong
1928, nanumpa siya sa ngalan ng Diyos at kanyang mga magulang na wala siyang kinalaman sa
pagpatay kay Luna at nakiusap pa kay Aguinaldo na maglabas ng statement na si Buencamino ay
inosente. Pero hanggang namatay na lang si Aguinaldo noong 1964 ay hindi ito nangyari.
Ibang usapan si Paterno. Tinawag dati ni Ambeth Ocampo si Pedro Paterno na numero
unong balimbing. Todo-puri sa mga Kastila, kumita pa sa Pact of Biak-na-Bato (nagdemand pa na
gawing duke ng Maynila plus pension), at nung dumating ang mga Kano, biglang nagbago rin ang
allegiance.
Q. SINABI BA TALAGA NG NANAY NI AGUINALDO NA SI DOA TRINIDAD
ANG NAGALAW PA BA YAN?
A. Pahiwatig ng napaka-insensitibong hirit na ito ay alam ng nanay ni Aguinaldo ang
planong pagpatay kay Luna. Pero fair ba ang bersyon na ito? Grabe naman ang magiging tingin
ng mga susunod pang henerasyon sa pamilya Aguinaldoparang Manson family. Sa bersiyon
ni Agoncillo, ang tanong ng matandang babae ay: Bakit niyo pinatay ang Heneral? Hindi niyo ba
siya kilala?
Q. TEKA NGA MUNA. SO SAAN BA TALAGA GALING ANG KUWENTONG SI
AGUINALDO ANG MASTERMIND SA PAGPAPATUMBA KAY LUNA?
A. Si Aguinaldo ang nag-appoint kay Luna na Secretary of War na may ranggong lieutenant
general. Tutol dito si Mabini. Parang lumalabas din na si Luna ang ikalawang
pinakamakapangyarihan sa gobyerno, sunod lang kay Aguinaldo. Isa rin si Mabini na bumubulong
kay Aguinaldo na 'wag magtiwala kay Luna. If Luna is not good for the army, the less he will be
for the office, because he is a despot, sabi dati ni Mabini. Umangal din si Mabini na hindi raw
kumukonsulta si Luna sa gobyerno tungkol sa mga plano niya. At dito rin malamang nag-ugat ang
mga haka-haka na nagbabalak si Luna na magtayo ng sariling gobyerno. Marami pang hirit si
Mabini versus the General, akala mo ay selosang misis ni Aguinaldo.
Pero three years after, mag-iiba ang tono ni Mabini sa kanyang La Revolucion Filipina
na sinulat habang exiled sa Guam (iba pa ang Guam noon. Puro malaria). Kalabisang sabihin na
nagtagumpay sana ang Rebolusyon kung sa halip na pinatay ni Aguinaldo si Luna ay buong
kakayahang sinuportahan na lamang niya ito...upang sirain si Luna, kinasangkapan ni
Aguinaldo ang mismong mga kawal na kinastigo ni Luna dahil sa paglabag sa disiplina. Kung
gayon, pinatay ni Aguinaldo ang disiplina, winasak ang kanyang sariling sandatahan.
Bumagsak ang Rebolusyon sa pagbagsak ni Luna, ang matatag na tagapagtaguyod nito, at kay
Aguinaldo nabubunton ang lahat ng kasiraang puri sa pagbagsak. (Translation: Michael M.
Coroza)
Sumama raw ang loob ni Mabini dahil nawala siya sa gobyerno ni Aguinaldo na pinaboran
ang mga autonomistang sina Paterno et al. In short, bitter lang si Mabini, at sabi ni Joaquin,
was using the dead Luna to flog Aguinaldo.
Q. SO ANONG GUSTONG PALABASIN NITONG NAPAKAHABANG
ARTIKULONG ITO?
A. Puwede sigurong sabihin na walang bida at walang kontrabida sa Heneral Luna. At
kadasalan, ganun din sa kasaysayan ng Filipinas, depende kung sino ang nagkukuwento. Lahat,
puwedeng bida, lahat din puwedeng kontrabida. Ika nga ng imortal na kasabihan: History is
written by the victors. Warning din ni George Santayana: Those who do not remember the past
are condemned to repeat it. Maganda rin na pinag-uusapan natin ang mga ganitong paksa, na
hindi lang sa loob ng classroom.
Sa sariling atin naman: Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan...mangmang.

Q. BAKIT NGA BA TALAGANG HINDI TUMATAYO SI MABINI SA BUONG
PELIKULA?
A. Mabuti pa, manood na lang tayo ng Aldub.
NEW GENRES: Pick-up Lines
Side note!
What is a Pick-up Line?
A Pick-up Line is a conversation opener to express a person's
admiration, love or any romantic intent to another person. It has been popular
nowadays especially among teenagers. Some use pick up lines just to humor
their friends. Oftentimes, Tagalog pick up lines are sent through text messages
or posted on user's and pages.
Pick-up lines range from straightforward conversation openers such as
introducing oneself, providing information about oneself, or asking someone
about their likes and common interests, to more elaborate attempts
including flattery or humour.
25 PICK-UP LINES
from the Internet
1.
BOY: Langit na ba to?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para ka kasing anghel ehh
2.
BOY: Manhole ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Ang bilis ko kasing nahulog sayo eh
3.
BOY: Horror Movie ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi pag nakikita kita bumibilis ang tibok ng puso ko.
4.
BOY: Pwede bang iturn-off na lang yung ilaw?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para tayo na lng ang mag-ON.
5.
BOY: Sana posporo ka at posporo din ako.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para MATCH tayo.
6.
BOY: Miss, alam mo, gusto sana kitang ipa-pulis.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi ninakaw mo ang puso ko.
7.
BOY: Pinaglihi ka ba sa keyboard?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Type kasi kita eh.
8.
BOY: Sana mga letra na lang tayo.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para I can put U and I together.
9.
BOY: Nakalunok ka ba ng kwitis?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi pag ngumingiti ka, may spark.
10.
BOY: Miss, dictionary ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi you give meaning to my life.
11.
BOY: Dalawang multo ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi GHOST-TWO kita.
12.
BOY: Alam mo ba may kamukha ka?
GIRL: Sino?
BOY: Kamukha mo yung future wife ko.
13.
BOY: Gusto ko ng MAGNUM?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para ako ang MAGNUMber one sa puso mo.
14.
BOY: PEDICAB ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: PEDICABang maging girlfriend?
15.
BOY: Anu pinag kaiba ng halaman at ikaw??
GIRL: Anu??
BOY: Ang halaman naka tanim sa paso. Ikaw naka tanim sa PUSO ko.
16.
BOY: Sana hindi ka buwan.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Para hindi mo ko iwan pagdating ng araw.
17.
BOY: Lumaki ka ata?
GIRL: Ha? Bakit?
BOY: Kasi dati hanggang balikat lang kita. Ngayon nasa isip na kita.
18.
BOY: Lumiit ka ata?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi noon hanggang uluhan kita, ngayon nasa puso na kita.
19.
BOY: Hindi ka ba napapagod?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kanina ka pa kasi tumatakbo sa isip ko.
20.
BOY: Alam mo mukha kang inodoro.
GIRL: Bakit naman?
BOY: Sa tuwing nakikita kasi kita para akong taeng nahuhulog sa'yo.
21.
BOY: Unggoy ka ba?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi umakyat ka na nga sa isip ko, sumabit ka pa sa puso ko.
22.
BOY: Pinapasabi ni Eddie Mahal ka niya.
GIRL: Sinong Eddie?
BOY: Eddie ako.
23.
BOY: Kung bola ka sa basketball, hinding-hindi kita masu-shoot.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Lagi kasi kitang mami-miss eh.
24.
BOY: Anong gusto mong view? front view, side view or back view?
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi, ako I Love You.
25.
BOY: Kung ako'y magtitinda, lahat ng paninda ko, ibebenta ko nang mura sa lahat ng tao lalo na sa
babae. Pero maliban lang sa'yo.
GIRL: Bakit?
BOY: Kasi sa'yo lang ako magmamahal.
NARRATIVE PROSE: Tell the Sky by Luis Katigbak
About the Author:
Luis Joaquin Katigbak was a Filipino award-winning writer and music critic. He was a
resident writer for PULP Magazine, a columnist for The Philippine Star, and an associate editor
for Esquire Philippines.
He was a graduate of the University of the Philippines (UP). From being a mathematics
major, he shifted to creative writing.
Katigbak was a recipient of four Palanca awards, a Philippine Graphic prize, and a Young
Artists' Grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). His books Happy
Endings, a collection of short stories; and The King of Nothing to Do, a collection of essays, were
nominated in the National Book Awards by the Manila Critics Circle. His last book "Dear Distance"
was released in March 2016.
He has been hospitalized since December 2015 for complications from diabetes. A series of
benefit events were held in January 2016 for him. A fundraising exhibit had been held in Blanc
Gallery in Katipunan in February to help cover his hospital expenses. On April 10, he suffered an
extensive stroke and the doctor stated that recovery was no longer possible. He passed away on
20 April 2016 at the age of 41.
TELL THE SKY

Luis Katigbak
There is something wrong with the sky again today, and once again the city has shifted. I
feel a small coldness snake itself up from my heart and through my throat. The unpleasant tingle
settles in my mouth, and I tell myself to get ready for work.
Once, when I was a child, my mother took me with her on a visit to Binondo to consult with
a fortuneteller of accurate and unflinching visions. She talked to him for quite some time about her
business ventures, her brothers and sisters, and her gradually disintegrating marriage, while I sat on
a chair that was too high for me and swung my legs back and forth with increasing frequency and
vigor. At some point, my mother swatted me on the back of the head and told me to be still.
Not long after that, the consultation came to an end, and she stood up and thanked the
fortuneteller profusely. I can no longer remember what he looked like at allwhen I try, all I can
see is a dark vagueness, an indentation in existence shaped like a childs-eye view of a grown-up
but I remember what he told me as we were on our way out of the room. You have eight stories,
he said. Use them well.
There are stories inside everyone, of course; some are like caged birds of varying hues, some
like ripe, slimy pods ready to burst at a touch. Most people have no idea how many they contain.
Some people think that they have limitless tales when, really, they recount the same one over and
over with insipid variations, tales of People-think-Im-cool or God-Im-so-wasted-in-this-country or
Well-I-showed her. No one ever notices. Some people actually do have a large and wonderful
variety of stories within them, andwhenever one is releasedit sparks and dazzles and hangs in
the air for a slow moment, like a December-sky firework.
The fortuneteller told me that I have eight, and I have never forgotten. I used two of them in
grade school: one to get me out of trouble and one to cheer myself up. The first one was told to an
initially skeptical priest at the Catholic school I was attending, and involved the matter of several
missing library books. As I spun my story, a lie of exceptional intricacy, I could see the doubt drain
slowly from his gaze, and feel the story slip away from meI knew then that it would save me
from punishment, but that I would never be able to use it again.
The second story came to me on a particularly gray morning when the routine of school
weighed so heavy on me that I felt as if I would split open in tears on the morning bus ride. Then it
came to me: I was not riding to school but to an apocalyptic war zone; I was no student, but a
soldier. My classmates were fellow pawns in a never-ending conflict. Every lesson threatened our
lives; every brief snack break was a blessing. In my mind, the history of the war was laid out, and
our insignificant part in it was clear and unchanging. This scenario transformed my hatred of the
day-to-day into a sort of ragged heroism. Once established, it filled me and sustained me, more
vivid than any daydream, until I entered high school.
In high school I used another story, this time to win the heart of my first love: a story of luck
and destiny and ever-afters, naturally. It was worth it just for the look on her face as we danced
together during one of the school-organized parties. I would never see such innocent longing and
admiration again. I knew our love would die within less than a year, but given the choice, I would
waste that story on her again and again.
I used three stories in collegethe circumstances and motivations behind two of them, I no
longer care to recall. My sixth story was a particularly convincing rumor I started online, that spread
with great swiftness through a certain sub-network of concerned parties and resulted in the
shutdown of two websites and the subsequent unemployment of about a dozen people. At the time, I
gloried in the power of a well-twisted and strategically placed untruth and, admittedly, even now,
the thought brings a crooked smile to me.
I was working at my first job when I used my seventh story. I was awakened in the middle
of the night by a frantic call from the housemate of a friend who lived nearby. This friend of mine
had downed a bottle of pills in an attempted suicide. I helped rush her to the hospital and waited
while they pumped her stomach in the emergency room. Afterwards, I sat by her hospital bed and
held her hand. I told her a story about a girl whose eyes would shed rose petals instead of tears, a
girl for whom life was a labyrinth instead of a straight line. She gripped my hand tight as I
recounted how this girl eventually learned to navigate the twists and turns of her maze and
appreciate their intricacies. Soon after, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
I knew I was down to my last story, and I wondered if I had used up too many, too soon.
That was three years ago. Since then, Ive had two more jobsneither of them especially fulfilling
and the world has changed for the stranger.
Little things at first, corner-of-my-eye things. Like light glinting off objects in a manner that
seemed off, somehow. Or the occasional sense that the sky was fouled by something other than
pollution, like a presence inexorably eating into its blankness. Or the way an arrangement of
buildings I would always pass while riding the MRT in the morning would seem to shift, to subtly
change order. No one else seemed to notice. I chalked this all up to my inadequate sense of spatial
relationships, to a possible need for a visit to an ophthalmologist.
It got worse. I started seeing people as other things, things that werent people. Its difficult
to explain. I would be talking to my boss, for instance, a tall and jovial man, and then I would see
somethinglike an image superimposed on his actual appearancea balloon, say, saffron-colored.
Or I would be arguing with the head of our Human Resources department, and be aware of a kind of
blackened spiral shape floating where his face should be, an ink-stained thing coiled in upon itself. I
supposed they were hallucinations. I read up on neurological case studies and thought that I had
found a name for my condition upon stumbling upon Oliver Sacks account of a man who mistook
his wife for a hat. Its not like I cant tell people and objects apart, though.
Ive almost gotten used to it by now, though day by day it gets a little worse. Last night
when I was looking at myself in the mirror after a shower, my reflection shifted and reassembled
itself. I saw something undeniably grotesque and yet at the same time deeply appealing: a sort of
chimera, with a childs arms and face, which for a body had a roughly ovoid shape with a snaky tail.
I was revulsed and fascinated in equal measure, and could not look away. The patchwork creature
looked like I felt inside: half-formed, immature, somewhat ridiculous. It was then that I realized that
I was not exactly hallucinatingbut more like Im seeing hidden things, secret and unsettling
truths.
Tonight I ride the MRT home as usual while trying not to look out the windows or at my
fellow passengers. From the station, I start walking to where I can get a jeepney ride, passing a
shopping center and a squatters area, wondering as I walk if Im going mad.
Youre not going mad, the fortuneteller tells me.
I look up and see a vague darkness, an indentation in existence. I cant make out his face.
Hes blocky, sketchy, indistinct. But his voice is clear and unwavering.
Its the world thats gone wrong, he assures me. Its shaky and wobbly and will soon come
apart. What youve been seeing are glimpses of a grand machine that will soon break down.
He goes on to say: All of everything is an unfurling and an unraveling, a binding and a
weaving. Its all cycles. Things turn in on themselves and blossom outwards into other things.
Beginnings into endings into beginnings.
But the cycle needs to be fed, he explains. Otherwise it slows and stutters and fails.
I stare at him as he says all this. No one else notices us. All at once Im tired and nervous,
but I know what is needed.
Its all I have left, I tell him. I know, he says.
My last story.
Who do I tell it to? I ask. You can tell it to the air, he says. You can tell it to the firmament.
He asks: Are you willing?
Yes, I whisper, and that small affirmative sound seems to rise up and make a space for itself
in the night sky.
So I start to tell my tale. And, as I do, an understanding comes upon me . . .
I understand that this, my final and eighth story, is my life itselfand as I mouth the ending,
I feel my heart beat, beat, stop.

POETRY: Toys by Gemino Abad
About the Author:
Gmino Henson Abad is a literary critic from Cebu, Philippines. His family moved to
Manila when his father, Antonio Abad, was offered professorships at Far Eastern University and
the University of the Philippines. He earned his B.A. English from the University of the
Philippines in 1964 and Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Chicago in 1970. He
served the University of the Philippines in various capacities: as Secretary of the University,
Secretary of the Board of Regents, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the U.P.
Institute of Creative Writing. For many years, he also taught English,
comparative literature and creative writing at U.P. Diliman.
Abad co-founded the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) which published Caracoa, a
poetry journal in English. His other works include Fugitive Emphasis (poems, 1973); In Another
Light (poems and critical essays, 1976); A Formal Approach to Lyric Poetry (critical theory,
1978); The Space Between (poems and critical essays, 1985); Poems and Parables (1988); Index to
Filipino Poetry in English, 1905-1950 (with Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, 1988) and State of
Play (letter-essays and parables, 1990). He edited landmark anthologies of Filipino poetry in
English, among them Man of Earth (1989), A Native Clearing (1993) and A Habit of Shores:
Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, 60s to the 90s (1999).
The University of the Philippines has elevated Abad to the rank of University Professor, the
highest academic rank awarded by the university to an exemplary faculty member. He currently sits
on the Board of Advisers of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing and teaches creative
writing as Emeritus University Professor at the College of Arts and Letters, U.P. Diliman.
In 2009, he became the first Filipino to receive the coveted Premio Feronia
in Rome, Italy under the foreign author category.
TOYS
Gemino Abad
Now our boys have such toys

as my brother and I never dreamed;
Did the same spirit stir our make-believe?
Yet outdoor was where we took its measure.
But how could I wish it were otherwise

for them, and would it be wise
since other kids inhabit the same quarry
where X-men wage their fantastic wars?
Indeed we knew the hot spill of blood,

with slingshots searched the bushes and trees,
but also knew ourselves pierced
where the worlds songs first were made.
But those video games, those robots,

armaments of glory, sirens of terror,
must root their eyes in our politics
and scavenge for hope in the worlds rubble.
Somethings amiss, or toys perhaps

have changed their meaning.
In the overflood of their kind,
theyve lost their round of seasons.
It may be the same with the worlds

weather, but in our time,
there was one season for kites
when the wind seemed to make the sky rounder;
There was another, for marbles and rubber bands,

the earth firmer, the blaze of sunshine brighter;
and yet another, for tops and wheels,
as streetwise we vied for dusty prizes.
And when the rains came,

and the skies fell with the thunderclap,
how we would run in drenched nakedness
to dare a lightning race to the edge of time.
But how shall I travel to my boys heart

and break their dreadnought of heroes,

and find, as when light breaks,
the pieces of their manhood whole?
O, their heroes create them,

but if they could invent their games
and stage their future, might they not
surprise the hero with their fate?
NEW GENRES: Hugot Lines
Side note!
What is a Hugot Line?
The term hugot is a Filipino word which means to draw or to pull
out. The usage of the hashtag #hugot became popular not so long ago and is
usually used along with song lyrics, a quote, etc. that the person tweeting
relates to; #hugot means the accompanying words draw emotions out of
him/her.
Hugot. Usually words with potentially and personally deep sentimental
or emotional undertones. Because feelings come from "deep within" so you
have had to "hugot" your emotions first "from deep within" before you
would've actually blurted them out in somehow emotionally undertoned words
subconsciously or otherwise.
HUGOT LINES
from the Internet
Kapag ikaw ay magmamahal, pero sasaktan mo rin naman, dapat maghamon ka na lang ng
suntukan.
* * * * *
Malabo na talaga ang mata ko. Pwede ba humingi sa iyo ng kahit konting pagtingin?
* * * * *
Kung pangit ka mahilig kang mag-selfie, sabihin mo na lang lahat ng pictures mo ay wacky.
* * * * *
Wala naman talagang pangit, sadyang nasobrahan lang ako sa ganda
* * * * *
Cup noodles ka ba?
Bakit?
Kasi gusto kitang buhusan ng kumukulong tubig.
* * * * *
Ang taong nagmamahal nang tunay ay parang matalinong estudyante
na kumukuha ng examhindi siya tumitingin sa iba kahit nahihirapan
* * * * *
Hindi lahat ng sweet loyal sayo. Tandaan, sweet nga ang candy,
pero nakabalot naman sa plastic
* * * * *
Sabi nga nila: "Lahat ng tao ay may pagkakataong MAGKAMALI o maging TANGA ngunit hindi
porket libre, AARAW - ARAWIN mo na."
* * * * *
Naiinis ka kase napapangitan ka sa ugali ko? Bakit, nung napangitan ba ako sa mukha mo nag-
iInarte ako?
* * * * *
Dalawa lang naman ang dahilan kung bakit ka iniwan. It's either "Puno Na" or "Hindi ka Nakita"
-JEEP yan. Akala mo Love Story mo na naman. Kaya ayon sabit na naman.
* * * * *
Ang CRUSH parang MATH yan. Pag hindi mo nakuha, tignan mo na lang...
* * * * *
#Plastic
---- minsan nilalagyan ng kung anu anung bagay...
---- madalas IKAW .
* * * * *
Ang BUHAY daw ay parang pag - seselfie, pag walang nag LIKE, di masaya.
* * * * *
Ang love parang basketball. Naka 3 points sila sa puso mo, pero minsan rebound ka lang!!
* * * * *
Kapag Crush, Crush Lang Wag Kang Mahuhulog. Masasaktan Ka Lang.
#Aww
* * * * *
Sa panahon ngayon mas tumatagal na ang utang kaysa sa relasyon. :D
* * * * *
Kung Hindi Mo Maiwasan Mag Mahal, Iwasan Mo Nalang Maging Tanga.
* * * * *
- Sa Sobra Nyong Paglalambingan, Mukha Na Kayong Naglalandian.
#Realtalk
* * * * *
Gusto mo ng sparks? Isaksak mo yung tinidor nyo sa outlet tapos wag mong bibitawang haliparot
ka.
* * * * *
GWAPO.
----Minsan may Girlfriend.

----Madalas may Boyfriend.
* * * * *
Sa Love pag nasaktan ka, parang McDo lang.

Sakit na di mo McmcmcmcKakalimutan.
* * * * *
Kung nahihirapan ka na.
Bumili ka nalang ng sprite.
MAGPAKATOTOO KA!
* * * * *
Iiwan mo lang pala ako. Sana naman nagsabi ka manlang para kahit papaano nakapag ready naman
ako.
* * * * *
Zero
---- Minsan numero
---- kadalasan Lovelife mo..
* * * * *
Crush kita , Crush Mo Sya , May Crush Syang Iba . Ano to? PAGHANGA Ng Mga TANGA ?
* * * * *
Nung nagawa mo kong lokohin, yun ang MALI. Pero para ulitin mo, hindi na yun MALI. MAY
SAKIT ka na!
ESSAY: A Heritage of Smallness by Nick Joaquin

About the Author:
Nicomedes Mrquez Joaqun (May 4, 1917 April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer,
historian and journalist, best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also
wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaqun was conferred the rank and title of National
Artist of the Philippines for Literature.
Joaqun represented the Philippines at the International PEN Congress in Tokyo in 1957, and
was appointed as a member of the Motion Pictures commission under presidents Diosdado
Macapagal and Ferdinand E. Marcos.
After being honored as National Artist, Joaquin used his position to work for intellectual
freedom in society. He secured the release of imprisoned writer Jos F. Lacaba. At a ceremony on
Mount Makiling attended by First Lady Imelda Marcos, Joaqun delivered an invocation
to Mariang Makiling, the mountain's mythical maiden. Joaqun touched on the importance of
freedom and the artist. After that, Joaqun was excluded by the Marcos regime as a speaker at
important cultural events.
Joaqun died of cardiac arrest in the early morning of April 29, 2004, at his home in San
Juan, Metro Manila. He was then editor of Philippine Graphic magazine, where he worked with
Juan P. Dayang, the magazine's first publisher. Joaqun was also publisher of its sister
publication, Mirror Weekly, a womens magazine, and wrote the column Small Beer for
the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Isyu, an opinion tabloid.
A HERITAGE OF SMALLNESS
Nick Joaquin
Society for the Filipino is a small rowboat: the barangay. Geography for the Filipino is a
small locality: the barrio. History for the Filipino is a small vague saying:matanda pa kay mahoma;
noong peacetime. Enterprise for the Filipino is a small stall: the sari-sari. Industry and production
for the Filipino are the small immediate searchings of each day: isang kahig, isang tuka. And
commerce for the Filipino is the smallest degree of retail: the tingi.
What most astonishes foreigners in the Philippines is that this is a country, perhaps the only
one in the world, where people buy and sell one stick of cigarette, half a head of garlic, a dab of
pomade, part of the contents of a can or bottle, one single egg, one single banana. To foreigners
used to buying things by the carton or the dozen or pound and in the large economy sizes, the
exquisite transactions of Philippine tingis cannot but seem Lilliputian. So much effort by so many
for so little. Like all those children risking neck and limb in the traffic to sell one stick of cigarette
at a time. Or those grown-up men hunting the sidewalks all day to sell a puppy or a lantern or a pair
of socks. The amount of effort they spend seems out of all proportion to the returns. Such folk are,
obviously, not enough. Laboriousness just can never be the equal of labor as skill, labor as audacity,
labor as enterprise.
The Filipino who travels abroad gets to thinking that his is the hardest working country in
the world. By six or seven in the morning we are already up on our way to work, shops and markets
are open; the wheels of industry are already agrind. Abroad, especially in the West, if you go out at
seven in the morning youre in a dead-town. Everybodys still in bed; everythings still closed up.
Activity doesnt begin till nine or ten and ceases promptly at five p.m. By six, the business sections
are dead towns again. The entire cities go to sleep on weekends. They have a shorter working day, a
shorter working week. Yet they pile up more mileage than we who work all day and all week.
Is the disparity to our disparagement?
We work more but make less. Why? Because we act on such a pygmy scale. Abroad they
would think you mad if you went in a store and tried to buy just one stick of cigarette. They dont
operate on the scale. The difference is greater than between having and not having; the difference is
in the way of thinking. They are accustomed to thinking dynamically. We have the habit, whatever
our individual resources, of thinking poor, of thinking petty.
Is that the explanation for our continuing failure to risethat we buy small and sell small,
that we think small and do small?
Are we not confusing timidity for humility and making a virtue of what may be the worst of
our vices? Is not our timorous clinging to smallness the bondage we must break if we are ever to
inherit the earth and be free, independent, progressive? The small must ever be prey to the big.
Aldous Huxley said that some people are born victims, or murderers. He came to the Philippines
and thought us the least original of people. Is there not a relation between his two terms?
Originality requires daring: the daring to destroy the obsolete, to annihilate the petty. Its cold
comfort to think we havent developed that kind of murderer mentality."
But till we do we had best stop talking about "our heritage of greatness for the national
heritage is lets face it a heritage of smallness.
However far we go back in our history its the small we findthe nipa hut, the barangay, the
petty kingship, the slight tillage, the tingi trade. All our artifacts are miniatures and so is our folk
literature, which is mostly proverbs, or dogmas in miniature. About the one big labor we can point
to in our remote past are the rice terracesand even that grandeur shrinks, on scrutiny, into
numberless little separate plots into a series of layers added to previous ones, all this being the
accumulation of ages of small routine efforts (like a colony of ant hills) rather than one grand labor
following one grand design. We could bring in here the nursery diota about the little drops of water
that make the mighty ocean, or the peso thats not a peso if it lacks a centavo; but creative labor,
alas, has sterner standards, a stricter hierarchy of values. Many little efforts, however perfect each in
itself, still cannot equal one single epic creation. A galleryful of even the most charming statuettes is
bound to look scant beside a Pieta or Moses by Michelangelo; and you could stack up the best short
stories you can think of and still not have enough to outweigh a mountain like War and Peace.
The depressing fact in Philippine history is what seems to be our native aversion to the large
venture, the big risk, the bold extensive enterprise. The pattern may have been set by the migration.
We try to equate the odyssey of the migrating barangays with that of the Pilgrim, Father of America,
but a glance of the map suffices to show the differences between the two ventures. One was a
voyage across an ocean into an unknown world; the other was a going to and from among
neighboring islands. One was a blind leap into space; the other seems, in comparison, a mere
crossing of rivers. The nature of the one required organization, a sustained effort, special skills,
special tools, the building of large ships. The nature of the other is revealed by its vehicle, the
barangay, which is a small rowboat, not a seafaring vessel designed for long distances on the
avenues of the ocean.
The migrations were thus self-limited, never moved far from their point of origin, and clung
to the heart of a small known world; the islands clustered round the Malay Peninsula. The
movement into the Philippines, for instance, was from points as next-door geographically as Borneo
and Sumatra. Since the Philippines is at heart of this region, the movement was toward center, or,
one may say, from near to still nearer, rather than to farther out. Just off the small brief circuit of
these migrations was another world: the vast mysterious continent of Australia; but there was
significantly no movement towards this terra incognita. It must have seemed too perilous, too
unfriendly of climate, too big, too hard. So, Australia was conquered not by the fold next door, but
by strangers from across two oceans and the other side of the world. They were more enterprising,
they have been rewarded. But history has punished the laggard by setting up over them a White
Australia with doors closed to the crowded Malay world.
The barangays that came to the Philippines were small both in scope and size. A barangay
with a hundred households would already be enormous; some barangays had only 30 families, or
less. These, however, could have been the seed of a great society if there had not been in that a fatal
aversion to synthesis. The barangay settlements already displayed a Philippine characteristic: the
tendency to petrify in isolation instead of consolidating, or to split smaller instead of growing. That
within the small area of Manila Bay there should be three different kingdoms (Tondo, Manila and
Pasay) may mean that the area wa originally settled by three different barangays that remained
distinct, never came together, never fused; or it could mean that a single original settlement; as it
grew split into three smaller pieces.
Philippine society, as though fearing bigness, ever tends to revert the condition of the
barangay of the small enclosed society. We dont grow like a seed, we split like an amoeba. The
moment a town grows big it become two towns. The moment a province becomes populous it
disintegrates into two or three smaller provinces. The excuse offered for divisions i always the
alleged difficulty of administering so huge an entity. But Philippines provinces are microscopic
compared to an American state like, say, Texas, where the local government isnt heard complaining
it cant efficiently handle so vast an area. We, on the other hand, make a confession of character
whenever we split up a town or province to avoid having of cope, admitting that, on that scale, we
cant be efficient; we are capable only of the small. The decentralization and barrio-autonomy
movement expresses our craving to return to the one unit of society we feel adequate to: the
barangay, with its 30 to a hundred families. Anything larger intimidates. We would deliberately limit
ourselves to the small performance. This attitude, an immemorial one, explains why were finding it
so hard to become a nation, and why our pagan forefathers could not even imagine the task. Not E
pluribus, unum is the impulse in our culture but Out of many, fragments. Foreigners had to come
and unite our land for us; the labor was far beyond our powers. Great was the King of Sugbu, but he
couldnt even control the tiny isle across his bay. Federation is still not even an idea for the tribes of
the North; and the Moro sultanates behave like our political parties: they keep splitting off into
particles.
Because we cannot unite for the large effort, even the small effort is increasingly beyond us.
There is less to learn in our schools, but even this little is protested by our young as too hard. The
falling line on the graph of effort is, alas, a recurring pattern in our history. Our artifacts but repeat a
refrain of decline and fall, which wouldnt be so sad if there had been a summit decline from, but
the evidence is that we start small and end small without ever having scaled any peaks. Used only to
the small effort, we are not, as a result, capable of the sustained effort and lose momentum fast. We
have a term for it: ningas cogon.
Go to any exhibit of Philippine artifacts and the items that from our cultural heritage but
confirm three theories about us, which should be stated again.
First: that the Filipino works best on small scaletiny figurines, small pots, filigree work in
gold or silver, decorative arabesques. The deduction here is that we feel adequate to the challenge of
the small, but are cowed by the challenge of the big.
Second: that the Filipino chooses to work in soft easy materialsclay, molten metal, tree
searching has failed to turn up anything really monumental in hardstone. Even carabao horn, an
obvious material for native craftsmen, has not been used to any extent remotely comparable to the
use of ivory in the ivory countries. The deduction here is that we feel equal to the materials that
yield but evade the challenge of materials that resist.
Third: that having mastered a material, craft or product, we tend to rut in it and dont move
on to a next phase, a larger development, based on what we have learned. In fact, we instantly lay
down even what mastery we already posses when confronted by a challenge from outside of
something more masterly, instead of being provoked to develop by the threat of competition. Faced
by the challenge of Chinese porcelain, the native art of pottery simply declined, though porcelain
should have been the next phase for our pottery makers. There was apparently no effort to steal and
master the arts of the Chinese. The excuse offered here that we did not have the materials for the
techniques for the making of porcelainunites in glum brotherhood yesterdays pottery makers and
todays would be industrialists. The native pot got buried by Chinese porcelain as Philippine
tobacco is still being buried by the blue seal.
Our cultural history, rather than a cumulative development, seems mostly a series of dead
ends. One reason is a fear of moving on to a more complex phase; another reason is a fear of tools.
Native pottery, for instance, somehow never got far enough to grasp the principle of the wheel.
Neither did native agriculture ever reach the point of discovering the plow for itself, or even the
idea of the draft animal, though the carabao was handy. Wheel and plow had to come from outside
because we always stopped short of technology, This stoppage at a certain level is the recurring fate
of our arts and crafts.
The santo everybodys collecting now are charming as legacies, depressing as indices, for
the art of the santero was a small art, in a not very demanding medium: wood. Having achieved
perfection in it, the santero was faced by the challenge of proving he could achieve equal perfection
on a larger scale and in more difficult materials: hardstone, marble, bronze. The challenge was not
met. Like the pagan potter before him, the santero stuck to his tiny rut, repeating his little
perfections over and over. The iron law of life is: Develop or decay. The art of the santero did not
advance; so it declined. Instead of moving onto a harder material, it retreated to a material even
easier than wool: Plasterand plaster has wrought the death of relax art.
One could go on and on with this litany.
Philippine movies started 50 years ago and, during the 30s, reached a certain level of
proficiency, where it stopped and has rutted ever since looking more and more primitive as the rest
of the cinema world speeds by on the way to new frontiers. We have to be realistic, say local movie
producers were in this business not to make art but money. But even from the business viewpoint,
theyre not realistic at all. The true businessman ever seeks to increase his market and therefore
ever tries to improve his product. Business dies when it resigns itself, as local movies have done, to
a limited market.
After more than half a century of writing in English, Philippine Literature in that medium is
still identified with the short story. That small literary form is apparently as much as we feel equal
to. But by limiting ourselves less and less capable even of the small thingas the fate of the pagan
potter and the Christian santero should have warned us. It no longer as obvious today that the
Filipino writer has mastered the short story form.
Its two decades since the war but what were mere makeshift in postwar days have petrified
into institutions like the jeepney, which we all know to be uncomfortable and inadequate, yet cannot
get rid of, because the would mean to tackle the problem of modernizing our systems of
transportationa problem we think so huge we hide from it in the comforting smallness of the
jeepney. A small solution to a huge problemdo we deceive ourselves into thinking that possible?
The jeepney hints that we do, for the jeepney carrier is about as adequate as a spoon to empty a river
with.
With the population welling, and land values rising, there should be in our cities, an upward
thrust in architecture, but we continue to build small, in our timid two-story fashion. Oh, we have
excuses. The land is soft: earthquakes are frequent. But Mexico City, for instance, is on far
swampier land and Mexico City is not a two-story town. San Francisco and Tokyo are in worse
earthquake belts, but San Francisco and Tokyo reach up for the skies. Isnt our architecture another
expression of our smallness spirit? To build big would pose problems too big for us. The water
pressure, for example, would have to be improvedand its hard enough to get water on the ground
floor flat and frail, our cities indicate our disinclination to make any but the smallest effort possible.
It wouldnt be so bad if our aversion for bigness and our clinging to the small denoted a
preference for quality over bulk; but the little things we take forever to do too often turn out to be
worse than the mass-produced article. Our couturiers, for instance, grow even limper of wrist when,
after waiting months and months for a pin ~a weaver to produce a yard or two of the fabric, they
find they have to discard most of the stuff because its so sloppily done. Foreigners who think of
pushing Philippine fabric in the world market give up in despair after experiencing our inability to
deliver in quantity. Our proud apologia is that mass production would ruin the quality of our
products. But Philippine crafts might be roused from the doldrums if forced to come up to mass-
production standards.
Its easy enough to quote the West against itself, to cite all those Western artists and writers
who rail against the cult of bigness and mass production and the bitch goddess success; but the
arguments against technological progress, like the arguments against nationalism, are possible only
to those who have already gone through that stage so successfully they can now afford to revile it.
The rest of us can only crave to be big enough to be able to deplore bigness.
For the present all we seen to be able to do is ignore pagan evidence and blame our inability
to sustain the big effort of our colonizers: they crushed our will and spirit, our initiative and
originality. But colonialism is not uniquely our ordeal but rather a universal experience. Other
nations went under the heel of the conqueror but have not spent the rest of their lives whining. What
people were more trod under than the Jews? But each have been a thoroughly crushed nation get up
and conquered new worlds instead. The Norman conquest of England was followed by a
subjugation very similar to our experience, but what issued from that subjugation were the will to
empire and the verve of a new language.

If it be true that we were enervated by the loss of our primordial freedom, culture and
institutions, then the native tribes that were never under Spain and didnt lose what we did should be
showing a stronger will and spirit, more initiative and originality, a richer culture and greater
progress, than the Christian Filipino. Do they? And this favorite apologia of ours gets further blasted
when we consider a people who, alongside us, suffered a far greater trampling yet never lost their
enterprising spirit. On the contrary, despite centuries of ghettos and programs and repressive
measures and racial scorn, the Chinese in the Philippines clambered to the top of economic heap
and are still right up there when it comes to the big deal. Shouldnt they have long come to the
conclusion (as we say we did) that theres no point in hustling and laboring and amassing wealth
only to see it wrested away and oneself punished for rising?
An honest reading of our history should rather force us to admit that it was the colonial years
that pushed us toward the larger effort. There was actually an advance in freedom, for the
unification of the land, the organization of towns and provinces, and the influx of new ideas, started
our liberation from the rule of the petty, whether of clan, locality or custom. Are we not vexed at the
hinterlander still bound by primordial terrors and taboos? Do we not say we have to set him free
through education? Freedom, after all is more than a political condition; and the colonial lowlander
especially a person like, say, Rizalwas surely more of a freeman than the unconquered tribesman
up in the hills. As wheel and plow set us free from a bondage to nature, so town and province
liberated us from the bounds of the barangay.
The liberation can be seen just by comparing our pagan with our Christian statuary. What
was static and stolid in the one becomes, in the other, dynamic motion and expression. It can be read
in the rear of architecture. Now, at last, the Filipino attempts the massivethe stone bridge that
unites, the irrigation dam that gives increase, the adobe church that identified. If we have a heritage
of greatness its in these labors and in three epic acts of the colonial period; first, the defense of the
land during two centuries of siege; second, the Propaganda Movement; and the third, the
Revolution.
The first, a heroic age that profoundly shaped us, began 1600 with the 50-year war with the
Dutch and may be said to have drawn to a close with the British invasion of 1762. The War with the
Dutch is the most under-rated event in our history, for it was the Great War in our history. It had to
be pointed out that the Philippines, a small colony practically abandoned to itself, yet held at bay for
half a century the mightiest naval power in the world at the time, though the Dutch sent armada
after armada, year after year, to conquer the colony, or by cutting off the galleons that were its links
with America, starve the colony to its knees. We rose so gloriously to the challenge the impetus of
spirit sent us spilling down to Borneo and the Moluccas and Indo-China, and it seemed for a
moment we might create an empire. But the tremendous effort did create an elite vital to our history:
the Creole-Tagalog-Pampango principalia - and ruled it together during these centuries of siege, and
which would which was the nation in embryo, which defended the land climax its military career
with the war of resistance against the British in the 1660s. By then, this elite already deeply felt
itself a nation that the government it set up in Bacolor actually defined the captive government in
Manila as illegitimate. From her flows the heritage that would flower in Malolos, for centuries of
heroic effort had bred, in Tagalog and the Pampango, a habit of leadership, a lordliness of spirit.
They had proved themselves capable of the great and sustained enterprise, destiny was theirs. An
analyst of our history notes that the sun on our flag has eight rays, each of which stands for a
Tagalog or Pampango province, and the the Tagalogs and Pampangos at Biak-na-Bato "assumed the
representation of the entire country and, therefore, became in fact the Philippines.
From the field of battle this elite would, after the British war, shift to the field of politics, a
significant move; and the Propaganda, which began as a Creole campaign against the Peninsulars,
would turn into the nationalist movement of Rizal and Del Pilar. This second epic act in our history
seemed a further annulment of the timidity. A man like Rizal was a deliberate rebel against the cult
of the small; he was so various a magus because he was set on proving that the Filipino could tackle
the big thing, the complex job. His novels have epic intentions; his poems sustain the long line and
go against Garcia Villas more characteristically Philippine dictum that poetry is the small intense
line.
With the Revolution, our culture is in dichotomy. This epic of 1896 is indeed a great effort
but by a small minority. The Tagalog and Pampango had taken it upon themselves to protest the
grievances of the entire archipelago. Moreover, within the movement was a clash between the two
strains in our culturebetween the propensity for the small activity and the will to something more
ambitious. Bonifacios Katipunan was large in number but small in scope; it was a rattling of bolos;
and its post fiasco efforts are little more than amok raids in the manner the Filipino is said to excel
in. (An observation about us in the last war was that we fight best not as an army, but in small
informal guerrilla outfits; not in pitched battle, but in rapid hit-and-run raids.) On the other hand,
there was, in Cavite, an army with officers, engineers, trenches, plans of battle and a complex
organization - a Revolution unlike all the little uprisings or mere raids of the past because it had
risen above tribe and saw itself as the national destiny. This was the highest we have reached in
nationalistic effort. But here again, having reached a certain level of achievement, we stopped. The
Revolution is, as we say today, "unfinished."
The trend since the turn of the century, and especially since the war, seems to be back to the
tradition of timidity, the heritage of smallness. We seem to be making less and less effort, thinking
ever smaller, doing even smaller. The air droops with a feeling of inadequacy. We cant cope; we
dont respond; we are not rising to challenges. So tiny a land as ours shouldnt be too hard to
connect with transportation - but we get crushed on small jeepneys, get killed on small trains, get
drowned in small boats. Larger and more populous cities abroad find it no problem to keep
themselves clean - but the simple matter of garbage can create a "crisis in the small city of Manila.
One American remarked that, after seeing Manilas chaos of traffic, he began to appreciate how his
city of Los Angeles handles its far, far greater volume of traffic. Is building a road that wont break
down when it rains no longer within our powers? Is even the building of sidewalks too herculean of
task for us?
One writer, as he surveyed the landscape of shortagesno rice, no water, no garbage
collectors, no peace, no ordergloomily mumbled that disintegration seems to be creeping upon us
and groped for Yeats terrifying lines:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold:

Mere anarchy is loosed
Have our capacities been so diminished by the small efforts we are becoming incapable even
to the small things? Our present problems are surely not what might be called colossal or
insurmountableyet we stand helpless before them. As the population swells, those problems will
expand and multiply. If they daunt us now, will they crush us then? The prospect is terrifying.
On the Feast of Freedom we may do well to ponder the Parable of the Servants and the
Talents. The enterprising servants who increase talents entrusted to them were rewarded by their
Lord; but the timid servant who made no effort to double the one talent given to him was deprived
of that talent and cast into the outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth:
For to him who has, more shall be given; but from him who has not, even the little he has
shall be taken away."
UNIT 5 Development of World Literature
World literature is sometimes used to refer to the sum total of the worlds national
literatures, but usually it refers to the circulation of works into the wider world beyond their country
of origin. Often used in the past primarily for masterpieces of Western European literature, world
literature today is increasingly seen in global context. Readers today have access to an
unprecedented range of works from around the world in excellent translations, and since the mid-
1990s a lively debate has grown up concerning both the aesthetic and the political values and
limitations of an emphasis on global processes over national traditions.
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available
in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (that is, the one thousand years from the fall of the
Western Roman Empire ca. AD 500 to the beginning of the Florentine Renaissance in the late 15th
century). The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works.
Just as in modern literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the
exuberantly profane, touching all points in-between. Works of literature are often grouped by place
of origin, language, and genre.
Since Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which
dominated Western and Central Europe, and since the Church was virtually the only source of
education, Latin was a common language for medieval writings, even in some parts of Europe that
were never Romanized. However, in Eastern Europe, the influence of the Eastern Roman
Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church made Greek and Old Church Slavonic the dominant
written languages.
The common people continued to use their respective vernaculars. A few examples, such as
the Old English Beowulf, the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, the Medieval Greek Digenis
Acritas, the Old East Slavic Tale of Igor's Campaign, and the Old French Chanson de Roland, are
well known to this day. Although the extant versions of these epics are generally considered the
works of individual (but anonymous) poets, there is no doubt that they are based on their peoples'
older oral traditions. Celtic traditions have survived in the lais of Marie de France,
the Mabinogion and the Arthurian cycles. Another host of vernacular literature has survived in
the Old Norse literature and more specifically in the Saga literature of Iceland.
The invention of biography can be attributed to this time period. It had such ancient
forebears as Plutarch's Parallel Lives and Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
Theological works were the dominant form of literature typically found in libraries during
the Middle Ages. Catholic clerics were the intellectual center of society in the Middle Ages, and it is
their literature that was produced in the greatest quantity.
Countless hymns survive from this time period (both liturgical and paraliturgical). The
liturgy itself was not in fixed form, and numerous competing missals set out individual conceptions
of the order of the mass. Religious scholars such as Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas,
and Pierre Ablard wrote lengthy theological and philosophical treatises, often attempting to
reconcile the teachings of the Greek and Roman pagan authors with the doctrines of the
Church. Hagiographies, or "lives of the saints", were also frequently written, as an encouragement
to the devout and a warning to others.
The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine reached such popularity that, in its time, it was
reportedly read more often than the Bible. Francis of Assisi was a prolific poet, and
his Franciscan followers frequently wrote poetry themselves as an expression of their piety. Dies
Irae and Stabat Mater are two of the most powerful Latin poems on religious subjects. Goliardic
poetry (four-line stanzas of satiric verse) was an art form used by some clerics to express dissent.
The only widespread religious writing that was not produced by clerics were the mystery plays:
growing out of simple tableaux re-enactments of a single Biblical scene, each mystery play became
its village's expression of the key events in the Bible. The text of these plays was often controlled by
local guilds, and mystery plays would be performed regularly on set feast-days, often lasting all day
long and into the night.
During the Middle Ages, the Jewish population of Europe also produced a number of
outstanding writers. Maimonides, born in Cordoba, Spain, and Rashi, born in Troyes, France, are
two of the best-known and most influential of these Jewish authors.
Secular literature in this period was not produced in equal quantity as religious literature, but
much has survived and we possess today a rich corpus. The subject of "courtly love" became
important in the 11th century, especially in the Romance languages (in
the French, Spanish, Galician-Portuguese, Catalan, Provenal languages, most notably) and Greek,
where the traveling singerstroubadoursmade a living from their songs. The writings of the
troubadours are often associated with unrequited longing, but this is not entirely accurate
(see aubade, for instance). In Germany, the Minnesnger continued the tradition of the troubadours.
In addition to epic poems in the Germanic tradition (e.g. Beowulf and Nibelungenlied), epic
poems in the tradition of the chanson de geste (e.g. The Song of Roland and Digenis Acritas which
deal with the Matter of France and the Acritic songs respectively) and courtly romances in the
tradition of the roman courtois, which deal with the Matter of Britain and the Matter of Rome,
achieved great and lasting popularity. The roman courtois is distinguished from the chanson de
geste not only by its subject matter, but also by its emphasis on love and chivalry rather than acts of
war.
Political poetry was written also, especially towards the end of this period, and
the goliardic form saw use by secular writers as well as clerics. Travel literature was highly popular
in the Middle Ages, as fantastic accounts of far-off lands (frequently embellished or entirely false)
entertained a society that, in most cases, limited people to the area in which they were born. (But
note the importance of pilgrimages, especially to Santiago de Compostela, in medieval times, also
witnessed by the prominence of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales).
The most prominent authors of Jewish secular poetry in the Middle Ages were Solomon ibn
Gabirol and Yehuda Halevi, both of whom were also renowned religious poets.
RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was influenced by the
intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance. The literature of
the Renaissance was written by within the general movement of the Renaissance which arose in
14th-century Italy and continued until the 16th century while being diffused into the western world.
It is characterized by the adoption of a humanist philosophy and the recovery of the classical
literature of Antiquity. It benefited from the spread of printing in the latter part of the 15th century.
For the writers of the Renaissance, Greco-Roman inspiration was shown both in the themes of their
writing and in the literary forms they used. The world was considered from an anthropocentric
perspective. Platonic ideas were revived and put to the service of Christianity. The search for
pleasures of the senses and a critical and rational spirit completed the ideological panorama of the
period. New literary genres such as the essay (Montaigne) and new metrical forms such as the
sonnet (Petrarch) and Spenserian stanza made their appearance.
The impact of the Renaissance varied across the continent; countries that were
predominantly Catholic or Protestant experienced the Renaissance differently. Areas where
the Orthodox Church was culturally dominant, as well as those areas of Europe under Islamic rule
were more or less outside its influence. The period focused on self-actualization and one's ability to
accept what is going on in one's life.
The earliest Renaissance literature appeared in Italy in the 14th century; Dante, Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Ariosto are notable examples of Italian Renaissance writers.
From Italy the influence of the Renaissance spread at different times to other countries and
continued to spread around Europe through the 17th century. The English Renaissance and the
Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. In northern
Europe the scholarly writings of Erasmus, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Edmund
Spenser and the writings of Sir Philip Sidney may be considered Renaissance in character.
The creation of the printing press (using movable type) by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440
encouraged authors to write in their local vernacular instead of Greek or Latin classical languages,
thus widening the reading audience and promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas.
EARLY MODERN LITERATURE

Early Modern literature succeeds Medieval literature, and in Europe in
particular Renaissance literature.
In Europe, the Early Modern period lasts roughly from 1550 to 1750, spanning the Baroque
period and ending with the Age of Enlightenment and the wars of the French Revolution. The Early
Modern period in Persia corresponds to the rule of the Safavid dynasty. In Japan, the "Early Modern
period" (Edo period) is taken to last down to 1868 (the beginning of Industrialization during
the Meiji period), in India, the Mughal era lasts until the establishment of the British Raj in 1857.
The Ottoman Empire undergoes various attempts of modernization from 1828 (Tanzimat).
Chinese literature of the Qing dynasty remains mostly unaffected by European influence,
and effects of modernization that would lead up to the New Culture Movement become visible only
form the Late Qing period in the 1890s.
A new spirit of science and investigation in Europe was part of a general upheaval in human
understanding, which began with the discovery of the New world in 1492 and continues through the
subsequent centuries, even up to the present day.
The form of writing now commonplace across the worldthe noveloriginated from the
early modern period and grew in popularity in the next century. Before the modern novel became
established as a form there first had to be a transitional stage when "novelty" began to appear in the
style of the epic poem.
Plays for entertainment (as opposed to religious enlightenment) returned to Europe's stages
in the early modern period. William Shakespeare is the most notable of the early modern
playwrighters, but numerous others made important contributions, including Pierre
Corneille, Molire, Jean Racine, Pedro Caldern de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Christopher
Marlowe. From the 16th to the 18th century commedia dell'arte performers improvised in the streets
of Italy and France. Some Commedia dell'arte plays were written down. Both the written plays and
the improvisation were influential upon literature of the time, particularly upon the work of Molire.
Shakespeare drew upon the arts of jesters and strolling players in creating new style comedies. All
the parts, even the female ones, were played by men (en travesti) but that would change, first in
France and then in England too, by the end of the 17th century.
The earliest work considered an opera in the sense the work is usually understood dates from
around 1597. It is Dafne, (now lost) written by Jacopo Peri for an elite circle of
literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata".
Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha has been called "the first novel" by many
literary scholars (or the first of the modern European novels). It was published in two parts. The
first part was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. It might be viewed as a parody of Le Morte
d'Arthur (and other examples of the chivalric romance), in which case the novel form would be the
direct result of poking fun at a collection of heroic folk legends. This is fully in keeping with the
spirit of the age of enlightenment which began from about this time and delighted in giving a
satirical twist to the stories and ideas of the past. It is worth noting that this trend toward satirising
previous writings was only made possible by the printing press. Without the invention of mass-
produced copies of a book it would not be possible to assume the reader will have seen the earlier
work and will thus understand the references within the text. In the 18th century Daniel
Defoe and Jonathan Swift wrote famous novels.
The 16th century saw outstanding epic poems of Torquato Tasso and Lus de Cames. Later
the most well-known poets were Juana Ins de la Cruz, John Milton and Alexander Pope. In
turn Jean de La Fontaine and Charles Perrault are appreciated for their fables.
The early 18th century sees the conclusion of the Baroque period and the incipient Age of
Enlightenment with authors such as Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing. European cultural influence begins to spread to other continents, notably Edo
period Japan, with notable authors of the period including Ueda Akinari and Sant Kyden. Early
American literature appears towards the end of the century, e.g. with The Power of Sympathy by
William Hill Brown (1789). The late 18th century in Germany sees the beginning Romantic
(Novalis) and Sturm und Drang (Goethe und Schiller) movements.
19th CENTURY LITERATURE

Literature of the 19th century refers to world literature produced during the 19th century.
The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1799 to 1900.
Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other
aspects of 19th-century culture.
Literary realism is the trend, beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature and
extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors, toward depictions of
contemporary life and society as it was, or is. In the spirit of general "realism," realist authors opted
for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or
similarly stylized presentation.
George Eliot's novel Middlemarch stands as a great milestone in the realist tradition. It is a
primary example of nineteenth-century realism's role in the naturalization of the burgeoning
capitalist marketplace.
William Dean Howells was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the
literature of the United States. His stories of 1850s Boston upper-crust life are highly regarded
among scholars of American fiction. His most popular novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, depicts a
man who, ironically, falls from materialistic fortune by his own mistakes. Stephen Crane has also
been recognized as illustrating important aspects of realism to American fiction in the
stories Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and The Open Boat.
Honor de Balzac is often credited with pioneering a systematic realism in French literature,
through the inclusion of specific detail and recurring characters. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo
Tolstoy, Gustave Flaubert, and Ivan Turgenev are regarded by many critics as representing the
zenith of the realist style with their unadorned prose and attention to the details of everyday life. In
German literature, 19th-century realism developed under the name of "Poetic Realism" or
"Bourgeois Realism," and major figures include Theodor Fontane, Gustav Freytag, Gottfried
Keller, Wilhelm Raabe, Adalbert Stifter, and Theodor Storm.[6] Later "realist" writers
included Benito Prez Galds, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Jos Maria de Ea de
Queiroz, Machado de Assis, Bolesaw Prus and, in a sense, mile Zola, whose naturalism is often
regarded as an offshoot of realism.
20th CENTURY LITERATURE

Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century
(1901 to 2000).
In terms of the Euro-American tradition, the main periods are captured in the bipartite
division, Modernist literature and Postmodern literature, flowering from roughly 1900 to 1940 and
1960 to 1990 respectively, divided, as a rule of thumb, by World War II. The somewhat malleable
term of contemporary literature is usually applied with a post-1960 cutoff point.
Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are most applicable to
Western literary history, the rise of globalization has allowed European literary ideas to spread into
non-Western cultures fairly rapidly, so that Asian and African literatures can be included into these
divisions with only minor qualifications. And in some ways, such as in Postcolonial literature,
writers from non-Western cultures were on the forefront of literary development.
Technological advances during the 20th century allowed cheaper production of books,
resulting in a significant rise in production of popular literature and trivial literature, comparable to
the similar developments in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the
20th century is by no means absolute, and various genres such as detectives or science
fiction fluctuate between the two. Largely ignored by mainstream literary criticism for the most of
the century, these genres developed their own establishments and critical awards; these include
the Nebula Award (since 1965), the British Fantasy Award (since 1971) or the Mythopoeic
Awards (since 1971).
Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic literature developed due to the development
of hypertext and later the World Wide Web.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded annually throughout the century (with the
exception of 1914, 1918, 1935 and 19401943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme.
The New York Times Best Seller list has been published since 1942.
The best-selling literary works of the 20th century are estimated to be The Lord of the
Rings (1954/55, 150 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, 120 million
copies) and And Then There Were None (1939, 115 million copies). The Lord of the Rings was also
voted "book of the century" in various surveys. Perry Rhodan (1961 to present) proclaimed as the
best-selling book series, with an estimated total of 1 billion copies sold.
21st CENTURY LITERATURE

The 21st century in literature refers to world literature in prose produced during the 21st
century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) the
year 2001 to the present.
The 2000s saw a steep increase in the acceptability of literature of all types, inspired by the
coming-of-age of millions of people who enjoyed the works of writers such as C. S. Lewis and J. R.
R. Tolkien in their youths. Neil Gaiman, for instance, one of the decade's most popular writers of
the speculative fiction genre, cites Tolkien, Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton as his three biggest
influences growing up. J. K. Rowling admits to being heavily influenced by Lewis as well. Philip
Pullman's gritty and controversial young adult His Dark Materials trilogy, written and published in
the late 1990s, increased in popularity and was more widely read during the 2000s. The popularity
of Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, and Rowling was spurred on by movies which proved to be some of the
biggest of the 2000s.
The 2000s also saw the popularization of manga, or Japanese comics, among international
audiences, particularly in English-speaking nations. Many famous book series such as the Harry
Potter series were adapted into films. Books on wars, guides for exams, myths, etc. were frequent
sellers in this decade. Some books were written in simple English and works of old writers were
translated into language that was easier to understand. Mythology was converted into graphic
novel form to build interest among young readers.

UNIT 6 21st Century World Literature
SHORT STORY: The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman
Side note!
Deconstruction is a literary technique which involves identifying the
contradictions within a texts claim to have a single, stable meaning, and
showing that a text can be taken to mean a variety of things that differ
significantly from what it purports to mean. The following story is the
authors spin after the events of CS Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia series
involving one of the main characters, Susan Pevensie.
About the Author:
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an
English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. His
notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American
Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including
the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the
first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard
Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the
British National Book Awards.
THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN

from Fragile Things

Neil Gaiman
She has the dream again that night.

In the dream, she is standing, with her brothers and her sister, on the edge of the battlefield.
It is summer, and the grass is a peculiarly vivid shade of green: a wholesome green, like a cricket
pitch or the welcoming slope of the South Downs as you make your way north from the coast. There
are bodies on the grass. None of the bodies are human; she can see a centaur, its throat slit, on the
grass near her.
The horse half of it is a vivid chestnut. Its human skin is nut-brown from the sun. She finds
herself staring at the horses penis, wondering about centaurs mating, imagines being kissed by that
bearded face. Her eyes flick to the cut throat, and the sticky red-black pool that surrounds it, and
she shivers.
Flies buzz about the corpses.
The wildflowers tangle in the grass. They bloomed yesterday for the first time inhow long?
A hundred years? A thousand? A hundred thousand? She does not know.
All this was snow, she thinks, as she looks at the battlefield.
Yesterday, all this was snow. Always winter, and never Christmas.
Her sister tugs her hand, and points. On the brow of the green hill they stand, deep in
conversation. The lion is golden, his arms folded behind his back. The witch is dressed all in white.
Right now she is shouting at the lion, who is simply listening. The children cannot make out any of
their words, not her cold anger, nor the lions thrum-deep replies. The witchs hair is black and
shiny, her lips are red.
In her dream she notices these things.
They will finish their conversation soon, the lion and the witch
There are things about herself that the professor despises. Her smell, for example. She
smells like her grandmother smelled, like old women smell, and for this she cannot forgive herself,
so on waking she bathes in scented water and, naked and towel-dried, dabs several drops of Chanel
toilet water beneath her arms and on her neck. It is, she believes, her sole extravagance.
Today she dresses in her dark brown dress suit. She thinks of these as her interview clothes,
as opposed to her lecture clothes or her knocking-about-he-house clothes. Now she is in retirement,
she wears her knocking-about-the-house clothes more and more. She puts on lipstick.
After breakfast, she washes a milk bottle, places it at her back door. She discovers that the
nextdoors cat has deposited a mouse head and a paw, on the doormat. It looks as though the mouse
is swimming through the coconut matting, as though most of it is submerged. She purses her lips,
then she folds her copy of yesterdays Daily Telegraph, and she folds and flips the mouse head and
the paw into the newspaper, never touching them with her hands.
Todays Daily Telegraph is waiting for her in the hall, along with several letters, which she
inspects, without opening any of them, then places on the desk in her tiny study. Since her
retirement she visits her study only to write. Now she walks into the kitchen and seats herself at the
old oak table.
Her reading glasses hang about her neck on a silver chain, and she perches them on her nose
and begins with the obituaries.
She does not actually expect to encounter anyone she knows there, but the world is small,
and she observes that, perhaps with cruel humor, the obituarists have run a photograph of Peter
Burrell-Gunnas he was in the early 1950s, and not at all as he was the last time the professor had
seen him, at a Literary Monthly Christmas party several years before, all gouty and beaky and
trembling, and reminding her of nothing so much as a caricature of an owl. In the photograph, he is
very beautiful.
He looks wild, and noble.
She had spent an evening once kissing him in a summer house: she remembers that very
clearly, although she cannot remember for the life of her in which garden the summer house had
belonged.
It was, she decides, Charles and Nadia Reids house in the country. Which meant that it was
before Nadia ran away with that Scottish artist, and Charles took the professor with him to Spain,
although she was certainly not a professor then. This was many years before people commonly went
to Spain for their holidays; it was an exotic and dangerous place in those days. He asked her to
marry him, too, and she is no longer certain why she said no, or even if she had entirely said no. He
was a pleasant-enough young man, and he took what was left of her virginity on a blanket on a
Spanish beach, on a warm spring night. She was twenty years old, and had thought herself so old
The doorbell chimes, and she puts down the paper, and makes her way to the front door, and
opens it.
Her first thought is how young the girl looks.
Her first thought is how old the woman looks. Professor Hastings? she says. Im Greta
Campion. Im doing the profile on you. For the Literary Chronicle.
The older woman stares at her for a moment, vulnerable and ancient, then she smiles. Its a
friendly smile, and Greta warms to her. Come in, dear, says the professor. Well be in the sitting
room.
I brought you this, says Greta. I baked it myself. She takes the cake tin from her bag,
hoping its contents hadnt disintegrated en route. Its a chocolate cake. I read on-line that you liked
them.
The old woman nods and blinks. I do, she says. How kind. This way.
Greta follows her into a comfortable room, is shown to her armchair, and told, firmly, not to
move. The professor bustles off and returns with a tray, on which are teacups and saucers, a teapot,
a plate of chocolate biscuits, and Gretas chocolate cake.
Tea is poured, and Greta exclaims over the professors brooch, and then she pulls out her
notebook and pen, and a copy of the professors last book, A Quest for Meanings in Childrens
Fiction, the copy bristling with Post-it notes and scraps of paper. They talk about the early chapters,
in which the hypothesis is set forth that there was originally no distinct branch of fiction that was
only intended for children, until the Victorian notions of the purity and sanctity of childhood
demanded that fiction for children be made
Well, pure, says the professor.
And sanctified? asks Greta, with a smile.
And sanctimonious, corrects the old woman. It is difficult to read The Water Babies
without wincing.
And then she talks about ways that artists used to draw childrenas adults, only smaller,
without considering the childs proportionsand how the Grimms stories were collected for adults
and, when the Grimms realized the books were being read in the nursery, were bowdlerized to make
them more appropriate. She talks of Perraults Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and of its original
coda in which the Princes cannibal ogre mother attempts to frame the Sleeping Beauty for having
eaten her own children, and all the while Greta nods and takes notes, and nervously tries to
contribute enough to the conversation that the professor will feel that it is a conversation or at least
an interview, not a lecture.
Where, asks Greta, do you feel your interest in childrens fiction came from?
The professor shakes her head. Where do any of our interests come from? Where does your
interest in childrens books come from?
Greta says, They always seemed the books that were most important to me. The ones that
mattered. When I was a kid, and when I grew. I was like Dahls Matilda. Were your family great
readers?
Not really. I say that, it was a long time ago that they died. Were killed. I should say.
All your family died at the same time? Was this in the war?
No, dear. We were evacuees, in the war. This was in a train crash, several years after. I was
not there.
Just like in Lewiss Narnia books, says Greta, and immediately feels like a fool, and an
insensitive fool. Im sorry. That was a terrible thing to say, wasnt it?
Was it, dear?
Greta can feel herself blushing, and she says, Its just I remember that sequence so vividly.
In The Last Battle. Where you learn there was a train crash on the way back to school, and everyone
was killed. Except for Susan, of course.
The professor says, More tea, dear? and Greta knows that she should leave the subject, but
she says, You know, that used to make me so angry.
What did, dear?
Susan. All the other kids go off to Paradise, and Susan cant go. Shes no longer a friend of
Narnia because shes too fond of lipsticks and nylons and invitations to parties. I even talked to my
English teacher about it, about the problem of Susan, when I was twelve.
Shell leave the subject now, talk about the role of childrens fiction in creating the belief
systems we adopt as adults, but the professor says, And tell me, dear, what did your teacher say?
She said that even though Susan had refused Paradise then, she still had time while she
lived to repent.
Repent what?
Not believing, I suppose. And the sin of Eve.
The professor cuts herself a slice of chocolate cake. She seems to be remembering. And then
she says, I doubt there was much opportunity for nylons and lipsticks after her family was killed.
There certainly wasnt for me. A little moneyless than one might imaginefrom her parents
estate, to lodge and feed her. No luxuries
There must have been something else wrong with Susan, says the young journalist,
something they didnt tell us. Otherwise she wouldnt have been damned like thatdenied the
Heaven of further up and further in. I mean, all the people she had ever cared for had gone on to
their reward, in a world of magic and waterfalls and joy. And she was left behind.
I dont know about the girl in the books, says the professor, but remaining behind would
also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers and her little sisters bodies. There
were a lot of people dead in that crash. I was taken to a nearby schoolit was the first day of term,
and they had taken the bodies there. My older brother looked okay. Like he was asleep. The other
two were a bit messier.
I suppose Susan would have seen their bodies, and thought, theyre on holidays now. The
perfect school holidays. Romping in meadows with talking animals, world without end.
She might have done. I only remember thinking what a great deal of damage a train can do,
when it hits another train, to the people who were traveling inside. I suppose youve never had to
identify a body, dear?
No.
Thats a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if Im wrong, what if its
not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for
liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to
identify Ed, wellhes enjoying himself a bit too much, isnt he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce
of enjoyment out of a mouse. Or a gram of enjoyment, I suppose it must be these days. I dont
know, really.
She trails off. And then, after some time, she says, Im sorry dear. I dont think I can do any
more of this today. Perhaps if your editor gives me a ring, we can set a time to finish our
conversation.
Greta nods and says of course, and knows in her heart, with a peculiar finality, that they will
talk no more.
That night, the professor climbs the stairs of her house, slowly, painstakingly, floor by floor.
She takes sheets and blankets from the airing cupboard, and makes up a bed in the spare bedroom,
at the back. It is empty but for a wartime austerity dressing table, with a mirror and drawers, an oak
bed, and a dusty applewood wardrobe, which contains only coathangers and a cardboard box. She
places a vase on the dressing table, containing purple rhododendron flowers, sticky and vulgar.
She takes from the box in the wardrobe a plastic shopping bag containing four old
photographic albums. Then she climbs into the bed that was hers as a child, and lies there between
the sheets, looking at the black-and-white photographs, and the sepia photographs, and the handful
of unconvincing color photographs. She looks at her brothers, and her sister, and her parents, and
she wonders how they could have been that young, how anybody could have been that young.
After a while she notices that there are several childrens books beside the bed, which
puzzles her slightly, because she does not believe she keeps books on the bedside table in that room.
Nor, she decides, does she usually have a bedside table there. On the top of the pile is an old
paperback bookit must be more than forty years old: the price on the cover is in shillings. It
shows a lion, and two girls twining a daisy chain into its mane.
The professors lips prickle with shock. And only then does she understand that she is
dreaming, for she does not keep those books in the house. Beneath the paperback is a hardback, in
its jacket, of a book that, in her dream, she has always wanted to read: Mary Poppins Brings in the
Dawn, which P. L. Travers had never written while alive.
She picks it up and opens it to the middle, and reads the story waiting for her: Jane and
Michael follow Mary Poppins on her day off, to Heaven, and they meet the boy Jesus, who is still
slightly scared of Mary Poppins because she was once his nanny, and the Holy Ghost, who
complains that he has not been able to get his sheet properly white since Mary Poppins left, and
God the Father, who says, Theres no making her do anything. Not her. Shes Mary Poppins.
But youre God, said Jane. You created everybody and everything. They have to do what
you say.
Not her, said God the Father once again, and he scratched his golden beard flecked with
white. I didnt create her. Shes Mary Poppins.
And the professor stirs in her sleep, and afterward dreams that she is reading her own
obituary. It has been a good life, she thinks, as she reads it, discovering her history laid out in black
and white.
Everyone is there. Even the people she had forgotten.
Greta sleeps beside her boyfriend, in a small flat in Camden, and she, too, is dreaming.
In the dream, the lion and the witch come down the hill together.
She is standing on the battlefield, holding her sisters hand. She looks up at the golden lion,
and the burning amber of his eyes. Hes not a tame lion, is he? she whispers to her sister, and
they shiver.
The witch looks at them all, then she turns to the lion, and says, coldly, I am satisfied with
the terms of our agreement. You take the girls: for myself, I shall have the boys.
She understands what must have happened, and she runs, but the beast is upon her before
she has covered a dozen paces.
The lion eats all of her except her head, in her dream. He leaves the head, and one of her
hands, just as a housecat leaves the parts of a mouse it has no desire for, for later, or as a gift. She
wishes that he had eaten her head, then she would not have had to look. Dead eyelids cannot be
closed, and she stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her brothers have become. The great beast
eats her little sister more slowly, and, it seems to her, with more relish and pleasure than it had
eaten her; but then, her little sister had always been its favorite.
Being dead, the eyes in the head on the grass cannot look away. Being dead, they miss
nothing. And then does the lion amble over to the head on the grass and devour it in its huge mouth,
crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.
Her heart is pounding. She tries to wake her boyfriend, but he snores and grunts and will not
be roused.
Its true, Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness. She grew up. She carried on. She didnt
die.
She imagines the professor, waking in the night and listening to the noises coming from the
old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be
mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant,
dangerous music of a hunting horn.
She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the
professors demise. Death comes in the night, she thinks, before she returns to sleep. Like a lion.
The white witch rides naked on the lions golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh,
scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is
perfectly clean.
POETRY: What Must Be Said by Gnter Grass

About the Author:
Gnter Wilhelm Grass (16 October 1927 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet,
playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdask, Poland). As a teenager, he served as
a drafted soldier from late 1944 in the Waffen-SS, and was taken prisoner of war by U.S. forces at
the end of the war in May 1945. He was released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and
sculptor, Grass began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his
childhood.
Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic
realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being Cat and Mouse and Dog
Years. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was
an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Tin Drum was adapted
as a film of the same name, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best
Foreign Language Film. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature,
praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".
WHAT MUST BE SAID

(Translated by Breon Mitchell)
Gnter Grass
Why have I kept silent, held back so long,

on something openly practised in
war games, at the end of which those of us

who survive will at best be footnotes?
It's the alleged right to a first strike

that could destroy an Iranian people
subjugated by a loudmouth
and gathered in organized rallies,
because an atom bomb may be being
developed within his arc of power.
Yet why do I hesitate to name

that other land in which
for years although kept secret
a growing nuclear power has existed
beyond supervision or verification,
subject to no inspection of any kind?
This general silence on the facts,

before which my own silence has bowed,
seems to me a troubling, enforced lie,
leading to a likely punishment
the moment it's broken:
the verdict "Anti-semitism" falls easily.
But now that my own country,

brought in time after time
for questioning about its own crimes,
profound and beyond compare,
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel,
(in what is purely a business transaction,
though glibly declared an act of reparation)
whose speciality consists in its ability
to direct nuclear warheads toward
an area in which not a single atom bomb
has yet been proved to exist, its feared
existence proof enough, I'll say what must be said.
But why have I kept silent till now?

Because I thought my own origins,
tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
meant I could not expect Israel, a land
to which I am, and always will be, attached,
to accept this open declaration of the truth.
Why only now, grown old,

and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel's atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because what must be said
may be too late tomorrow;

and because burdened enough as Germans
we may be providing material for a crime
that is foreseeable, so that our complicity
will not be expunged by any
of the usual excuses.
And granted: I've broken my silence
because I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy;
and I hope too that many may be freed
from their silence, may demand
that those responsible for the open danger
we face renounce the use of force,
may insist that the governments of
both Iran and Israel allow an international authority
free and open inspection of
the nuclear potential and capability of both.
No other course offers help

to Israelis and Palestinians alike,
to all those living side by side in enmity
in this region occupied by illusions,
and ultimately, to all of us.
NOVEL: The Life of Pi (an excerpt) Yann Martel
Side note!
The Young Adult (YA) Literature
Young adult fiction or young adult literature (YA) is fiction published
for readers in their youth. The age range for young adult fiction is
subjectiveSome sources claim it ranges from ages 12-18, while authors and
readers of "young teen novels" often define it as written for those aged 15 to
the early 20s. The terms young adult novel, juvenile novel, teenage
fiction, young adult book, etc., refer to the works in this category.
About the Author:
Yann Martel (born 25 June 1963) is a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for
the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, a #1 international bestseller published in more than
50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the
Bestseller Lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other bestseller
lists. It was adapted to the screen and directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars (the most for the
event) including Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil
and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of
letters to the prime minister of Canada, 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He has won a number of
literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2002 Asian/Pacific
American Award for Literature.
He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.
Although his first language is French, Yann Martel writes in English: "English is the language in
which I best express the subtlety of life. But I must say that French is the language closest to my
heart. And for this same reason, English gives me a sufficient distance to write.
THE LIFE OF PI
(an excerpt)
Yann Martel
I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in
front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me. Had I considered my prospects in the light
of reason, I surely would have given up and let go of the oar, hoping that I might drown before
being eaten. But I dont recall that I had a single thought during those first minutes of relative
safety. I didnt even notice daybreak. I held on to the oar, I just held on, God only knows why.
The elements allowed me to go on living. The lifeboat did not sink. Richard Parker kept out
of sight. The sharks prowled but did not lunge. The waves splashed me but did not pull me off.
I watched the ship as it disappeared with much burbling and belching. Lights flickered and
went out. I looked about for my family, for survivors, for another lifeboat, for anything that might
bring me hope. There was nothing. Only rain, marauding waves of black ocean and the flotsam of
tragedy.
The darkness melted away from the sky. The rain stopped.
I could not stay in the position I was in forever. I was cold. My neck was sore from holding
up my head and from all the craning I had been doing. My back hurt from leaning against the
lifebuoy. And I needed to be higher up if I were to see other lifeboats.
In the morning I could not move. I was pinned by weakness to the tarpaulin. Even thinking
was exhausting. I applied myself to thinking straight. At length, as slowly as a caravan of camels
crossing a desert, some thoughts came together.
I thought of sustenance for the first time. I had not had a drop to drink or a bite to eat or a
minute of sleep in three days. Finding this obvious explanation for my weakness brought me a little
strength.
Richard Parker was still on board. In fact, he was directly beneath me. Incredible that such a
thing should need consent to be true, but it was only after much deliberation, upon assessing various
mental items and points of view, that I concluded that it was not a dream or a delusion or a
misplaced memory or a fancy or any other such falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a
weakened, highly agitated state. The truth of it would be confirmed as soon as I felt well enough to
investigate.
How I had failed to notice for two and a half days a 450-pound Bengal tiger in a lifeboat
twenty-six feet long was a conundrum I would have to try to crack later, when I had more energy.
The feat surely made Richard Parker the largest stowaway, proportionally speaking, in the history of
navigation. From tip of nose to tip of tail he took up over a third of the length of the ship he was on.
You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much
better. We see that in sports all the time, dont we? The tennis challenger starts strong but soon loses
confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the
challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly hes
playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points. So it was with me.
To cope with a hyena seemed remotely possible, but I was so obviously outmatched by Richard
Parker that it wasnt even worth worrying about. With a tiger aboard, my life was over. That being
settled, why not do something about my parched throat?
I believe it was this that saved my life that morning, that I was quite literally dying of thirst.
Now that the word had popped into my head I couldnt think of anything else, as if the word itself
were salty and the more I thought of it, the worse the effect. I have heard that the hunger for air
exceeds as a compelling sensation the thirst for water. Only for a few minutes, I say. After a few
minutes you die and the discomfort of asphyxiation goes away. Whereas thirst is a drawn-out affair.
Look: Christ on the Cross died of suffocation, but His only complaint was of thirst. If thirst can be
so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It was
enough to make me go raving mad. I have never known a worse physical hell than this putrid taste
and pasty feeling in the mouth, this unbearable pressure at the back of the throat, this sensation that
my blood was turning to a thick syrup that barely flowed. Truly, by comparison, a tiger was nothing.
And so I pushed aside all thoughts of Richard Parker and fearlessly went exploring for fresh
water.
The divining rod in my mind dipped sharply and a spring gushed water when I remembered
that I was on a genuine, regulation lifeboat and that such a lifeboat was surely outfitted with
supplies. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposition. What captain would fail in so
elementary a way to ensure the safety of his crew?
What ship chandler would not think of making a little extra money under the noble guise of
saving lives? It was settled. There was water aboard. All I had to do was find it.
Which meant I had to move. I made it to the middle of the boat, to the edge of the tarpaulin.
It was a hard crawl. I felt I was climbing the side of a volcano and I was about to look over the rim
into a boiling cauldron of orange lava. I lay flat. I carefully brought my head over. I did not look
over any more than I had to. I did not see Richard Parker. The hyena was plainly visible, though. It
was back behind what was left of the zebra. It was looking at me.
I was no longer afraid of it. It wasnt ten feet away, yet my heart didnt skip a beat. Richard
Parkers presence had at least that useful aspect. To be afraid of this ridiculous dog when there was
a tiger about was like being afraid of splinters when trees are falling down. I became very angry at
the animal. You ugly, foul creature, I muttered. The only reason I didnt stand up and beat it off
the lifeboat with a stick was lack of strength and stick, not lack of heart.
Did the hyena sense something of my mastery? Did it say to itself, Super alpha is watching
me I better not move? I dont know. At any rate, it didnt move. In fact, in the way it ducked its
head it seemed to want to hide from me. But it was no use hiding. It would get its just deserts soon
enough.
Richard Parker also explained the animals strange behavior. Now it was clear why the
hyena had confined itself to such an absurdly small space behind the zebra and why it had waited so
long before killing it. It was fear of the greater beast and fear of touching the greater beasts food.
The strained, temporary peace between Orange Juice and the hyena, and my reprieve, were no
doubt due to the same reason: in the face of such a superior predator, all of us were prey, and normal
ways of preying were affected. It seemed the presence of a tiger had saved me from a hyena
surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
But the great beast was not behaving like a great beast, to such an extent that the hyena had
taken liberties. Richard Parkers passivity, and for three long days, needed explaining. Only in two
ways could I account for it: sedation and seasickness. Father regularly sedated a number of the
animals to lessen their stress. Might he have sedated Richard Parker shortly before the ship sank?
Had the shock of the shipwreck the noises, the falling into the sea, the terrible struggle to swim to
the lifeboat increased the effect of the sedative? Had seasickness taken over after that? These
were the only plausible explanations I could come up with.
I lost interest in the question. Only water interested me.
I took stock of the lifeboat.
It was three and a half feet deep, eight feet wide and twenty-six feet long, exactly. I know
because it was printed on one of the side benches in black letters. It also said that the lifeboat was
designed to accommodate a maximum of thirty-two people. Wouldnt that have been merry, sharing
it with so many? Instead we were three and it was awfully crowded
It seems orange such a nice Hindu color is the color of survival because the whole
inside of the boat and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every
other significant object aboard was orange. Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange.
The words Tsimtsum and Panama were printed on each side of the bow in stark, black,
roman capitals.
I did not grasp all these details and many more right away. They came to my notice
with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future,
when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It
would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the
thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the
mother of invention, how very true.
But that first time I had a good look at the lifeboat I did not see the detail I wanted. The
surface of the stern and side benches was continuous and unbroken, as were the sides of the
buoyancy tanks. The floor lay flat against the hull; there could be no cache beneath it. It was certain:
there was no locker or box or any other sort of container anywhere. Only smooth, uninterrupted
orange surfaces.
My estimation of captains and ship chandlers wavered. My hopes for survival flickered. My
thirst remained.
And what if the supplies were at the bow, beneath the tarpaulin? I turned and crawled back. I
felt like a dried-out lizard. I pushed down on the tarpaulin. It was tautly stretched. If I unrolled it, I
would give myself access to what supplies might be stored below. But that meant creating an
opening onto Richard Parkers den.
There was no question. Thirst pushed me on.
I unrolled it a little. Immediately I was rewarded. The bow was like the stern; it had an end
bench. And upon it, just a few inches from the stem, a hasp glittered like a diamond. There was the
outline of a lid. My heart began to pound. I unrolled the tarpaulin further. I peeked under. The lid
was shaped like a rounded-out triangle, three feet wide and two feet deep. At that moment I
perceived an orange mass. I jerked my head back. But the orange wasnt moving and didnt look
right. I looked again. It wasnt a tiger. It was a life jacket. There were a number of life jackets at the
back of Richard Parkers den.
A shiver went through my body. Between the life jackets, partially, as if through some
leaves, I had my first, unambiguous, clear-headed glimpse of Richard Parker. It was his haunches I
could see, and part of his back. Tawny and striped and simply enormous. He was facing the stern,
lying flat on his stomach. He was still except for the breathing motion of his sides. I blinked in
disbelief at how close he was. He was right there, two feet beneath me. Stretching, I could have
pinched his bottom. And between us there was nothing but a thin tarpaulin, easily got round.
God preserve me! No supplication was ever more passionate yet more gently carried by
the breath. I lay absolutely motionless.
I had to have water. I brought my hand down and quietly undid the hasp. I pulled on the lid.
It opened onto a locker.
I looked down between my legs. I thought I would faint for joy. The open locker glistened
with shiny new things. Oh, the delight of the manufactured good, the man-made device, the created
thing! That moment of material revelation brought an intensity of pleasure a heady mix of hope,
surprise, disbelief, thrill, gratitude, all crushed into one unequalled in my life by any Christmas,
birthday, wedding, Diwali or other gift-giving occasion. I was positively giddy with happiness.
My eyes immediately fell upon what I was looking for. Whether in a bottle, a tin can or a
carton, water is unmistakably packaged. On this lifeboat, the wine of life was served in pale golden
cans that fit nicely in the hand. Drinking Water said the vintage label in black letters. HP Foods Ltd.
were the vintners. 500 ml were the contents. There were stacks of these cans, too many to count at a
glance.
With a shaking hand I reached down and picked one up. It was cool to the touch and heavy. I
shook it. The bubble of air inside made a dull glub glub glub sound. I was about to be delivered
from my hellish thirst. My pulse raced at the thought. I only had to open the can.
I paused. How would I do that?
I had a can surely I had a can opener? I looked in the locker. There was a great quantity of
things. I rummaged about. I was losing patience. Aching expectation had run its fruitful course. I
had to drink nowor I would die. I could not find the desired instrument. But there was no time for
useless distress. Action was needed. Could I pry it open with my fingernails? I tried. I couldnt. My
teeth? It wasnt worth trying. I looked over the gunnel. The tarpaulin hooks. Short, blunt, solid. I
kneeled on the bench and leaned over. Holding the can with both my hands, I sharply brought it up
against a hook. A good dint. I did it again. Another dint next to the first. By dint of dinting, I
managed the trick. A pearl of water appeared. I licked it off. I turned the can and banged the
opposite side of the top against the hook to make another hole. I worked like a fiend. I made a larger
hole. I sat back on the gunnel. I held the can up to my face. I opened my mouth. I tilted the can.
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described. To the gurgling beat
of my greedy throat, pure, delicious, beautiful, crystalline water flowed into my system. Liquid life,
it was. I drained that golden cup to the very last drop, sucking at the hole to catch any remaining
moisture. I went, Ahhhhhh! tossed the can overboard and got another one. I opened it the way I
had the first and its contents vanished just as quickly. That can sailed overboard too, and I opened
the next one. Which, shortly, also ended up in the ocean. Another can was dispatched. I drank four
cans, two liters of that most exquisite of nectars, before I stopped. You might think such a rapid
intake of water after prolonged thirst might upset my system. Nonsense! I never felt better in my
life. Why, feel my brow! My forehead was wet with fresh, clean, refreshing perspiration. Everything
in me, right down to the pores of my skin, was expressing joy.
A sense of well being quickly overcame me. My mouth became moist and soft. I forgot
about the back of my throat. My skin relaxed. My joints moved with greater ease. My heart began to
beat like a merry drum and blood started flowing through my veins like cars from a wedding party
honking their way through town. Strength and suppleness came back to my muscles. My head
became clearer. Truly, I was coming back to life from the dead. It was glorious, it was glorious. I tell
you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic. I basked in
bliss and plenitude for several minutes.
A certain emptiness made itself felt. I touched my belly. It was a hard and hollow cavity.
Food would be nice now. A masala dosai with a coconut chutney hmmmmm! Even better:
oothappam! HMMMMM! Oh! I brought my hands to my mouth IDLI! The mere thought of the
word provoked a shot of pain behind my jaws and a deluge of saliva in my mouth. My right hand
started twitching. It reached and nearly touched the delicious flattened balls of parboiled rice in my
imagination. It sank its fingers into their steaming hot flesh... It formed a ball soaked with sauceIt
brought it to my mouthI chewedOh, it was exquisitely painful!
I looked into the locker for food. I found cartons of Seven Oceans Standard Emergency
Ration, from faraway, exotic Bergen, Norway. The breakfast that was to make up for nine missed
meals, not to mention odd tiffins that Mother had brought along, came in a half-kilo block, dense,
solid and vacuum-packed in silver-colored plastic that was covered with instructions in twelve
languages. In English it said the ration consisted of eighteen fortified biscuits of baked wheat,
animal fat and glucose, and that no more than six should be eaten in a twenty-four-hour period. Pity
about the fat, but given the exceptional circumstances the vegetarian part of me would simply pinch
its nose and bear it.
At the top of the block were the words Tear here to open and a black arrow pointing to the
edge of the plastic. The edge gave way under my fingers. Nine wax-paper-wrapped rectangular bars
tumbled out. I unwrapped one. It naturally broke into two. Two nearly square biscuits, pale in color
and fragrant in smell. I bit into one. Lord, who would have thought? I never suspected. It was a
secret held from me: Norwegian cuisine was the best in the world! These biscuits were amazingly
good. They were savory and delicate to the palate, neither too sweet nor too salty. They broke up
under the teeth with a delightful crunching sound. Mixed with saliva, they made a granular paste
that was enchantment to the tongue and mouth. And when I swallowed, my stomach had only one
thing to say: Hallelujah!
The whole package disappeared in a few minutes, wrapping paper flying away in the wind. I
considered opening another carton, but I thought better. No harm in exercising a little restraint.
Actually, with half a kilo of emergency ration in my stomach, I felt quite heavy.
I decided I should find out what exactly was in the treasure chest before me. It was a large
locker, larger than its opening. The space extended right down to the hull and ran some little ways
into the side benches. I lowered my feet into the locker and sat on its edge, my back against the
stem. I counted the cartons of Seven Ocean. I had eaten one; there were thirty-one left. According to
the instructions, each 500-gram carton was supposed to last one survivor three days. That meant I
had food rations to last me 31 x 3 93 days! The instructions also suggested survivors restrict
themselves to half a liter of water every twenty-four hours. I counted the cans of water. There were
124. Each contained half a liter. So I had water rations to last me 124 days. Never had simple
arithmetic brought such a smile to my face.
What else did I have? I plunged my arm eagerly into the locker and brought up one
marvelous object after another. Each one, no matter what it was, soothed me. I was so sorely in need
of company and comfort that the attention brought to making each one of these mass-produced
goods felt like a special attention paid to me. I repeatedly mumbled, Thank you! Thank you! Thank
you!
It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who
scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even
wholeness.
I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity. It was not a question
of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat. We would
live or we would dietogether. He might be killed in an accident, or he could die shortly of
natural causes, but it would be foolish to count on such an eventuality. More likely the worst would
happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human
frailty. Only if I tamed him could I possibly trick him into dying first, if we had to come to that
sorry business.
But theres more to it. I will come clean. I will tell you a secret: a part of me was glad about
Richard Parker. A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if he died I would be
left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was
thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic
circumstances. He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful.
I am grateful. Its the plain truth: without Richard Parker, I wouldnt be alive today to tell you my
story.
I looked around at the horizon. Didnt I have here a perfect circus ring, inescapably round,
without a single corner for him to hide in? I looked down at the sea. Wasnt this an ideal source of
treats with which to condition him to obey? I noticed a whistle hanging from one of the life jackets.
Wouldnt this make a good whip with which to keep him in line? What was missing here to tame
Richard Parker? Time? It might be weeks before a ship sighted me. I had all the time in the world.
Resolve? Theres nothing like extreme need to give you resolve. Knowledge? Was I not a
zookeepers son? Reward? Was there any reward greater than life? Any punishment worse than
death? I looked at Richard Parker. My panic was gone. My fear was dominated. Survival was at
hand.
And so it came to be:
Plan Number Seven: Keep Him Alive.
POETRY: Casa by Rigoberto Gonzlez

About the Author:
Rigoberto Gonzlez was born in Bakersfield, California and raised in Michoacn, Mexico.
He is the author of several poetry books, including So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It
Breaks (1999), a National Poetry Series selection; Other Fugitives and Other
Strangers (2006); Black Blossoms (2011); and Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda
Literary Award. He has also written two bilingual childrens books, Soledad Sigh-Sighs (2003)
and Antonios Card (2005); the novel Crossing Vines (2003), winner of ForeWord Magazines
Fiction Book of the Year Award; and a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano
Mariposa (2006); and a book of stories Men without Bliss (2008).
CASA
Rigoberto Gonzlez
I am not your mother, I will not be moved

by the grief or gratitude of men
who weep like orphans at my door.
I am not a church. I do not answer
prayers but I never turn them down.
Come in and kneel or sit or stand,

the burden of your weight won't lessen
no matter the length of your admission.
Tell me anything you want, I have to listen

but don't expect me to respond
when you tell me you have lost your job

or that your wife has found another love
or that your children took their laughter
to another town. You feel alone and empty?
Color me surprised! I didn't notice they were gone.
Despite the row of faces pinned like medals

to my walls, I didn't earn them.
The scratches on the wood are not my scars.
If there's a smell of spices in the air
blame the trickery of kitchens
or your sad addiction to the yesterdays

that never keep no matter how much you believe
they will. I am not a time capsule.
I do not value pithy things like locks
of hair and milk teeth and ticket stubs
and promise ringsmere particles

of dust I'd blow out to the street if I could
sneeze. Take your high school jersey
and your woman's wedding dress away
from me. Sentimental hoarding bothers me.
So off with you, old couch that cries

in coins as it gets dragged out to the porch.
Farewell, cold bed that breaks its bones
in protest to eviction or foreclosure or
whatever launched this grim parade
of exits. I am not a pet. I do not feel

abandonment. Sometimes I don't even see you
come or go or stay behind. My windows
are your eyes not mine. If you should die
inside me I'll leave it up to you to tell
the neighbors. Shut the heaters off

I do not fear the cold. I'm not the one
who shrinks into the corner of the floor
because whatever made you think
this was a home with warmth isn't here
to sweet-talk anymore. Don't look at me

that way, I'm not to blame. I granted
nothing to the immigrant or exile
that I didn't give a bordercrosser or a native
born. I am not a prize or a wish come true.
I am not a fairytale castle. Though I

used to be, in some distant land inhabited
by dreamers now extinct. Who knows
what happened there? In any case, good
riddance, grotesque fantasy and mirth.
So long, wall-to-wall disguise in vulgar

suede and chintz. Take care, you fool,
and don't forget that I am just a house,
a structure without soul for those whose
patron saints are longing and despair.
WEBTOON: The God of High School (an excerpt) by Park

Yong-je
Side note!
What are Webtoons?
Webtoon (Hangul: ) is a term used to describe South
Korean webcomics or manhwa that are published online. The Korean web
portal Daum created a webtoon service in 2003, as did Naver in 2004.
[1] These services regularly release webtoons that are available for free.
According to David Welsh of Bloomberg, comics account for a quarter of all
book sales in South Korea, while more than 3 million Korean users paid to
access online manhwa and 10 million users read free webcomics..
About the Author:
Park Yong-je () is a Korean webtoon artist, and the author of The God of High
School. He graduated from Korean National University of Arts, Dept. of Animation.
THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL

(an excerpt)
Park Yong-je
om the Philippines and the World1 21st Century Literature

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UNIT 1 Introduction to Literature

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LITERARY PROGRESS:

WHY DO WE NEED TO STUDY LITERATURE?

Example: Poem by David McCord

Books fall open,

Most Common Figurative Languages

Examples: dead as a dodo

Examples: Chun is the star that shines in my darkest night.

3. Personification gives human qualities to non-human objects

Examples: Luck smiled at the happy couple.

4. Symbolism uses objects to represent another person, place or idea.

1. Denotation the direct and explicit meaning as defined in the dictionary.

Example: A dog is a four-legged animal coated by fur.

Example: When a man is called a dog, it could mean that he is rough.

- ideas are also better remembered through this technique.

1. Repetition of letters, words and sounds create a certain pattern in writing.

Example: Dirt and

2. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds at the start of words either sequentially or

a. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the beginning of a series of words.

Example: Anna acts annoyed at Antonia about Amys assignment.

b. Consonance the repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning of a series of words.

Example: Verni vivaciously vacates Voltaires Volkswagen.

IV. Manipulation of Events

2. Flashback an interruption of the progress of the story.

5. In medias res - Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually

6. Deconstruction - a theory used in the study of literature or philosophy

1. Literary allusion a reference to a famous story book character.

Example: It would take a Hercules to clean up this mess.

3. Historical allusion a reference to a famous person or event in local,

Example: That mean old curmudgeon Miss Minchin is Hitler incarnate.

4. Biblical allusion a reference to character, place or event in the Holy

2. Amusing Humor is not obvious and is very discreet

THE LITERARY GENRES

Two General Classes:

1. Action and plot 5. Theme

Narrative poetry is of three kinds:

Lyric poetry is of six types namely:

octave rhyming abbaabba and sestet rhyming cdecde or cdccdc.

1. Poetic plays, which in turn are of five types namely:

THE SPANISH COLONIAL TRADITION

Christian life in the Tagalog language) published in 1605.

21ST CENTURY PHILIPPINE WRITING

21st Century Literature

ANG ULOD SA MANSANAS

Ang ikaduha nga angkab kag indi ang una

Ang nagpukan sa tawo sa paghigugma

Ang daku nga ulod nga nagakabod sa sanga

Ang ulod sa mansanas natulon ni Adan

Nag-uriod ang ulod sa iya bagol

Pagtambok sang ulod nanginwala si Adan

Bugalon nga ulod nga sia nagdumdum

Sang malumos ang tawo sa katawhan

Kag paano kon bayhon sang babaye ang ginpili?

Linibo ang nagligad nga mga dinag-on

Sa pagbalik sang Anak sang Diwa nga Bugtong

Sa ulo ni Adan dayon magabuskag

akon, short sang bugtot.

Kon ikaw ang akon iloy, sin-o ang akon amay?

lang, Type AB ako, Type A si Jed. Nagapasimpalad lang ako. Siling ko

21st Century Literature

About the Author:

PAVIA CARABAO CARROZA FESTIVAL

fiesta is being participated by the eighteen

It was on May 3, 1973 that the