Jose Garcia Villa

Jose Garcia Villa, a Filipino poet, critic, short story writer and painter, is an important person to
recognize during Filipino American History Month.Villa was born in 1907 in the Philippine
Islands. His early path did not involve poetry. Instead he began a pre-medical course of study at
the University of the Philippines, eventually switching to pre-law. After some time, Villa
recognized that his true passion was in the creative arts, and his career as a writer began. In 1929,
he published a collection of erotic poems called Man Songs. This collection was met with some
controversy. But that same year, he was selected for the Best Story of the Year from
the Philippine Free Press magazine for his story called Mir-l-Nisa. Villa moved from the
university in the Philippines to attend the University of New Mexico where he went on to
found Clay, a “mimeograph literary magazine.” After finishing his BA there, he moved to
Columbia University for his post-graduate education. Aside from publishing various collections
of poetry, Villa also added to the world of poetic style, introducing a new rhyme scheme called
“reversed consonance.” As Villa explained, “The last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or
the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme
for near would be run; or rain, green, reign.” Villa also wrote something he called “comma
poems,” where a comma is included after each word in the poem. As he explained in the preface
to his Volume Two, “The commas are an integral and essential part of the medium: regulating
the poem’s verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal value,
and the line movement to become more measured. “Villa has won numerous awards, including
the 1973 National Artist of the Philippines for literature. His work in both poetry and challenging
traditional poetic style continues to have an impact in modern poetry, both for members of the
poetry community and other Asian American writer
 Rolando S. Tinio
He was a playwright, actor, poet, translator, teacher, and critic. He grew up in
Tondo and graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a degree in
Philosophy, magna cum laude at the age of 18.
Tinio published four volumes of poems between 1972 and 1993. His language
morphed from “Taglish,” a mixture of Tagalog and English, to pure Filipino and
back to English. His book Kristal na Uniberso won the National Book Award.
Among his many works for the theater are Larawan, the musical, Ang Mestisa,
Ako, Ang Kiri, Ana Maria and the komedya Orosman at Zafira. He was known for
translating Western classics, which includes the works of Shakespeare, Ibsen,
Sophocles, Chekhov and Puccini into Filipino. He led theater groups Ateneo
Experimental Theater and Teatro Pilipino to new heights with his artistic vision
and intellectual approach. He also worked on the stage adaptation of National
Artist Nick Joaquin’s play Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. He was conferred
National Artist status in 1997.
 Nina Estrada Puyat
She was born in Tarlac, Philippines. Her collection of fifty sonnets, Heart of Clay
(1959), was published by Doubleday as This Love Within. Her political works
include a three-act play, The Cripple, which was censored by the Marcos regime.
The poem "Elegy" was written on the night of the assassination of Benigno
Aquino. This poem is said to be the most significant piece of poetry to come out of
the People Power ear in the Philippines. Nina was the 1979 Poet Laureate of the
Philippine Poets Association; she is the first recipient of a special diploma of
Master in Literature from the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines.
 Virginia R. Moreno

She was born in the Tondo neighborhood of Manila and studied at the University

of the Philippines, where she was editor of the campus newspaper, and at the
Kansas Institute of International Education. Her first collection of poems Batik
Maker and Other Poems was published in 1972; it received the Palanca Memorial
Awards for Literature. Her play Straw Patriot (1956) was translated into
Filipino by Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez in 1967 as Bayaning huwad. In 1969, she
won the National Historical Playwriting Contest for her play The Onyx Wolf, also
known as La Loba Negra and Itim Asu. Also, in 1969, she studied at the British
Film Institute in London under a British Council grant. In 1973, she was co-
director of the documentary The Imaginative Community: 7 Poets in Iowa. Moreno
also took part in the International Writing Program at the University of lowa. In
1976, she became director of the University of the Philippines Film Center.
 Alberto Florentino

He was born on July 28, 1931. Florentino had his first familiarity probably during
the time when his father, teacher, was an active on school activities such as
directing plays, opted to get assistance from his son to do copies of the plays that
he is directing. It is said that Florentino got his techniques in playwriting with the
experiences he got due to the fact that while typing multiple copies of his father’s
play, he needed to read the manuscript over and over again
 Bienvenido Santos

A novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist, Santos's early writings were in the
English language he learned at school, Tondo (the language of his mother's songs
at home), and Tagalog (the native language of the Philippines). In 1932, he earned
a B.A. from the University of the Philippines. Under the Philippine Pensionado
program (a continuation of the U.S. one begun in 1903), Santos came to the
University of Illinois for a master's degree in English. Later he studied at Harvard,
Columbia, and, as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, at the University of Iowa. His
first two novels, Villa Magdalena and The Volcano, were published in the
Philippines in 1965. Santos became an American citizen in 1976. One year later,
the Marcos regime banned his novel about government corruption, The Praying
Man, and he and his wife remained in San Francisco. Scent of Apples (1980), his
only book to be published in the United States, won the American Book Award
from the Before Columbus Foundation. He wrote more than a dozen books about
exiles in both of his adopted countries, including the short story collections
including You Lovely People (1955) and Brother, My Brother (1960).

Manuel E. Arguilla

He was an Ilocano who wrote in English. He was best known for his short story
"How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife." which received first price in the
Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940. Most of his stories depict life in Barrio
Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union, where he was born in 1911. He earned his Bachelor
of Arts in Education in 1933 at the University of the Philippines. He became a
member and later the president of the UP Writers' Club and editor of the Literary
Apprentice. He married Lydia Villanueva, another talented writer, and they lived
in Ermita, Manila.
Arguilla taught creative writing at the University of Manila and worked in the
Bureau of Public Welfare as managing editor of the Welfare Advocate until 1943;
afterwards, he was elected to the Board of Censors. He secretly established a
guerilla intelligence unit against the Japanese during World War II. In August
1944, Manuel Arguilla was captured and executed by the Japanese.

Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero

He is a teacher and theater artist whose 35 years of devoted professorship has
produced the most sterling luminaries in Philippine performing arts today: Behn
Cervantes, Celia Diaz-Laurel, Joy Virata, Joonee Gamboa, etc. In 1947, he was
appointed as UP Dramatic Club director and served for 16 years. As founder and
artistic director of the UP Mobile Theater, he pioneered the concept of theater
campus tour and delivered no less than 2,500 performances in a span of 19
committed years of service. By bringing theatre to countryside, Guerrero made it
possible for students and audiences in general to experience the basic grammar of
staging and acting in familiar and friendly ways through his plays that humorously
reflect the behavior of the Filipino.

Renato Constantino

He was a Filipino historian known for being part of the leftist tradition of

Philippine historiography. Apart from being a historian, Constantino was also
engaged in foreign service, working for the Philippine Mission to the United
Nations and the Department of Foreign Affairs. Constantino attended
the University of the Philippines where he became the youngest editor of the
University's student publication, The Philippine Collegian. He wrote editorial
columns criticizing President Manuel Quezon, which earned the attention of the
President by responding to the article in one of his speeches. When the Second
World War erupted, Constantino fought in Bataan and was a member of an
intelligence team spying on the Japanese. He also worked as a journalist during the
war.
At the conclusion of the war, Constantino joined the Philippine Mission to
the United Nations from 1946 to 1949 as its Executive Secretary. He worked as a
counselor for the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1949 to 1951. These
exposures to foreign service became the foundations of a book he wrote about the
United Nations.