21st Century Literature

Feature Writing

Submitted by:
Loredo, Mikaela F.
Grade 12 – St. Teresa of Calcutta (STEM)
Francisco Sionil José (December 3, 1924 – January 6, 2022) was a Filipino novelist who was
widely read in the English Language. José, who was deeply committed to social justice,
frequently expressed his frustration with his country’s failure to overcome centuries of Spanish
colonization, followed by increasing dominance by the United States. José’s novels and short
stories, in rich themes and setting borrowed from him own peasant upbringing, amounted to a
never-ending morality tale about the Philippines’ poverty and class differences, a society ruled
by fiefs, oligarchies, political dynasties, social roots of class battles and colonialism in Filipino
society, and he was named as a National Artist of the Philippines for Literature in 2001. His
English-language writings have been translated into 28 different languages, including Korean,
Indonesian, Czech, Russian, Latvian, Ukranian, and Dutch. He was frequently regarded as the
leading Filipino contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
José was influenced greatly by his hardworking mother, who went out of her way to procure for
him the books he wanted to read while also ensuring that her family weren’t left hungry amidst
poverty and landlessness. José began writing in grade school, around the same time he began
reading. One of José’s teachers opened the school library to her students in the fifth grade,
which was how he was able to read novels by José Rizal, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Faulkner,
and Steinbeck. The young José cried as he read about Basilio and Crispin in Rizal’s Noli Me
Tangere (Touch Me Not), for injustice was not foreign to him. José was five years old when his
grandfather, a soldier during the Philippine revolution, had tearfully shown him the land their
family had formerly tilled but had been taken away by affluent mestizo landlords who knew how
to manipulate the structure opposing immigrants like his grandfather.
In an interview with The New York Times, he said “Of what use is the artist, in a situation like
this? I look back over our history and I see that the pen is not that powerful. Everything I have
done has been useless. It is the sword that is powerful.”
F. Sionil José’s largest concern as a novelist, according to one of his columns, was “my
apparent incompetence of affecting citizens, to witness at least some tangible and constructive
effect of my beseeching, my editorializing”.
After World War II, José enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas, but dropped out to pursue
writing and journalism in Manila. In the years afterwards, he has edited numerous literary and
journalistic magazines, launched a publishing firm, and established the Philippine section of
PEN, an international writers’ organization. José got various honors for his efforts. His most
popular novel, The Pretenders, tells the narrative of one man’s separation from his
impoverished upbringing and the opulence of his spouse’s wealthy family.
The life of José Rizal and words had a significant impact on José’s oeuvre. The five-volume
Rosales Saga, specifically, utilizes and combines Rizal motifs and personalities. Throughout his
entire career, José’s oeuvre had advocated for social justice and change in-order to improve the
lives of ordinary Filipino families. He is considered among the most highly praised Filipino
authors in the world, although he is underappreciated in his own country due to his original
Filipino–English and anti-elite beliefs.
Sionil José also operated Solidaridad Bookshop on Padre Faura Street in Manila’s Ermita
neighborhood. The bookshop speacializes in hard-to-find titles and Filipianiana literature. It is
acknowledged to be a favored hangout for many local artists or novelists.
On September 12, 2011, he wrote “Why we are shallow” in his regular column, Hindsight, in The
Phillipine STAR, criticizing the deterioration of Filipino philosophical and cultural norms on an
array of contemporary features, involving the media, the educational system—particularly the
absence of emphasis on traditional literature and the instruction of Greek and Latin—and the
plethora and rapidity of data on the global web.
José’s writings have received five Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature: The God
Stealer in 1959, Waywaya in 1979, Arbol De Fuego (Firetree) in 1980, Mass in 1981, and A
Scenario for Philippine Resistance in 1979.

F. Sionil José’s Literary Works

Rosales Saga novels
A five-novel series spanning three centuries of Philippine history that has been translated into
22 languages.
1. Po-on (1984)
2. The Pretenders (1962)
3. My Brother, My Executioner (1973)
4. Mass (1974)
5. Tree (1978)
Original novels that contain the Rosales Saga:
1. Source (Po-on) (1993)
2. Don Vicente (1980)
3. The Samsons (The Pretenders and Mass in one book)
Other novels:
1. Three Filipino Women (1992)
2. Two Filipino Women (1981)
Novellas:
1. The God Stealer and Other Stories (2001)
2. Puppy Love and Thirteen Short Stories (1998)
3. Olvidon and Other Stories (1988)
4. Platinum: Ten Filipino Stories (1983)
5. Waywaya: Eleven Filipino Short Stories (1980)
6. Asian PEN Anthology (1966)
7. Short Story Inteenational (SSI): Tales by the World’s Great Contemporary Writers (1989)
Children’s books
1. The Molave and The Orchid (2004)
Verses:
1. Questions (1988)
Essays and Non-Fiction:
1. In Search of the Word (1998)
2. We Filipinos: Our Moral Malaise, Our Heroic Heritage (1999)
3. Soba, Senbei and Shibuya: A Memoir of Post-War Japan (2000)
4. Heroes in the Attic, Termites in the Sala: Why We are Poor (2005)
5. This I Believe: Gleanings from a Life in Literature (2006)
6. Literature and Liberation (1988)
In translation:
1. Zajatec bludného kruhu (The Pretenders, Czech language, 1981)
2. Po-on (Tagalog Language, 1998)
3. Anochecer (Littera) (Spanish Language, 2003)
In anthologies:
1. Tong (short story, 1993)
In film documentaries:
1. Francisco Sionil José – A Filipino Odyssey (1996)

José cherished having the company of young at heart, aspiring authors, with whom he
occasionally held informal seminars in his living room. “For art to be meaningful,” he advised, “it
must be more than just for fun. It must be relevant to certain instances, to people, and to
delivering justice.”
He noted, “Pure creativity, pure knowledge, are helpful, however they ought to have a
significance to humankind.”