(Image courtesy of FTG) FEU Theater Guild (FTG)’s 93rd season began with a highly polished rendition of Guy de Maupassant’s short story La Mère Sauvage, transforming the tale into a truly Filipino meditation on the intimate horrors of occupation that haunt our society still. The mask of civility Writer-director Dudz Teraña has transplanted this violent,… Read More Moryon : Maupassant’s La Mère Sauvage made truly Filipino
Once upon a time, a wealthy Ilonggo traveled to Europe and put up a photography studio in Barcelona. Born to a Spanish friar and a Filipina businesswoman, Felix Laureano published “the first Filipino photobook” (dedicating it to Juan Luna, his friend) a year before our forefathers’ revolution against Mother Spain. What Anvil Publishing has done… Read More Recuerdos de Filipinas: Memories Before Our Break with Spain
A son of Manila, my late father owned an imposing hardcover brown volume which he treasured and encouraged his teenaged children to read. We used the busyness of youth as an excuse not to when really, we were intimidated by its thickness. The book has mysteriously vanished, to our belated sorrow. So it was with… Read More Manila, My Manila: Glories of the Past Resurrected
“In a way, we were all massacred. Only, some of us were fortunate to have lived through it.” Crimson as arterial blood, the cover of the nonfiction book Rampage : MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila by James M. Scott gives an idea of the extremely graphic violence depicted inside. It’s an unputdownable weighty… Read More Rampage: When Manila’s Streets Ran Red with Blood
“Even God can be felt in the heat of the sun or the bliss of the ocean. But what happens to your crypto when the circuits or blockchains are broken? What happens when the power goes out?” Sci-fi books are scarily prophetic. From the modern physics-defying vehicles and gadgets we take for granted, to the… Read More “God’s Ashes” is Sci-Fi with a Call to Action
Summit Books Editor and The Colonial Dept. podcaster Lio Mangubat has written a collection of thirteen essays which were originally broadcast in podcast form during the pandemic. Dalgona coffees and avocado toast lockdown projects are great, but perhaps don’t come close to what Mangubat has done: leave behind a tangible record of esoteric learning that… Read More Local yet Global : A Fun Book on Forgotten Tales from Philippine Colonial History
“The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.” Debatable to some, for sure. But I am inclined to agree with Samuel Johnson, and with Susan Sontag. Especially after having read The Three-Cornered Sun. The Philippine War of Independence is usually summed up as a racial conflict that the Filipino Katipuneros waged against Spanish… Read More Exploding Galaxies’ “The Three-Cornered Sun” by Linda Ty-Casper : A Contrapuntal Composition
