Santos has presented what may well be the essence of those years - the loneliness and hunger of a people who were almost all of them hurt and broken to the bone. But for an ideal, which Santos so eloquently dramatizes in this book, they would have lost their very souls. In this sense YOU LOVELY PEOPLE is a document and at once a portrait of the Filipino heart.

    He has big plans that could set him up financially for life. And although he spends his time trying to get a coworker to bed, he still pines for an old girlfriend from his troubled childhood.

    Edited by literary critic Isagani R. Cruz, this collection spans from 1925 to 1998. In this book readers will meet both famous and unfamiliar writers in both conventional and unexpected renditions of the genre. Although many of the stories are acknowledged masterpieces, the editor also chose stories on the basis of their ability to represent a particular author or decade. The stories of the 25 men and women writers represented here depict a vast gamut of human experience and emotions that, collectively, produce a stunning portrait of Philippine life and society. Dr. Cruz is a professor of literature at De Lasalle University, where he is also publisher of DLSU Press. He is himself a multi-awarded author and columnist, and the founding chair of the Manila Critics Circle. In a country where English has been the medium of instruction since the turn of the century, it is but fitting for the Philippines to share with the rest of the world its own vibrant treasury of short fiction. This richly satisfying collection represents the very best to emerge out of the Philippines in our century.

    So the kind and character of his works: very rare, exceptional, unique, maverick, exceedingly original fiction: rara avis that's a quantum leap away and departure... At least three or four in this collection already strike one as veritable classics." - GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES

    The first collection of fifteen short stories by the popular tri-media personality.

    Set in future Manila, a gleaming metropolis where one's paranoia may not be exactly unfounded and whose lashing sings tribute to Philip K. Dick. "Stations" takes on the ethical trappings of high technology adoption. "August Moon" relies on a succession of flashbacks to uncover, as well as obscure, the eventual doom of a woman who deems herself a "good wife," while "Eyes as Wide as the Sky" depicts a post-war world—scorched yet not wholly devoid of hope. These stories insist on the unreal becoming the real, the rational melding with the irrational, familiarity breeding strangeness.

    The Foot Soldier brings you to the hell of jungle combat. Close your eyes and this novella takes you there. It conveys the terror and brutality of jungle warfare and their effect on the American riflemen--those who bore the greatest burden. It's every bit as compelling as The Things They Carried.

    Told in the voice of its protagonist, Noel Ilustre Bulaong, the narrative travels through familiar social and literary territory: the coconut groves of Bulaong's childhood, Manila's hovels, the Diliman Commune, "UG" safehouse, martial law prisons, and the homes and offices of the petty-bourgeoisie. It is a story of false horizons, of betrayal, compromise, and guilt, and not incidentally of the contemporary middle-class Filipino's migration from the village to the metropolis to the outside world.

    DE VEYRAhas published two books of poetry: Subterranean Thought Parade and Shadowboxing in Headphones. He has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Free Press Literary Awards, and the very first National Commission for Culture and the Arts' Writers' Prize for Poetry. He also fronts the spoken word-jazz-rock band Radioactive Sago Project and currently works as a host and writer for the News and Public Affairs programs of TV5. This is his third collection of poems.

    Features poems, essays, plays, and works of fiction written in both Filipino and English.

    But is her allegiance to the principles of Mao or to Jed, the comrade she’s in love with? Can she really be a part of the movement or is she just a “useful fool,” a spoiled brat playing at revolution? Far from the Philippines, in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, Sol confesses her youthful indiscretions, unable to get past the fatal act of communist fervor that locked her memory in an endless loop. Rich with wordplay and unforgettable imagery, Gun Dealers’ Daughter combines the momentum of an amnesiac thriller with the intellectual delights of a Borgesian puzzle. In her American debut, award-winning author Gina Apostol delivers a riveting novel that illuminates the conflicted and little-known history of the Philippines, a country deeply entwined with our own.

    Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (1861-1896) was a Filipino polymath, nationalist and the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. He attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree sobresaliente. Rizal enrolled in Medicine and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas and then travelled alone to Madrid, Spain, where he continued his studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid, earning the degree of Licentiate in Medicine. He was a prolific poet, essayist, diarist, correspondent, and novelist whose most famous works were his two novels, Noli me Tangere (1887) and El Filibusterismo (1891). As a political figure, Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led by Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo. He is considered the Philippines' national hero and the anniversary of Rizal's death is commemorated as a Philippine holiday called Rizal Day.

    As Hagedorn points out in her insightful introduction, Manila is a city burdened with a violent and painful past, with a long heritage of foreign occupation. The specters of WWII (during which the city suffered from U.S. saturation bombing), and the oppressive 20-year reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos live on in recent memory. The Filipino take on noir includes a liberal dose of the gothic and supernatural, with disappearance and loss being constants."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)"This Southeast sampler is unique, possessing an overall gritty tone. Each slice of supernatural splendor pulls the reader in with their nontraditional heroes…Ultimately, readers get a strong taste of the real Manila and all her dark secrets, wanting more of while being slightly afraid of what she might do next. Manila is the perfect place for noir scenes to occur, and it is easy to get sucked into its deadly nightshade of doom."--Criminal Class PressBrand-new stories by: Lourd De Veyra, Gina Apostol, Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, F.H. Batacan, Jose Dalisay Jr., Eric Gamalinda, Jessica Hagedorn, Angelo Lacuesta, R. Zamora Linmark, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, Sabina Murray, Jonas Vitman, Marianne Villanueva, and Lysley Tenorio.Manila provides the ideal, torrid setting for an Akashic Noir series volume. It's where the rich rub shoulders with the poor, where five-star hotels coexist with informal settlements, where religious zeal coexists with superstition, and where politics is often synonymous with celebrity and corruption.From the Introduction by Jessica Hagedorn:Manila is not for the faint of heart. Built on water and reclaimed land, it’s an intense, congested, teeming megalopolis, the vital core of an urban network of sixteen cities and one municipality collectively known as Metro Manila. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: tropical. Which means hot, humid, prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions.I think of Manila as the ultimate femme fatale. Complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. She’s been invaded, plundered, raped, and pillaged, colonized for four hundred years by Spain and fifty years by the US, bombed and pretty much decimated by Japanese and American forces during an epic, month-long battle in 1945.Yet somehow, and with no thanks to the corrupt politicians, the crime syndicates, and the indifferent rich who rule the roost, Manila bounces back. The people’s ability to endure, adapt, and forgive never ceases to amaze, whether it’s about rebuilding from the latest round of catastrophic flooding, or rebuilding from the ashes of a horrific world war, or the ashes of the brutal, twenty-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos . . .Many years have passed since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. People are free to write and say what they want, yet nothing is different. The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich, and overseas workers toil in faraway places like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, and Finland. Glaring inequities are a source of dark humor to many Filipinos, but really—just another day in the life . . .Writers from the Americas and Europe are known for a certain style of noir fiction, but the rest of the world approaches the crime story from a culturally unique perspective. In Manila Noir we find that the genre is flexible enough to incorporate flamboyant emotion and the supernatural, along with the usual elements noir fans have come to expect: moody atmospherics, terse dialogue, sudden violence, mordant humor, a fatalist vision.

    Because of this we have no memory of ourselves: we remember only the last deluge, the last seismic upheaval. Two friends are hired by Marcos to rewrite Philippine history. Their mission: to make it appear that Marcos was destined to rule the country in perpetuity. Working from an office called Agency for the Scientific Investigation of the Absurd, they embark on a journey that will take them across a surreal panorama of Philippine politics and history, and in the process question all their morals and beliefs. This landscape includes mythological sultans, mercenaries, the Beatles, messianic Amerasian rock stars, faith healers, spies, torturers, sycophants, social climbers, sugar barons, millenarian vigilantes, generals and communists--the dizzying farrago of lovers and sinners who populate the country's incredible story. By the end of their project--and this breathtaking novel--the reader emerges from a world that is at once familiar and unbelievable. It's what real life might look like if both heaven and hell were crammed into it, and all its creatures were let loose.

    As late as 1953, she was a starry-eyed, penniless, provincial lass in search of a good fortune in Manila. Then came Ferdinand E. Marcos, literally a knight in shining armor who rescued her from poverty and misery. "I will make you the First Lady of the land," he promised her.Complete, detailed replete with facts and documents which have been painstakingly hidden from the public by the administration's image-makers, her life story as told in generations. It explains Imelda's much vaunted charisma which in President Marcos' own words garnered one million votes in the 1965 elections.She is a person who is difficult to be indifferent to. This book tells us why.