Florante at Laura


Francisco Balagtas - 1838
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Rizal Without the Overcoat: Expanded Edition


Ambeth R. Ocampo - 1990
    Ocampo’s newspaper column “Looking Back” that began in the Philippine Daily Globe and later moved to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He presents a readable and painless introduction to Jose Rizal and offers fascinating insights, lively anecdotes, academic intrigue, and little-known facts about the hero as human. Investigating Rizal’s own writings - his diaries, letters, and other papers – Ocampo attempts to strip the countless myths and rumors that surround the national hero.

Culture and History


Nick Joaquín - 1988
    Taguiwalo.

Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage (Anthropology of the Filipino People, #1)


F. Landa Jocano - 1998
    Many new archaeological materials have been recovered since its publication in 1975, requiring changes in the earlier descriptions and interpretations of Philippine prehistoric society and culture." -- www.kabayancentral.com

A History of the Philippines


Renato Constantino - 1976
    imperialism. Constantino provides a penetrating analysis of the productive relations and class structure in the Philippines, and how these have shaped―and been shaped by―the role of the Filipino people in the making of their own history. Additionally, he challenges the dominant views of Spanish and U.S. historians by exposing the myths and prejudices propagated in their work, and, in doing so, makes a major breakthrough toward intellectual decolonization. This book is an indispensible key to the history of conquest and resistance in the Philippine.

The First Filipino


León María Guerrero - 1961
    It has been awarded the First Prize in the Rizal Biography Contest under the auspices of the Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission in 1961.

History of the Filipino People


Teodoro A. Agoncillo - 1960
    Comprehensive overview of Philippine History including Pre-Spanish life and culture, Spanish rule, the Filipino -American War, American rule, and the campaign for Independence, among other subjects.

Ermita: A Filipino Novel


F. Sionil José - 1988
    Sionil Jose's novella, "Obsession." Fabulous protitute, a woman wronged, she is now exposed in her exquisite nudity, surrounded by people like her, Eduardo Dantes, publisher, Senator Andres Bravo, General Bombilla, socialite Conchita Rojo, and Rolando Cruz, Ph.D. in history turned public relations specialist.Ermita is the story of an enclave of privilege and affluence, and the putrefaction of a society. Here is Manila-before 1941, during the tumultuous years of the Japanese Occupation, and the corrupt Marcos regime.

America Is in the Heart: A Personal History


Carlos Bulosan - 1946
    First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well known Filipino poet describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West. Bulosan does not spare the reader any of the horrors tha accompanied the migrant's life; but his quiet, stoic voice is the most convincing witness to the terrible events he witnessed.

Stupid Is Forever


Miriam Defensor Santiago - 2014
    People are puzzled how she can spontaneously make them laugh in the midst of national policy crises, and of real danger to her life as a corruption fighter.This book is a collection of jokes, one-liners, pick-up lines, conebacks and speeches delivered and/or curated by the beloved Senator. Also, inside are illustrations by Cj de Silva-Ong, Manix Abrera, Elbert Or, Rob Cham and more of the Philippines' best young illustrators.

Insurrecto


Gina Apostol - 2018
    Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created “a howling wilderness” of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara’s film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator—one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher.Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women—artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters—finding their way to their own truths and histories. Using interlocking voices and a kaleidoscopic structure, the novel is startlingly innovative, meditative, and playful. Insurrecto masterfully questions and twists narrative in the manner of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch, and Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.

Alternative Alamat: Stories Inspired by Philippine Mythology


Paolo ChikiamcoEliza Victoria - 2011
    . . Yet too few of these tales are known and read today. Alternative Alamat gathers stories, by contemporary authors of Philippine fantasy, which make innovative use of elements of Philippine mythology. None of these stories are straight re-tellings of the old tales: they build on those stories, or question underlying assumptions; use ancient names as catalysts, or play within the spaces where the myths are silent. What you will find in common in these eleven stories is a love for the myths, epics, and legends which reflect us, contain us, call to us-and it is our hope that, in reading our stories, you may catch a glimpse of, and develop a hunger for, those venerable tales.Alternative Alamat also features a cover and interior illustrations by Mervin Malonzo, a short list of notable Philippine deities, tips for online and offline research, and in-depth interviews with two people who have devoted much of their careers to the study of Philippine folklore and anthropology, Professors Herminia Meñez Coben ("Explorations in Philippine Folklore" and "Verbal Arts in Philippine Indigenous Communities: Poetics, Society, and History") and Fernando N. Zialcita ("The Soul Book" and "Authentic but Not Exotic").

The Philippines Is Not a Small Country


Gideon Lasco - 2020
    Drawing from anthropology, history, contemporary events, popular culture, and the author’s field experiences and travels, the essays draw connections between nature and culture, self and society, the local and the global, as well as the past and the present in order to arrive at a deeper, fuller, critical, yet hopeful view of a country that is larger than many imagine it to be.Published in 2020.

Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Phiippine Culture and Society


William Henry Scott - 1994
    It does not attempt to reconstruct that society by consideration of present Philippine societies, or of features believed to be common to all Austronesian peoples. Nor does it seek similarities with neighboring cultures in Southeast Asia, though the raw data presented should be of use to scholars who might wish to do so. Rather, it seeks to answer the question: What did the Spaniards actually say about the Filipino people when they first met them? It is hoped that the answer to that question will permit Filipino readers today to pay a vicarious visit to the land of their ancestors four centuries ago.Part 1 describes Visayan culture in eight chapters on physical appearance, food and farming, trades and commerce, religion, literature and entertainment, natural science, social organization, and warfare. Part 2 surveys the rest of the archipelago from south to north.

Dekada '70 (Ang Orihinal at Kumpletong Edisyon)


Lualhati Bautista - 1984
    More than the individual story of a mother watching her sons grow and plunge into real life, Dekada '70 is an indictment of martial law, and here, Lualhati minces no worlds." - Female Forum, November 21, 1983