12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do to Help Our Country


Alexander L. Lacson - 2005
    At that time, new York was already the finance capital of the world. But during that period, around 650,000 serious crimes and murders were committed yearly in that city. No one could solve the problem.Then 2 police consultants experimented on making improvement in new York City's subway train system, used by almost 7% of New Yorkers, but where conditions then were horrible. The waiting platforms were poorly lit and damp, while the walls were covered with all kinds of graffiti. The trains themselves were filthy, the floors littered with trash, and were often late.First, they removed all the graffiti, and painted clean the platforms and the trains/ Then they posted plain-clothes policeman in all stations to arrest those who did not pay train tokens. In a few years, criminality in New York City declined sharply by 65%. Two little things-removal of graffiti and presence of policemen. By they changed the culture and the face of New York.Gladwell says "do not underestimate the power of little things." they can spur a revolution.If "little things"can change a city, they can change a country."Life is made up of little things. Greatness follows if we learn to be great in little things," says Charles Simmons.Because of his book, Gladwell has been cited as one of the World's 100 Influential people by TIME Magazine this year. And his book is changing the mindsets of people around the world.

The Indolence of the Filipino


José Rizal - 1890
    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.

StyLIZed: Liz Uy's Ten Style Essentials


Liz Uy - 2014
    Each page is peppered with indispensible style advice Liz has culled from her many years working in the fashion magazine industry and styling countless personalities...definitely a must-have for every girls who wants to be styLIZed!

Orosa-Nakpil, Malate (A Filipino Novel)


Louie Mar A. Gangcuangco - 2006
    In his narrative, Gangcuangco reiterates relevant issues about HIV-AIDS, especially men having sex with men, sustaining the interest of the reader in an erotic yet amusing and witty manner. Fallacies about the virus and advisories about safe sex are consistently reaffirmed amidst the compelling dialogues and discourses emanating from the many colorful and controversial characters of the novel.

Dark Hours


Conchitina R. Cruz - 2005
    Here in this starkly beautiful volume, she has discovered a language sufficient to the terrors and the joys of the contemporary. The highest praise that can be given to any work of literature—and Dark Hours is most surely literature—is that it is contemporary. This is a very remarkable book.”—Lynn Emanuel

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.

Mythspace, Volume 1


Paolo Chikiamco - 2014
    ALIENS ARE FICTION.That's what young Ambrosio believes, not his crazy Lola's stories about robot-riding Nuno, and Kapres from space. But now she's dead, and Ambrosio's about to learn that she wasn't so crazy after all...EVERY STORY HAS ITS OWN TRUTH.Mythspace vol. 1 is a collection of six stories, each exploring a shared universe where Philippine folklore creatures -- Tikbalangs, Kapres, Manananggals -- were inspired by alien civilizations. Each creature is re-imagined and used to populate a science fiction universe that is rooted in Philippine oral tradition. From Ambrosio's journey, to a Kapre war, to a Manananggal coming of age, Mythspace will take you on a journey both strange and familiar.SPACE OPERA. PINOY STYLE.

Interim Goddess of Love


Mina V. Esguerra - 2012
    She's never even had a boyfriend, but that doesn't stop people from spilling their guts to her, and asking for advice. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise when the cutest guy in school tells her that she's going to have to take on this responsibility -- but for all humanity.The Goddess of Love has gone AWOL. It's a problem, because her job is to keep in check this world's obsession with love (and lack of it). The God of the Sun, for now an impossibly handsome senior at an exclusive college just outside of Metro Manila, thinks Hannah has what it takes to (temporarily) do the job.While she's learning to do this goddess thing, she practices on the love troubles of shy Kathy, who's got a secret admirer on campus. Hannah's mission, should she choose to accept it, is to make sure that he's not a creepy stalker and they find their happily ever after -- or at least something that'll last until next semester. (As if she could refuse! The Sun God asked so nicely. And he's so, well, hot.)

The Hand of the Enemy


Kerima Polotan - 1962
    

A Kiss In The Rain


J.C. Quin - 2013
    He walked towards her, took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shivering body. "Miss are you lost? Do you need help?" he asked her. She looked at him, and for the first time he saw her face. She looked so beautiful, yet looked so fragile. She moved towards him, cutting the distance between them. Then suddenly, she kissed him on his lips. He felt her hands run through his hair. She held him at the nape of his head, pulling him closer, deepening their kiss. He doesn’t know why, but he kissed her back, wanting more. But then suddenly she pulled out of the kiss, looked at him and gave him her sweetest smile. And at that very moment, he fell in love. He doesn’t know what to say, and before he could utter a word, she ran away. "Wait!" he shouted while looking at the direction she was heading. But he didn't saw her. He started to walk and he pushed himself through the crowd, but still he couldn't see her. He lost her. His name is Jared and this is the story on how he fell in love with a stranger which started with A KISS IN THE RAIN.

A Blade of Fern: A Novel About the Philippines


Edith L. Tiempo - 1978
    Set in the exotic background of the little mining village of Nibucal in the southern Philippines, A Blade of Fern sketches a panoramic vista of rural life and problems of survival among miners prospecting for gold.The novel is in the tradition of the Romantic hero who runs away from a society he rejects to seek regeneration in a deeply natural environment.A Blade of Fern should be of interest to students of Philippine literature in English and the general reader.

Sandosenang Sapatos (A Dozen Pairs of Shoes)


Luis P. Gatmaitan - 2002
    But only Karina gets to wear the shoes that he makes. “Sorry, Bunso, you will never know how it feels like to wear the beautiful shoes our Tatay makes…” Karina whispers to her sister. Why doesn’t their father make shoes for Susie? Receiving Unang Gantimpala, Maikling Kathang Pambata for the 2001 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Sandosenang Sapatos is the heartwarming story of a father’s incomparable love for his disabled daughter. For Ages 8 and up.

The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century


Isagani R. Cruz - 2000
    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.

Killing Time in a Warm Place


José Y. Dalisay Jr. - 1992
    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.

Instructions on How to Disappear


Gabriela Lee - 2016
    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.