F. Sionil Jose examines 'Why We Are Hungry'

MANILA, Philippines – As a sequel to Why We Are Poor, this essay collection by the country’s most widely translated writer enlarges on the themes that have defined his oeuvre in the last six decades. Worth noting are the challenging statements on colonialism and the colonized mind — a condition which many Filipinos are afflicted with.

Sionil Jose elaborates on his core ideas of a nationalist revolution and questions the communist movement, as well as the Moro struggle, for not really having achieved anything in the last 40 years. He suggests that it is the military that could be the nation’s modernizer.

Sionil Jose makes definitive statements about Philippine culture not being primarily Asian but Western. Worth noting in this essay collection, too, are his instructive comments on literature and on the writers who worked for Ferdinand Marcos.

In his twilight years, Sionil Jose continues to raise his voice to wake Filipinos up from their apathy and lethargy and, most of all, from their self-induced ignorance. He has also received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature in 1980, the National Artist Award in 2001, and the Pablo Neruda Centennial Award from Chile in 2004.

Alejandro D. Padilla, who edited this volume, is senior editor at C&E Publishing, Inc. and part-time facilitator at the Center for Language and Learning of De La Salle University. He also taught English at Miriam College and served as editor-in-chief of the De La Salle University Press.

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