Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
PUBLICATIONS
Novels
The Pretenders. Manila, Solidaridad, 1962; published as The Samsons: The Pretenders; and, Mass, New
York, Modern Library, 2000.
Mass. Amsterdam, Wereldvenster, 1982; London, Allen and Unwin, 1984; as Mis, Manila, Solidaridad,
1983.
Sin. Manila, Solidaridad, 1994; published as Sins, New York, Random House, 1996.
Don Vincente: A Novel in Two Parts (contains Tree and My Brother, My Executioner). New York, Modern
Library, 1999.
Short Stories
Waywaya and Other Short Stories from the Philippines. Hong Kong, Heinemann, 1980.
"The Chief Mourner" (serial), in Women's Weekly (Manila), 11 May-10 July 1953.
"The Balete Tree" (serial), in Women's Weekly (Manila), 4 March 1954-6 July 1956.
Poetry
Other
(Selected Works). Moscow, 1977.
Conversations with F. Sionil Jose, edited by Miguel Bernad. Manila, Vera-Reyes, 1991.
In Search of the Word: Selected Essays of F. Sionil Jose. Manila, de la Salle University Press, 1998.
Editor, Asian PEN Anthology 1. Manila, Solidaridad, 1966; New York, Taplinger, 1967.
Critical Studies:
F. Sionil Jose and His Fiction edited by Alfredo T. Morales, Manila, Vera-Reyes, 1990.
***
F. Sionil Jose holds two distinctions in Philippine writing in English, indeed in Philippine writing in
general. He is the only writer who has produced a series of novels that constitute an epic imaginative
creation of a century of Philippine life, and he is perhaps the most widely known abroad, his writings
having been translated into more foreign languages than those of any other Filipino writer. (The only
exception would be that greatest of all Filipino writers and patriots, Jose Rizal, martyred in the struggle
against Spanish domination.)
We are introduced to the early world of Sionil Jose in Po-on. The earliest novel in terms of chronology, it
is set in the later decades of the 19th century during the decaying years of the Spanish empire. The
latter still retained some struggling remnants of its colonial civil services, including some manorial lords
in the plains of central Luzon island, descendants of the Basque and Spanish-Catalan settlers, served by
immigrants from the deep Ilocano country up north. In one scene a Basque grandee comes to the town
of Rosales, when the settlement is still unorganized, and designates the limits of his domain with his
whip.
After the Philippine revolution, which saw the change of colonial masters from Spanish to American, no
significant change occurred in the feudal relations of the agrarian economy. In fact, free trade was
instituted between the Philippines and the United States, benefiting the native landowners and their
hirelings and the leaders of industry and their subalterns while impoverishing the tenants of the land
and the laborers in small-scale industries. Such relationships are examined in Tree. Despite all the
injustices they suffered during the American colonial regime, when war came in December 1941, the
tenants and their leaders decided to fight the Japanese invaders as guerrillas, hoping that at the end of
the war they would be afforded improved living conditions.
My Brother, My Executioner occurs at this point in Sionil Jose's epic narrative. It deals with the activities
of two half-brothers, one a dispossessed guerrilla. With more than enough property to keep his family in
comfort, the bourgeois half-brother can afford to entertain liberal ideas and even consider embracing
progressive ways, but his dispossessed half-brother avenges himself by destroying the more fortunate.
The master-servant, lord-slave relationship may also be found in the industrial world in Manila. One
specific case is Antonio Samson in The Pretenders. Overcoming the disadvantages of rural birth, Samson
manages to earn a doctorate at a prestigious New England university, afterwards planning to return to
his hometown sweetheart, with whom he had fathered a child. Instead, he is snatched away by a
powerful agro-industrial baron and married off to his socialite daughter. Samson is now made to move
in elevated social circles and do work he had not prepared himself to do. He has frequent spats with his
wife who, he discovers to his dismay, has been engaged in affairs with other men. Determined to end his
shame, Samson throws himself under a train.
We are afforded a rich composite picture of the Philippines of the mid-to late twentieth century in Mass,
which covers the years before and after the proclamation of martial law in 1972. A few of the old names
reappear, but new characters emergestudent activists, women's liberation movement followers, drug
addicts, intellectuals. The major character is the bastard son of Antonio Samson, Pepe Samson, now
living in the slums of Tondo. He is a faithful follower of a former anti-Japanese Huk (Communist rebel)
commander now devoted to local affairs, and a student leader at a university in Manila. A reform
movement that started with protest at the increase in oil prices becomes a struggle for human rights,
student rights, tenant's rights, women's liberation, and eventually a heterogeneous mass of protests
manipulated by fraudulent leaders. After the failure of the intended uprising, one of the dedicated
characters decides to return to central Luzon to seek his roots and build anew.
Sins looks back on the history of the Philippines during much of the twentieth century through the eyes
of the amoral Don Carlos Corbello, or C.C., who took part in that history and, on his deathbed, is reaping
much of what he sowed. Dusk jumps back to the time of the Spanish-American War, whose Philippine
theatre (as opposed to the Cuban theatre) is largely unknown to most Americans. In the course of Sionil
Jose's work, which calls to mind Balzac's "Human Comedy" if on a smaller scale, we get an increasingly
defined picture of Philippine history over more than a century. We are shown all kinds of people, from
the moral cowards to the fiercely heroic, from the ferociously greedy to the selflessly philanthropic. In
the face of all the tragic events in their lives, many of the people in Sionil Jose's epic are still able to say
"We shall overcome."
Leopoldo Y. Yabes,
Read more: F(rancisco) Sionil Jose Biography - Manila, Solidaridad, University, and Editor - JRank
Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4741/Sionil-Jose-F-rancisco.html#ixzz4voQDgu1d