F. Sionil Jose
F. Sionil Jose
Francisco Sionil Joséis one of the most widely read Filipino writers in the English language. His novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. José's works—written in English—have been translated into 22 languages, including Korean, Indonesian, Czech, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Dutch...
NationalityFilipino
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth3 December 1924
middle
Contemplation is a luxury of the middle class, the very rich.
creates liberate people provides
The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.
broke eastern far high japan school university war
I was a senior high school student at the Far Eastern University when the war with Japan broke out in 1941.
ask future people unless
I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.
equally history meant people
A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.
arts harsh ignore nation truth understand work
This is the harsh truth about us: not only do Filipinos ignore books, literature - we do not understand how important the arts are - not just to those of us who work at it, but to the nation as a whole.
among explains
The ethnic differences among Filipinos are very real. The paucity of arable land, for instance, explains the industry of the Ilokanos and the Cebuanos.
art artificial distrust judging visual
In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art.
cannot demanded english entirely german history native sad spanish using
I write entirely in English; Tagalog chauvinists chide me for this. I feel no guilt in doing so. But I am sad that I cannot write in my native Ilokano. History demanded this; if it isn't English I am using now, I would most probably be writing in Spanish like Rizal, or even German or Japanese.
food
I said that if I were an industrialist or entrepreneur, I would invest in agriculture-based enterprises, for there is so much that can be done in manufacturing, in food preservation.
aspiring draw felt oldies
I find it always pleasurable talking with young people, particularly those aspiring to be writers, out of nostalgia, and because I've always felt that we oldies can learn so much from them and draw from them inspiration in our flagging and rickety years.
died elite grave hebrew latin replaced studied
From antiquity, Latin died but is still studied in seminaries and elite universities. So did Sanskrit in Asia. iI was replaced by Pali, but even Pali died, too. Linguists say the only ancient language which was resuscitated from the grave was Hebrew of Israel.
cannot demand distant recall
Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past.
clearly easily eight fails images keen last recall responses sensory though
At 86, I can easily look back to the last eight decades. Though memory often fails me now, so many images of the past are still clearly polished, and I can yet recall not just an abiding sense of place, but the keen smells, the sensory responses to the events of that past.