2nd Post: Filipino Authors

Carlos Bulosan was born in the Philippines in the rural farming village of Mangusmana, near the town of Binalonan (Pangasinan province, Luzon island). He was the son of a farmer and spent most of his upbringing in the countryside with his family. Like many families in the Philippines, Carlos’s family struggled to survive during times of economic hardship.

The discrimination and unhealthy working conditions Carlos had experienced in many of his workplaces encouraged him to participate in union organizing with other Filipinos and various workers. Carlos become a self-educated and prolific writer determined to voice the struggles he had undergone as a Filipino coming to America and the struggles he had witnessed of other people. Like many of his fellow Filipinos in his time, Carlos never had the opportunity to return to the Philippines. After years of hardship and flight, he passed away in Seattle suffering from an advanced stage of bronchopneumonia. He is buried at Queen Anne Hill in Seattle.

(source: Panitikan.com.ph: Your Portal to Philippine Literature. 2009. Web. 25 June 2009 http://www.bulosan.org/html/bulosan_biography.html )

(image source: http://www.palhbooks.com/bulosanx.jpg)

Bienvenido Santos was born on March 22, 1911 in Tondo, Manila. In 1932, he obtained his BA from the University of the Philippines. As a scholar under the Philippine Pensionado program in 1941 he pursued an MA in English at the University of Illinois, Columbia University and Harvard University. During the war years, he served as public information officer under the Philippine government in exile in Washington D.C. In 1946 he returned to the country to be a teacher and university administrator. He accepted a Rockefeller fellowship in 1958 at the Writers Workshop in the University of Iowa, where he later became a Fulbright exchange professor. He was also honored with the Guggenheim fellowship, a Republic Cultural Heritage Award, Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, and an American Book Award. Santos also received honorary doctorate degrees from the UP and the Bicol University in 1981, and from Wichita State University, where he was a Distinguished Writer in Residence from 1973 to 1982. After he retired, he became a Visiting Writer and Artist at the De La Salle University in Manila. He passed away in 1996.

Santos’ works of short fiction, among which are well-known stories that depict the Filipino condition in America, include the collections You Lovely People (1955) and Scent of Apples (1979). His six novels include The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor and What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco. His poetry collections are entitled Distances: In Time and The Wounded Stag: 54 Poems, while his nonfiction has been collected in four books, among them Memory’s Fictions and Postscript to a Saintly Life.

(source: Panitikan.com.ph: Your Portal to Philippine Literature. 2009. Web. 25 June 2009 http://panitikan.com.ph/authors/s/bsantos.htm )

(image source:(image source: http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Groups/Santos.gif )

Bicycle

For me, Literature is like, riding on a bike, aha!

it is hard for someone or for a first timer to ride on a bike, especially how to balanced it.

but when you learn to.. you will have fun and keep riding on it every time, and you can go faster and further!and for literature, when you love literature, when you learn something from it you'll try to learn more to appriciate it even more!