"The God Stealer" by Francisco Sionil Jose

 "The God Stealer"  by Francisco Sionil Jose  (1959, 12 pages)

A Reading Life Project

in partnership with 

A Simple Clockwork

Prior Posts on short stories and history of the Philippines

Of the 1400 posts on my  blog, the most read are those on short stories by authors  from the Philippines.    Nancy from A Simple Clockwork and I have been posting on these stories, mostly focusing on older stories, for some time now.   We have provided lots of links where these stories can be read online.  Taken together, they make up a great inadequately explored resource for students of post-colonial Asian literature.   Most importantly, they are wonderful stories by real people writing about their heritage in honest heartfelt works.

Francisco  Sional Jose (1924, AKA F. Sionil Jose) is one of the most highly regarded of all authors from the Philippines.   His  novels and his short stories deal directly with the consequences of political and economic colonialism, especially as it impacts the poor of the country.  Jose was born in Pangasinan Provence on the island of Luzon, as was my wife.  He attended, though he did not graduate, St. Thomas University as does my middle daughter.  He is of  Ifugao descent.  He is a national artist of the Philippines.  (There is a good article him in the online edition of The Manila Bulletin )

I think "The God Stealer" is the most read of his works.   (I will include a link where it can be read online at the end of my post).   It deals directly with issues vital to the heritage of the country.  There are two main characters in the story, an American, Sam Cristie and a man of Ifugao heritage who have become close friends though working at the same agency for a number of years.  For those not familiar with their culture, the Ifugao culture is one of the oldest intact cultures in Asia.   They are internationally famous for constructing over 2000 years ago the famous rice terraces which many consider one of the wonders of the world.    The terraces are now in real danger of being lost to the world.  To maintain them is very labor intensive and the young people of the culture can make more money working in Manila than they can in their birth communities   Of course a giant mega-city also seems more exciting to the young than a ten house village with no electricity.  Ifugao   practice a religion older than Christianity   Part of the story is the conflicts these forces engender in Philip who has taken on big city ways and converted to Christianity.



Sam Christie (his name seems to meant to bring two things to mind, "Sam" for Uncle Sam and "Christie" meaning a Christian) wants to see the famous rice terraces and he wants to purchase a small statue of an Ifugao God as a souvenir to take back to New England with him.   Philip gets word his grandfather is very sick and he and Sam make the long bus trip to his home village.  Jose does a great job of making us feel like we are along for the ride.  I wonder what the roads from there to Manila were like fifty years ago!

Sam is fascinated by the rice terraces, overwhelmed by their beauty and awestruck at what went into  building them over 2000 years ago.  At first Philip seems a bit embarrassed for his friend to see where he came from.  Philip is received coldly by his family, they regard him as a deserter to his heritage.  We attend a festival held in their honor, we meet the aging and ill grandfather, we learn about how the live, see the foods they eat and get  very good feel for the lives of the Ifugao people  in this powerful story.

I do not want to tell the ending of this story as it so meaningful in multifarious ways.

"The God Stealer"  by Francisco Sionil Jose should be read by anyone into post colonial Asian literature.  It was originally written, as are all the author's works, in English.  It shows a deep understanding of very real problems felt in ancient cultures all over the world.  How do you keep the young people rooted in the culture when they can make a lot more money, and have seemingly a more exciting life, in a mega-city?   This drama is being played out all over Asia.  It does not take a genius to one day see the cultures of people like the Ifugao  preserved only in vacation spots designed to give tourists photo ops.  ((100 pesos for a picture, please with statues of their Gods, made in China, for sale.)

You can read "The God Stealer" here.    If you have never read a short story by an author from the Philippines this is a good place to start.  If you have been reading them for decades, then lend is your expertise, please.

Nancy at A Simple Clockwork has some very illuminating posts on the literary culture of the Philippines and is perhaps the only place to learn about the literature of Cebu.

"The Doll" by Egmidio Enriquez

"The Doll" by Egmidio Enriquez (1953, 5 pages)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Joint Project with A Simple Clockwork

Three days ago Typhoon Pablo struck Zamboanga and killed over 400 people.  In a small tribute to the people of the region, I am posting on a famous literary work by a son of the city in  which all can take pride,  Egmidio, Enriquez.  "The Doll" is a beautiful story that counsels a gentle wisdom.  

My Posts on The Literature and History of the Philippines



"HE was christened Narciso and his mother called him Sising. But when be took a fancy to his mother’s old rag dolls which she preserved with moth balls for the little girls she had expected to have, his father decided to call him Boy. His father was excessively masculine, from the low broad forehead and the thick bushy brows to the wide cleft chest and the ridged abdomen beneath it"

In Partnership with Nancy C, located in Cebu and we hope she and her family are all safe from typhoons,  I have posted on a number of short stories, mostly from before 1960, by writers from the Philippines.   I know there is a huge interest in these stories as my posts on these stories are by far the most read of all 1300 plus items on my blog.   

Most of the writers Nancy and I have focused on have a relatively small literary corpus, some only have two or three stories.   There are no authors from the Philippines with the large body of work common to many American, Irish, or European writers of the time.    I think, this is pretty much speculation, that the reasons are economic and social, not borne from a lack of creativity or drive.  The only audience for writers from the Philippines at the time were a very small educated elite group numbering probably in the few thousands at most.  From these few thousand only a very small percentage would have been interested in, just as is the case now throughout the world, reading literary quality short stories or novels.   This reduces your actual first reader audience down to a few hundred people, probably a lot of them university students or professors.  No one made a living as a writer in the Philippines in this period so writing had to be a hobby.  Compounding  this is the fact that literary short stories in any language other than English had no viable places to be published so people had to write in a second to them language. When "The Doll" was written there were over 100 languages and dialects spoken in the Philippines.  In spite of this there are lots of wonderful world class short stories by authors from the Philippines and "The Doll" by Egmidio Enriqueaz is one of them.  

There is very little information available on the author on the internet.  I could find only that he was from Zamboanga City in the extreme south of the country. He published only in the 1950s, as far as I can find.  He probably grew up speaking Zamboangueño Chavacano at home.  There were five dialects or languages spoken in the area, which was heavily influenced by Spanish culture.  In 1960 it had a population of about 100,000 people.   English would have been the medium of instruction in Enriquez's high school or college years.

As "The Doll Opens" a husband is berating his wife for giving their son a doll to play with.   The man is described as very macho and brags of the "red blood" of masculinity he has passed along to his son.   He is angry with his wife as she fears by giving the boy a doll and letting his hair grow long she is making him less manly than he should be.   Of course this is just a thinly disguised fear on the part of the father that the boy might grow into a homosexual because he was given a doll to play with.   The boy ages and he keeps feminine ways and his father constantly harshly criticizes him and says he is a poor son.   He talks to his wife about how will the boy ever run or even have his on family.  (Spoiler alert).   In a scene that has been played out millions of times, when the boy matures to the point a girl does take a romantic interest in him, once alone with her, in order to do what he things a man should based on his father's teaching, he totally brutalizes the woman. Once through with her he basically walks out, insulting her as he leaves.   It is not made real clear what he does to her but it looks like he forced himself in an abusive fashion on a woman who was perfectly willing to have sex with him.   The boy is eager to tell his father of the manly way he conducted himself and a cycle of abuse is perpetuated.

"The Doll" by Egmidio Enriquez is a simple, very beautifully written story with a powerful message for the parents of the world.   It also exposes the shallowness of the culture of machismo fostered on the people of the area by their colonial masters.

I do not know the publication history of this story.   My date of publication is a guess based on what I do know.   If anyone knows more about the author please share your knowledge with us.

You can read this story here.

Mel u

"Rice" by Manuel Arguilla

"Rice" by Manuel Arguilla  (1938, 5 pages)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Reading Life Project in Conjunction with

A Simple Clockwork

1911 to 1944

My Prior Posts on the literature and history of the Philippines

My posts on older, mostly pre-World War Two, short stories of the Philippines are the most viewed  items out of over 1200 posts on my blog.  At first I thought the large number of viewers must be students but the high level of readership has persisted too  long and the location of the readers is too diverse to support this idea.   I am happy to see there is a wide real interest in these older stories, all written in English, the second language of the Philippines.   I think these stories are the real literary treasure of the Philippines.  They also are a great resource for those wishing to see how their ancestors lived and an invaluable resource for students of colonial Asian literature.  They are also a great pleasure to read.   

I have already posted on a story by Manuel Arguilla  "How Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife".
Manuel Arguilla (1911 to 1944) was from  the big island of Luzon, in the north in  Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union.   He grew up speaking Ilokano,  the third most spoken language in the Philippines.   Most of his stories are about the common people in the small town he grew up in.   After finishing high school he moved to the Manila area (this had to have been a two or three day at least commute in those days) to attend the University of the Philippines, not far from where I live, in fact.   He received a B.S. in education, was president of the University literary club and married Lydia Villaneuva, another talented writer we hope to post on one day. 

After graduation he taught creative writing at the University of Manila and also worked for the government at the Bureau of Public Welfare as the editor of their publication.   He was a dedicated patriot and during the Japanese occupation he organized and led a secret intelligence organization.
He was captured by the Japanese who tortured him to death.    

"Rice" is a terribly sad story set among very poor rural people who make their living from growing rice.   The story starts out with Pablo and his beloved carabao (water buffalo).   These animals are normally very gentle and are often almost parts of the family inspite of their huge size.   The description of Pablo taking the carabao to feed was very beautiful and moving.  We see the house Pablo shares with his wife and family.  "As he looked at the house Pablo did not see how squalid it was."    He calls out to his wife but she does not answer so he asks a neighbor woman if she knows where his wife went.  The woman has no rice in the house.   For those outside the country, rice is the basic foodstuff of the country, often eaten with every meal.   To not have rice is basically to not have food.  The only food they have in the house is some snails they collected in the rice fields.   They have to hide them from the guards of the plantation owner as they are supposed to pay for taking even snails from the fields.  The families have only one way to get rice to hold them over before the harvest comes in.   They can borrow sacks of rice from the plantation owner, to be repaid back two sacks for one.    

Pablo tells his wife he is going to rob the truck that carries the rice.   You can read the story here to find out what happens.

"Rice" is a very moving story that shows us how dominated the lives of rural workers were by the owners of the plantations on which they worked.   

My date of publication is a guess.  If anyone knows the publication history of this great story, please leave a comment.

Mel u
The Reading Life
@thereadinglife

"The Small Key" by Paz Latorena

"The Small Key" by Paz Latorena (1927, 6 pages)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Reading Life Project

1908 to 1953
Boac, Mariduque, Philippines

My Prior posts on the literature and culture of the  Philippines

In conjunction with Nancy C, located in Cebu, (I am in the capital region) of the great blog, A Simple Clockwork, I have been doing a series of posts on short stories by authors from the Philippines, mostly older stories written in English.   My readership on these stories has been very high, sometimes with over 2000 page views a day.   I do not know what part of this represents a genuine interest and what percent is from students seeking help with a homework assignment but all visitors are very welcome.

One of our objectives is to try to get a new generation of readers to read these wonderful old stories.  For some of us it will bring to our mind the lives of great great grandparents we never knew and for others it will open up a whole new world.   There are also a joy to read for the beauty of their prose, their deep wisdom and their great characterizations.

In my opinion the older short stories of the Philippines are a world class literary treasures that have not gotten near the attention they merit.   They are a goldmine for students of colonial literature and those who want a glimpse of an almost forgotten way of life before the internet, mobile phones and consumerism took over the culture of the Philippines.

Paz Latorena was one of the very best of the first generation of authors from the Philippines to write primarily in English, the language of the ruler of the Philippines during most of the life of Latorena, the USA.   Latorena was educated in Manila, partially at the University of the Philippines.    She was active in the University of the Philippines writing club and was a student of another wonderful writer, Paz Marquez Benitez (on whom I have posted).  She earned a masters and doctors degree  from the University of Saint Thomas (UST).   Her students all loved her and testified to her greatness as a teacher.    Latorena's place in the history of the literature of the Philippines was established by three short stories, "The Small Key", "Desire" and "The Sunset".    

"The Small Key" is a beautiful account of the feeling of a man, whose first wife died, and his second wife.   As the story opens Latorena describes in a few lines the rural setting of the story.  The man and his wife live far from any neighbors.  Their house is surrounded by  wild bamboo.   Her husband is a very hard working prosperous farmer.   They are having lunch and the man cannot linger as the fields need plowing.  His wife is not feeling well so as he leaves he tells her he will ask Tia Maria, an aunt or a neighbor,  to stop by.

Once the husband is gone the wife begins to fold his coat.   A small key falls to the floor and the woman, in her late twenties, looks almost old.   She tries to throw herself into her work on the laundry but her eyes keep going to a small trunk in the corner of the room.  She knows in that trunk are the clothes of her husband's late first wife.   She tries to tell her self what does it matter if her husband keeps the clothes of his first wife, after all she is dead.   She begins to wonder why her husband feels he has to carry to key to the chest with him in his coat when he leaves the house.  When the husband arrives home happy that the plowing is completed, Tia Maria  meets him at the gate and tells him his wife is sick.

I will leave the rest of the story untold.

As the story closes we wonder how this will work out over the years.   The husband seems to imagine he can use the deed of his wife to gain power in the relationship and the wife knows he is mad but thinks he will get over it.

This is a marvelous story about the dynamics of marriage and I really liked it.   I will read her other two famous stories soon.

You can read this wonderful story here

Mel u

"At War's End: An Elegy" by Rony V Diaz

"At War's End:  An Elegy" by Rony V. Diaz (7 pages, date of publication unknown to me)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Reading Life Project

co-hosted by

A Simple Clockwork

Rony V. Diaz

Rony V. Diaz has been awarded the Palanca Award, the most prestigious literary award of the Philippines, several times.   He has taught English at the University of the Philippines.   He is currently the publisher of The Manila Times, one of the premier daily newspapers in Asia.   I find the editorial and general prose in The Manila Times to be very high and for sure written at a higher level than most American newspapers.

"At War's End"  (this short story maybe based or the basis for a novel by Diaz of the same name-if anyone knows the full publishing history of this story please let me know) starts out with a very dramatic attention holding line:  "The evening before he killed himself, Virgilio Serrano gave a dinner party".    Of course this makes you wonder why he killed himself and why he felt a need to have a dinner party on the eve of his suicide.

"At War's End", set shortly after the end of WWII in Manila, is told in the first person by a college friend of Virgilio.   They are both in their early twenties.   It seems Vergilio has a great life awaiting him.   He lives with his father and sister in a pre-war mansion and has four servants and a driver whose only job is to wait on him.   The neighborhood he lives in is beginning to recover from the consequences of the battle for Manila but through luck his house was undamaged.   It is the center for intellectual gatherings where people stay up all night talking about art, literature and politics.   His family has a huge agricultural plantation with over 1000 tenants (working on sort of a share-cropping basis)   The estate, remote from Manila of course, was managed by his father's sister Clara who lived there full time in a 17th century stone hacienda.   She was a very astute business woman who knew where ever peso went and came from.   Virgilio was an only child whose mother was killed in a car accident when he was young and his father never remarried.   He will one day be very rich with a long life of total freedom ahead of him.   

In the universities there is much talk of social justice.   Virgillio begins, under pressure from classmates and influenced by what he reads,  to question the justice of 1000 tenants and their family working in grinding poverty just to support him in leisured comfort.   He begins to think once the time comes when he is in control of the estate he will either will it to the tenants or perhaps, after providing for aunt Clara, divide it up and end the feudalism his family has lived from for generations.

Diaz is a very skillful writer who lets us wonder why Virgillio killed himself.   Was it because he did not feel he could live with the guilt of being the lord of  a vast estate while at the same time not being able to live without the status and money this brought him.

You can read this story, and lots of other short stories by Authors from the Philippines HERE

Mel u

"The Mats" by Francisco Arcellana

Nothing Can Destroy the Faith and Strength of the people of the Philippines -  Mel u, Quezon City and Candelaria, November 10, 2013-  comments welcome

"The Mats"  by Francisco Arcellana (1951, 7 pages)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Reading Life Project

co-hosted by

A Simple Clockwork

Francisco Arcellana

1916 to 2002

The most viewed of 1150 posts on my blog are my posts on Short Stories of the Philippines.   I am very gratified over this and I think the older short stories of the Philippines are a largely unexplored literary treasure.   Today I am posting on a story, "The Mats" by Francisco Arcellana (1916 to 2002).   

Arcellana was a highly regarded poet, essayist, critic, journalist and teacher.  It is for his short stories that he is best remembered.  He is considered one of the first writers of the modern Filipino short story in English.    It is his lyrical style that became the role model for a generation of writers.   He was proclaimed a national artist of the Philippines in 1990 and was given a state funeral.  

"The Mats" is set somewhere before World War II.  It was in the time when people did not sleep in beds but slept on mats.   As the story opens Mr Angeles, head of a large family, has just returned from one of his periodic inspection tours on the families farm lands in the Marivales in the province of Bataan.   Students of WWII history will know of the Bataan Death March and it is in fact very close to my families home province in Zambales.   The population now is about 125,000 people but I would be surprised if there were more than a few thousand at the time of the story.   

Mr. Angeles return is always very exciting for his children as he always brings them a nice gift in addition to the huge amount of fruit he brings home.  (I really enjoyed Arcellana's listing of all the fruits.)   He has a special surprise this time.  While he was gone he had met a marvelous artist who specializes in making sleeping mats.   His wife still treasures the sleeping mat she got as a wedding present.  Whenever anyone in the family is sick they sleep on the mat.   Everyone gathers around for the mats to be given out, he has them all rolled together.  The mats are great works of art, each one has the name of the child it belongs to woven into it along with a special symbol that relates to their life.   They are all totally thrilled.  Then the father tells them that they are to not use these mats until they have reached a milestone in their lives such as enrollment in  the University of the Philippines.  This seems a little cruel but maybe it was motivational.  I am not quite sure how this should be taken.  Then they notice they notice there are three more mats rolled up.   Those are for their children that have passed away.   This somehow brings a chill on the occasion, or at least it did to me.   It almost seemed a burden a father should share on his own but it can also be taken as total family bonding even with members that have passed and placing a spirit of history in the children.

The prose style is simple and beautiful.   From "The Mats" we can get a good look at the lives of people from the 1930s or so in the Philippines.  (Note-I am not sure of the exact date of this story, I am guessing at the date based on what I know and ask anyone who knows its publication history to share their knowledge with us.)   

I urge anyone who wants to learn more about the regional literature of the Philippines to follow the blog of Nancy C, A Simple Clockwork.   Nancy will soon post on another one of Arecellana's short stories.

This is not a closed project, anyone who wants to write a post on a short story of the Philippines is invited to join us.

"The Mat" (and several other short stories) can be read HERE.

Mel u

"Zita" by Arturo B. Rotor

"Zita" by Arturo Rotor (1930, 16 pages)

Short Stories of the Philippines

A Reading Life Project
co-hosted by

A Simple Clockwork

Manila-August 8, 2012

Prior Posts For Project

Arturo Rotor, M. D.

Out of 1150 posts on The Reading Life, the top two most read posts of all times are my posts on two older short stories by authors from the Philippines,  "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife" by Manuel Arguilla and "The Wedding Dance" by Amador Daguio.   Even during the terrible floods in Luzon and Zambales in the last two days readership was very high.  At first I thought maybe the readers were college students seeking help with but now from the persistence of the trend and the full country readership I think there is a great interest in these older stories.   They might in fact be the real literary treasure of the Philippines.   If you are persistent in looking you will find there are hundreds of these old stories, all written in English.

"Zita" is one of the famous pre-WWII short stories, written by Arturo Rotoro  (1907 to 1988.   The name might be familiar to you because Rotor was a very well known medical doctor and the disease "Rotor Syndrome" which he isolated and first correctly described is named after him.      He also played a vital role during WWII in the government in exile, was a noted breeder of orchids and a widely respected music critic.

The story centers on Mr Reteche, a teacher who comes to a remote Island in the Philippines to work in the municipal school.   The people on the island are all very impressed by him.  In 1930, as even now, it would have been an unsophisticated place for a man from the big city.   The leader of the area offers him a very nice house but he prefers to stay in a simple hut owned by a fisherman, by the sea.   He  wants no fuss made over him and there is a deep feeling of melancholy about him.   It was apparent he was deeply lonely and had suffered heart break.   He is shocked when one of his students, a young lady, has the same name as the woman who broke his heart, Zita.

Rotor does a wonderful job of letting us see what life was like on this small Island in 1930.   Zita's father, who wants so much for his daughter to develop to her full potential, hires Mr. Reteche to teach her to be a lady.    He gives her guidance in dress and teaches her to dance.    She is far from a child and we can see a feeling being to develop between the two of them.

I will leave the rest of this beautiful story untold and there will be a link at the end of my post where  you can it if you like.

Nancy C. of A Simple Clockwork  has begun to post extensively on regional literature of the Philippines, especially that of Cebu.   I strongly urge any one wishing to expanding their knowledge to follow her blog.



You can read "Zita" here

Mel u

"The Bread of Salt" by N V M Gonzalez

"The Bread of Salt" by N V M Gonzalez (1958, 8 pages)

My Prior Posts on the Literature of the Philippines

Prior  Posts for the Short Stories of the Philippines Project

1. Dead Stars and A Night in the Hills by Paz Marquez Benitez

2. Servant Girl and Magnificence by Estrella Alfon

3. The Wedding Dance by Amado Daguio

Today is the fifth  post for  what I hope will be a long term project featuring  short story writers from the Philippines.   In a joint venture with Nancy Cudis of Simple Clockwork we will be spotlighting once or twice a  month the work of a short story writer from the Philippines.   Nancy is based in Cebu City and focuses according to her profile on  PHILIPPINE LITERATURE, CLASSICS, CHILDREN'S and MIDDLE-GRADE BOOKS, CHRISTIAN FICTION, and clean ROMANCE.    Her blog is just getting started and I can already tell she has a great passion for what she does and I hope a lot of my readers will also follow her blog.    

Be sure and read the posts on Simpleclock Work for an insight into the literature  and culture of Cebu and of the Philippines that you will find nowhere else

   At first I thought there were only twenty or so short stories from the American Era n the Philippines online but I have now found 100s of them.   These stories represent a literary and cultural treasure and a body of work that anyone interested in colonial studies could profit from.   But most important, if the five  writers whose stories I have read so far are any guide, the stories are a lot of fun to read, feel like they were written from the heart, are easy to read and give us a look at a way of life gone forever.   There are links to resources on Nancy's Blog and in my prior posts on this topic.

We invite anyone interested to join in.   If you have never heard of any authors from the Philippines you are very welcome to learn along with us and if you have been reading in this area for 30 years, please help us out.   Done long enough, we hope out project could become a real resource for those interested in the literary culture of the Philippines.   We do need help in this project to start to cover all the writers.

Néstor Vicente Madali  Gonzalez (September 8, 1915-November 28, 1999, known by his initials) is the first writer from the province of Oriental Mindoro we have featured so far.  Growing up Gonzalez often helped his father in the family meat business.   He attended high school in Oriental Mindoro and started but did not finish his degree at National College in Manila.   While in Manila he began to write for local newspapers and magazines, just like we have seen so many other writers do.    Gonzalez became very active in creative writing circles in Manila and was the first president of the Philippines Writers Association.  He received a grant to study creative writing at Stanford University in California where he studied under Katherine Anne Porter and Wallace Stenger.    Upon return to the Philippines he became the first person ever asked to teach at the University of Philippines without having a college degree.  He was to go on to teach creative writing at several American colleges as a visiting professor.   In 1997 he was given the status of an artist of the Philippines.   He wrote largely in English and he published three novels and six collections of short stories.   

Pan de Sal, bread of salt, is one of the very basic comfort foods of the Philippines.   There is bakery less than a block from where we live that makes some of the best.     They normally come into the house in a brown paper bag and everybody knows if you want one you should not wait.  They are soft, have an ever so slightly nutty flavor and are great with a hot cup of coffee and sometimes it is OK to dunk them.   Everybody loves Pan de Sal.   They give you a feeling of home and your grandmother's kitchen.   If someone is sick, they will for sure love  one of these delicious rolls and our story, "Bread of Salt" begins when our young central figure is sent out by his grandmother, who just had three molars removed, to buy a bag of Pan de Sal.   This was back in the days before there were fancy chains bakeries and deluxe supermarkets and you bought your Pan de Sal right out of the oven and you did not mind the stains on the paper bag.    Almost every day he would go and watch the bakers do their work and would leave happy, knowing he would have his share.   

The central character develops a crush on the niece of the owner of the plantation that his grandfather has managed for many years.  I really liked it when he makes reference to his English class reading the work of Robert Louis Stevenson.   He also played the violin and was soon invited to join a local band which he saw as a welcome opportunity to earn some money.  He begins to imagine himself as a world famous musician just returned from a triumphant tour of America.  He begins to make some money but his aunt discourages him, telling him at parties the musicians always eat last.  

In the mean time he is more and more tormented by his teenage love for Aida (the name is not chosen by accident) and he fears she will be leaving soon to go back to her parents house then he is so happy to learn she is not leaving.  His band will be playing at a big party at Aida's house.   She still has no idea of the crush he has on her.    He is nearly crushed at the end of the party when she comes up to him and tells him that as soon as the  V I P guests leave she will bring him a bag full of food.  He quickly gets the point that he is just part of the help.  After eating the very good and copious food he stopped by and bought a bag of pan de sal to take home to his family.

"Pan de Sal" is a very well done story that shows how we long for simple comforts in times of pain or when our hopes are dashed.  It is about the class structure and the nature of families in the Philippines in the 1950s.    It is beautifully written.

You can read it here

Nancy's family has suffered a tragic loss  and the prayers of  The Reading Life family are with her and her family.    

Mel u