Underground Spirit Volume I: Philippine Short Stories in English 1973 to 1989 Edited by Gemino H. Abad

Volume 1 of the two-volume sequel anthology to Upon Our Own Ground (2008) continues our people's story--the same complex tapestry, as in the previous anthology, of how we Filipinos think and feel about our world and so, justify the way we live. Because of the ever-present danger of arrest and torture during the years of the Marcos dictatorship (1972 to 1986), the writers were driven to other forms or guises of the short story, such as fantasy and sci-fi, tale and parable. But whatever the form, you come away from the story with an image of a lifetime or a moment lived that the story's words have evocatively forged; and that image sums up and makes into a whole the story's meaningfulness by which its form has been achieved.
That meaningfulness too is what raises the story to a universal plane, which is not the realm of eternal verities but rather, the site of everlasting questioning. Thus, illustratively, it would appear in a number of stories that the country's true hero is the common tao for their underground spirit of endurance; the rebel, too, the NPA cadre, would be ennobled during those oppressive years of martial law by their struggle for a just and humane society.
A Philippine import. Limited copies available.

ISBN-13: 978-97-1-542638-1
Published: University of the Philippines Press (August 2011)
Pages: 684 pages
Weight: 1030g
Size: 6x9