Philippine Writings: Short Stories, Essays, Poetry with German Contributions on Philippine Literature by A.G. Hufana

In this new anthology of trans-European stories, the publishers take us to the Far East, an area in which the Republic of the Philippines, owning to its Christian character and democratic system, occupies a special place. As a result of the archipelago's history, native writing is marked by both Eastern and Western influences and recorded in several languages. Apart from English and Spanish, Filipinos write books in the vernacular, Tagalog, and several native dialects. It can be clearly seen that those writers who use the vernacular draw on traditional themes and ways of narration, while the Spanish writers express themselves in orate 19th-century style on themes involving the emotions, and the English-writing Filipinos are more assertive and use more modern techniques. Some of these stories place the peasant or fisherman, his long-suffering wife and his sons in the centre. Others deal with human conflict situations of a kind that is by no means exclusive to the Philippines, and so these stories have a solution of general applicability which as often as not is wrong.

Publisher : Regal Publishing, Manila (January 1, 1977)
Paperback : 466 pages