Bienvenido Santos
Biography:
Novelist, poet, activist, and teacher
Born: 3/22/1911 - 1/7/1996
Birthplace: Manila, Philippines
-In 1932, he earned a B.A. from the University of the Philippines.
-Under the Philippine Pensionado program, Santos came to the University of Illinois for a master's degree in English.
-Later he studied at Harvard, Columbia, and, as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, at the University of Iowa.
-His first two novels, Villa Magdalena and The Volcano, were published in the Philippines in 1965.
-Santos became an American citizen in 1976.
-One year later, the Marcos regime banned his novel about government corruption, The Praying Man, and he and his wife remained in San Francisco.
-Scent of Apples (1980), his only book to be published in the United States, won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
-He wrote more than a dozen books about exiles in both of his adopted countries, including the short story collections including You Lovely People (1955) and Brother, My Brother (1960).
Having alighted from a Graham car now parked in front of the spot where the chapel used to be until last month when a typhoon leveled it to the ground and the bell fell from the ceiling did not break. Work had started on it when the Japs came. Many people were afraid, and we heard all sorts of news.
The trail led father inland beyond the waterless creek were the barrio schoolhouse stood. On both side of the muddy trail are fields now planted to corn, hemmed on all sides by coconut trees, In our backyard are kilns for drying, copra, and heaps of firewood from the forest of Lafonte. My elder brother Cario knew that forest by heart. I had helped him gather firewood and he was not afraid of the dark.
“Selmo,” he would say, “you have a chicken heart and the memory of a turtle.”
I wondered where he was, my strong , big brother, as I watched the enemy soldiers go under the shreds which stretched on a long line to the west backyard. These were
Novelist, poet, activist, and teacher
Born: 3/22/1911 - 1/7/1996
Birthplace: Manila, Philippines
-In 1932, he earned a B.A. from the University of the Philippines.
-Under the Philippine Pensionado program, Santos came to the University of Illinois for a master's degree in English.
-Later he studied at Harvard, Columbia, and, as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, at the University of Iowa.
-His first two novels, Villa Magdalena and The Volcano, were published in the Philippines in 1965.
-Santos became an American citizen in 1976.
-One year later, the Marcos regime banned his novel about government corruption, The Praying Man, and he and his wife remained in San Francisco.
-Scent of Apples (1980), his only book to be published in the United States, won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
-He wrote more than a dozen books about exiles in both of his adopted countries, including the short story collections including You Lovely People (1955) and Brother, My Brother (1960).
Having alighted from a Graham car now parked in front of the spot where the chapel used to be until last month when a typhoon leveled it to the ground and the bell fell from the ceiling did not break. Work had started on it when the Japs came. Many people were afraid, and we heard all sorts of news.
The trail led father inland beyond the waterless creek were the barrio schoolhouse stood. On both side of the muddy trail are fields now planted to corn, hemmed on all sides by coconut trees, In our backyard are kilns for drying, copra, and heaps of firewood from the forest of Lafonte. My elder brother Cario knew that forest by heart. I had helped him gather firewood and he was not afraid of the dark.
“Selmo,” he would say, “you have a chicken heart and the memory of a turtle.”
I wondered where he was, my strong , big brother, as I watched the enemy soldiers go under the shreds which stretched on a long line to the west backyard. These were