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Essay

The pajama games

I think, if President Duterte’s attendance at international summits is to be guaranteed, whoever is hosting should consider holding sleepovers instead of boring old meetings.  Meetings are boring—only grown-ups go to them to do, ugh, Business. A pajama party, now, that’s a different...

British author in Manila: A conversation in Solidaridad

  James Hamilton-Paterson, if National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose’s word is to be taken as it is meant, is one of the few non-Filipino authors who has written about the Philippines with a very level view of our people and this archipelago...

The sisterhood of the childbearing scrubs

Are women doing it for themselves or are they doing it to themselves? Nothing sets a movement back like heresy among its members, so when women themselves act contrary to what feminism considers in the best interest of other women, there is a jarring...

Four Sundays and a funeral

What is the proper term for someone who is taking the bar exam? I was going to suggest barista but I re-thought the thought after realizing that law graduates might take offense at being associated with slinging lattés, which are scrumptious, at a Starbucks. Not...

Boo

Damn Filipino parents and their lack of imagination. And patriotism. Hex me all you want, but I will maintain till I inhale my last that Halloween is the most un-Filipino of holidays and that the Philippines has no business celebrating the day.  It...

Lolo

The essay was written four days before the author succumbed to a massive stroke. This story, about his grandfather, is his last essay Before sunrise, he would do the rounds of his small sugarcane farm on the east side of his house. He would...

Random Pickings

Reynaldo Abilo—from scholar to being somebody

“When i was 25, i was based in Cebu and I was the customer Development Finance Manager of Colgate Palmolive in charge of Visayas...

The devil goes shirtless

Listen, I think President Duterte is a hypocrite.  For all his bombast against Catholicism, his pronouncements, lo and behold, have a solid foundation in...

From Presidents to common folk: Tales from the piano

Whatever the pianists' individual differences in taste, grooming and temperament, no one can deny that in terms of international exposure, the Philippines has been...

Writing in the Age of Tokhang: Message to the Fellows of the recently-concluded 57th U.P. National Writers Workshop for Mid-Career Authors

by Rolando B. Tolentino *Photos used with permission from Likhaan: University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing. Vlad Gonzales is this year's director of the...