Essay

Among the most iconic Filipino images of fathers are those showing our overseas Filipino workers coming home from, or leaving for, foreign shores to take on jobs for a better future for their families.  And more often than not, beyond the hugs and...

I lived in a big house with my widowed mother, a grandmother and an unmarried aunt. My mother, Sofia Villasin Peñaranda, was a schoolteacher. We would walk to school together. But after class, I would walk home with my classmates who would linger...

The Philippines Graphic shares with its readers the life, conviction, and passion of this much venerated, singularly gifted, and internationally-acclaimed film director whose best works spanned one of the most difficult junctures in our nation’s history. Written by multi-awarded poet, screenwriter, editor, and...

“How did Taling end up in our household, Mommy?”  I have turned my curiosity during the pandemic to our family history and my question to my Mom must have sent the neurons in her 90-year-old brain firing. But she did recall Taling’s story...

She was there when Philippines Graphic was born in June 1990. In those early days, Marra PL Lanot and her husband Jose “Pete” Lacaba were protégés of the late National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin, then the Editor-in-Chief of the Graphic.             Marra was...

The corridor was circular, lined with curved benches along the wall. Behind the benches were glass windows that overlooked the street below.    As you sat on those benches, you faced another glass window of a room with closed blinds to ensure the privacy...