Essay About Senior Year And Land Reform

Francisco Sionil Jose
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“No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.” – Francisco Sionil JoseHe was born on December 3, 1924, a widely acclaimed Filipino journalist and fictionist.The eldest among three children to Antonio and Sofia SionilSpent his whole childhood in Barrio Cabugawan, Rosales, Pangasinan.Married to Maria Teresa Jovellanos with whom he has seven children.After his father left their family, he had to struggle and support his family by means of raising hogs and working as a farm laborer.Attended Rosales Elementary School where one of his teachers, Soledad Oriel, inculcated in him his lifelong love of books.After he finished elementary school, JOSE went to live in Manila with his maternal uncle, where he did household chores in exchange for tuition at Far Eastern University High School (1939-1941). FRANKIE was in his senior year during World War II when the Japanese attacked Manila in December 1941 and schools were closed. Although it was three months short of the full term students were given credit for the year. High school thus completed, JOSE returned to his hometown. His mothers house in Barrio Cabugawan was burned down so the family stayed in Rosales with a second cousin that was a doctor. This cousin collected medicines, which he several times delivered to guerrillas.Schools were reopened in late 1943 and in June 1944 JOSE enrolled at Santo Tomas University in Manila. American air raids on the city began in September that year, and in November he and his mother returned to Rosales, walking for three days before they could find a calesa to take them the rest of the distance.As soon as the war was over JOSE returned to Manila and enrolled in premedical courses at the Manila College of Pharmacy and Dentistry, which he attended for one semester until the University of Santo Tomas again reopened.When it became apparent, however, that he was not suited for the sciences, he transferred to the faculty of liberal arts. Here his English teacher, Paz Latorena, who was, according to JOSE, a “wonderful writer” and who introduced him “to the finer aspects of literature”, encouraged his writing. During his years at the university JOSE lived with relatives in Manila in what he describes as “a very decrepit room right beside the railroad tracks” a room which he immortalized in his best-known novel, The PretendersIn addition to helping with household chores in return for room and board, JOSE worked for the U.S. Army as a checker in the port area from 6:00 p.m. to midnight.Soon he became a typist in the army office at night and he worked there until the office was disbanded five months later.Fortunately he was then able to obtain a paid position as assistant literary editor on the universitys newspaper, the Varsitarian and became in quick succession literary editor, managing editor and finally editor-in-chief.When he was a junior JOSE met fellow student Maria Teresita (Tessie) Jovellanos, who came from a “genteel middle class” family.Her families, JOSE recalls, received him civilly but were unhappy that their daughter was interested in an author: “they thought there was no future for writers.”After one year writing articles for USIS, JOSE was asked to join the staff of the Manila Times Sunday Magazine as an associate editor. He remained with the magazine for 10 years, eventually becoming managing editor.During these years JOSE began seriously to study and write about the problems of rural poverty and land reform.Ramon Magsaysay, first as defense minister and then as president, succeeded not only in breaking the movement militarily, but in gaining the confidence of the people by his efforts at land reform, resettlement and rural public works. In connection with his interest in land reform JOSE traveled, as a journalist, to different parts of the country, learning to his dismay that wealthy landgrabbers were still defrauding the peasantry as they had his own family years before. n 1955 JOSE received a Smith-Mundt Leader Grant from the U.S. Department of State to meet literary figures, such as the poet Robert Frost, critic Malcolm Cowley and John Crowe Ransom, poet and editor of the influential literary Kenyon Review (Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio). Two grants from the Asia Foundation one to visit the Middle East and Southeast Asia for one month (1955) and a second (1960) to revisit the United States and Southeast Asia and to tour South America enabled him not only to make further valuable contacts with other writers and journalists, but also to study land reform measures undertaken in those areas.JOSE has made a point of returning to the sites of the projects whose initial stages he had witnessed, whether overseas or in the Philippines. In his own country he revisited some project sites only to find they had quickly become ghost towns due, he says, “to the absence of planning or of basic knowledge of how farmers work.”PS. Di kumpleto to, ginawa ko nalang na after nyang marealize yung mga nangayyare sa pilipinas. Masyadong mahaba eh, pero kung gusto mo, ituloy. Go lang.Reasons for God Stealer, for me. HahahaActually it was a pretty good story which showcased the underlying problem of being a modernized Filipino, we often forgot where we came from just because there’s a better way of lifestyle that has been presented to us. In this particular story, Phillip can be coined as the Philippines and Sam can be coined as the America ( You know, Uncle Sam), it was a story about the relationship of the colonizer with the colonized. Jose presented the filipino, by means of Phillip, as a huge chunk of meat who are pretty much confused with pretty much everything. A birth era for the new or an old picture of the past. I mean it was pretty confusing really, sino ba ang ayaw sa modernong kapaligiran? Pero kung masisira yung preserved culture or tradition dahil sa inaasam na modernisasyon, parang dun na magkakaproblemsa. Just beacuse you wanted to be successful doesnt mean that you should disappoint the people who made you who you are. Parang yung sa Korean lang yan na nagspeech, na sobrang inggit sa pinoy kasi sobrang well-off sa buhay, samantalang sila after Korean war, they had to start from scratch, tayo we were coined to the Pearl of the Orient, with such magnificent culture, history and resources. But we took it for granted, sabi nung korean, wala daw kasi tayong pagmamahal sa sarili nating bayan, tama nga naman, madalas satin walang pakialam sa mga nangyayare eh.