F. Sionil Jose: A portrait of a great Filipino writer
To introduce Francisco Sionil Jose, also known as F. Sionil Jose, as a mere novelist-writer would be so insufficient. F. Sionil Jose is much more than that. Anyone who has been following the Philippine literary scene religiously would have heard about the breadth, the ingenuity, and the passion with which the 86-year-old National Artist for Literature is known for.
Born on December 3, 1924, F. Sionil Jose is one of the most widely-read Filipino writers in the English language. His works have been translated into 22 languages including Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, and Russian.
His works are usually replete with social underpinnings on the class struggles as well as the colonialism in Philippine society. Even as a young kid, Jose already had a firm understanding about justice, corruption, inequality, and other social issues. He learned much from growing up in a somewhat destitute living condition in Barrio Cabugawan in Rosales, Pangasinan.
Jose was of Ilocano descent; his family migrated to Pangasinan before his birth. To flee from poverty, his family traveled from Ilocos towards Cagayan Valley, through the Santa Fe Trail, bringing with them their lifetime possessions including uprooted molave posts of their old houses and their alsong, a stone mortar for pounding rice.
But even if his family was having a hard time trying to make both ends meet, his mother Sofia would go out of her way to bring him books he would read with a flickering candle to shine on the words. He remembered his mother teaching him to read at a young age. His mother learned English from the Thomasites, the first American teachers who came to the Philippines after the Philippine-American war in 1902.
The moment he learned how to read was also the beginning of his successful writing career. He was in grade school when he found his passion for writing. That time, one of his teachers opened the school library to her students. And there, Jose met the most brilliant writers. He got to know Willa Cather as he perused "My Antonia." He also had encounters with Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
He became acquainted with Jose Rizal as he read and reread the National Hero’s novels — "Noli Me Tangere" and "El Filibusterismo".Reading about Basilio and Crispin made the young Jose cry. He could relate with the injustice that the characters experienced under the Spanish colonizers because injustice was not new to him.
When he was five years old, he remembered seeing his father who was a brave soldier during the revolution, on the verge of tears as he showed Jose the land which used to belong to their family. The land was taken away by the rich mestizo landlords who knew how to work around the system against the illiterates.
Suffice it to say, Jose believes that Jose Rizal is the greatest Filipino writer of all time. In fact, Rizal’s life and writings greatly influenced José’s works. The five-volume "Rosales Saga" – consisting of "The Pretenders", "Tree", "My Brother", "My Executioner", "Mass", and "Po-on" – has a touch of Rizal’s writing style, employing themes and characters from Rizal’s famous works.
After World War II, Jose tried to further develop his writing by taking up classes at the University of Santo Tomas, but he dropped out. Instead, he was swept by the whirlpool of the journalism world in Manila. He edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for writers.
He later opened Solidaridad Bookshop, located at Padre Faura Street in Ermita, Manila, which offers mostly hard-to-find books and Filipiniana reading material and has become a favorite rendezvous of many Filipino writers.
Even though he has received numerous awards and recognitions such as the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts in 1999, the Outstanding Fulbrighters Award for Literature in 1988, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts in 1980, and has been one of the most critically-acclaimed Filipino authors internationally, Jose is somehow underrated in the Philippines because of his authentic Filipino English and his anti-elite views.
When asked why he writes in English instead of Filipino or his native Ilocano tongue, Jose enthuses: “I’m comfortable with English. You have to use the language you know best. Language is very, very important. I’m having a hard time writing in Filipino or in Ilocano. It is quite hard to translate the nuances of the Ilocano language into English without being literal. But to make English truly mine, I have to decolonize it, give it a Filipino timbre, to give English literature a flavor of our own country.”
If he could, he would certainly write in his native language, Ilocano. He loves to listen to the language that he would take a trip to his literary geography – sometimes with a group of expatriates or local writers, and other times, with his wife. He would visit Rosales, his hometown and proceed to Tayug where the Colorum uprising occurred in 1971, before heading to Binalonan, where Carlos Bulosan was born. Then, he would head to Bauang, La Union where Ilocano writer Manuel Arguilla was born, then onward to Ilocos Sur to Santa Maria, and to Cabugao where his "Rosales Saga" started.
And his reason for his frequent travels to the North? “To state it on a romantic level, I go there to nurture my roots, to look again at old familiar places, to listen to a language I rarely use. To be pretentious about it, I go there to refurbish my memory.”
While he writes in English, it doesn’t mean he has no heart for the Filipino language, or he isn’t nationalistic. It is actually quite the opposite. He so much loves his country that he writes for clarity – for the people who will read his works to understand and empathize with the Filipinos and the country they are living in.
He once wrote: “The soul and reality of people are in their arts, in their literature, their songs. Literature teaches us history. We get to know our country and ourselves through literature.”
The sheer volume of his writings may have put him in the forefront of Philippine literature, but it is the consistent championing of the aspirations of the Filipino people, the sovereignty, and the social justice that give life to F. Sionil Jose’s words. - Article courtesy of Manila Bulletin.
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