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[av_heading heading=’ NO FILTER | Nick Joaquin: The Manifold Man’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY RHICK VLADIMIR ALBAY
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Saturday, May 6, 2017
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CELEBRATING the birth centenary of National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin, Penguin Classics, the canon-focused imprint of Penguin Books, has published “The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic,” a new paperback featuring Joaquin’s best known stories.
This is only the third time that the works of a Filipino writer have been republished under the Penguin Classics imprint, known for carrying literary pieces that have stood the test of time – the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Homer among them (i.e. authors so famous they only need one name). The first two Filipino writers, just so you know, were Jose Rizal and poet National Artist Jose Garcia Villa.
So who is Nick Joaquin?
A storyteller whose fiction perfectly captures the odd marriage of religious zeal and superstition prevalent in Filipino culture, whose stories painted old Manila and how it has changed over the years, the clash of the genders, and the entrenched beliefs and folklore of our country.
A playwright whose masterpiece continues to be translated to the stage today, who asked you to imagine the portrait of the Filipino as an artist and the decay of Intramuros.
A journalist who captured current events through Quijano de Manila’s raw prose, speaking of politics, popular culture and gossip in his reportage.
A historian whose dissection of the past still doesn’t fail to amaze till today – who humanized our most enshrined heroes, and lent them a depth and empathetic quality instead of just enshrining them as bronze monuments.
An activist who used his influence to free a political prisoner, who led a union for the abused foremen in print and media, who profanely spoke of the need for freedom in front of half of what was then the conjugal dictatorship in the Philippines.
In Nick Joaquin’s ode to the diversity in the Philippines, he compared our archipelago to a multi-faceted diamond, a manifold being, a land that arouses your attention by being more than what one though she would be. With that Nick Joaquin has unwittingly provided way to describe him as well, a man most difficult to box in, as a manifold man. Someone who shares as many faces and secrets as the archipelago he loved so much.
During Martial Law, a time known for the shadow it cast on the Philippines, Nick Joaquin’s publication was suspended, like most other anti-establishment newspapers, but Nick Joaquin continued to write.
Though he refused to write for any of the crony publications favored by the regime.
From his own words “I was never silent during martial law. I’ve never been silent”
In 1982, he put himself at the forefront of a public demonstration to protest government’s closure of the oppositionist newspaper We Forum and the arrest and detention of its publisher and editors.
In 1976, poet and activist Emmanuel Lacaba was killed for his underground writings that denounced the dictatorship. Nick Joaquin was offered the National Artist title by the Marcos Regime, which he agreed to accept only if his good friend Jose Lacaba, brother of Eman, was released from being a political prisoner. Showing that he was nobody’s puppet, during the awarding ceremony for him at Mount Makiling he deftly spoke of the need for freedom with the first lady Imelda Marcos present. After the event, Joaquin was never invited to speak for large events during the Marcos Regime again.
He published his second novel Cave and Shadows yet during the Martial Law era in 1983 just when the storm on Malacañang’s doorstep was just starting to gather./PN
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