F. Sionil José

F. Sionil José Bust monument (Rosales, Pangasinan Presidencia).

The Inscription in the Monument (February 23, 2007).

José was born in Rosales, Pangasinan, the setting of many of his stories. He spent his childhood in Barrio Cabugawan, Rosales, where he first began to write. José is of Ilocano descent whose family had migrated to Pangasinan prior to his birth. Fleeing poverty, his forefathers traveled from Ilocos towards Cagayan Valley through the Santa Fe Trail. Like many migrant families, they brought their lifetime possessions with them, including uprooted molave posts of their old houses and their alsong, a stone mortar for pounding rice.[1][2][3][4]

One of the greatest influences to José was his industrious mother who went out of her way to get him the books he loved to read, while making sure her family did not go hungry despite poverty and landlessness. José started writing in grade school, at the time he started reading. In the fifth grade, one of José's teachers opened the school library to her students, which is how José managed to read the novels of José Rizal, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Faulkner and Steinbeck. Reading about Basilio and Crispin in Rizal's Noli Me Tangere made the young José cry, because injustice was not an alien thing to him. When José was five years old, his grandfather who was a soldier during the Philippine revolution, had once tearfully showed him the land their family had once tilled but was taken away by rich mestizo landlords who knew how to work the system against illiterates like his grandfather.[1][2][3][4]

José attended the University of Santo Tomas after World War II, but dropped out and plunged into writing and journalism in Manila. In subsequent years, he edited various literary and journalistic publications, started a publishing house, and founded the Philippine branch of PEN, an international organization for writers.[1][2] José received numerous awards for his work. The Pretenders is his most popular novel, which is the story of one man's alienation from his poor background and the decadence of his wife's wealthy family.[3][4]

José Rizal's life and writings profoundly influenced José's work. The five volume Rosales Saga, in particular, employs and integrates themes and characters from Rizal's work.[7] Throughout his career, José's writings espouse social justice and change to better the lives of average Filipino families. He is one of the most critically acclaimed Filipino authors internationally, although much underrated in his own country because of his authentic Filipino English and his anti-elite views.[1][2][3][4]

"Authors like myself choose the city as a setting for their fiction because the city itself illustrates the progress or the sophistication that a particular country has achieved. Or, on the other hand, it might also reflect the kind of decay, both social and perhaps moral, that has come upon a particular people."

— F. Sionil José, BBC.com, 30 July 2003[1]

Sionil José also owns Solidaridad Bookshop, which is on Padre Faura Street in Ermita, Manila. The bookshop offers mostly hard-to-find books and Filipiniana reading materials. It is said to be one of the favorite haunts of many local writers.[1][2][3][4]

In his regular column, Hindsight, in The Philippine STAR, dated 12 September 2011, he wrote "Why we are shallow", blaming the decline of Filipino intellectual and cultural standards on a variety of modern amenities, including media, the education system—particularly the loss of emphasis on classic literature and the study of Greek and Latin—and the abundance and immediacy of information on the Internet.[8]

A five-novel series that spans three centuries of Philippine history, translated into 22 languages

• Po-on (Source) (1984) ISBN 971-8845-10-0
• The Pretenders (1962) ISBN 971-8845-00-3
• My Brother, My Executioner (1973) ISBN 971-8845-16-X
• Mass (December 31, 1974) ISBN 0-86861-572-2
• Tree (1978) ISBN 971-8845-14-3

• Source (Po-on) (1993) ISBN 0-375-75144-0
• Don Vicente (1980) ISBN 0-375-75243-9 – Tree and My Brother, My Executioner combined in one book
• The Samsons ISBN 0-375-75244-7 The Pretenders and Mass combined in one book

• Three Filipino Women (1992) ISBN 9780307830289
• Two Filipino Women (1981) ISBN 9711001136

• The God Stealer and Other Stories (2001) ISBN 971-8845-35-6
• Puppy Love and Thirteen Short Stories (March 15, 1998) ISBN 971-8845-26-7 and ISBN 978-971-8845-26-4
• Olvidon and Other Stories (1988) ISBN 971-8845-18-6
• Platinum: Ten Filipino Stories (1983) ISBN 971-8845-22-4 (now out of print, its stories are added to the new version of Olvidon and Other Stories)
• Waywaya: Eleven Filipino Short Stories (1980) ISBN 99922-884-0-X
• Asian PEN Anthology (as editor) (1966)
• Short Story International (SSI): Tales by the World's Great Contemporary Writers (Unabridged, Volume 13, Number 75) (co-author, 1989) ISBN 1-55573-042-6

• The Molave and The Orchid (November 2004)

• Questions (1988)

• In Search of the Word (De La Salle University Press, March 15, 1998) ISBN 971-555-264-1 and ISBN 978-971-555-264-6
• We Filipinos: Our Moral Malaise, Our Heroic Heritage
• Soba, Senbei and Shibuya: A Memoir of Post-War Japan ISBN 971-8845-31-3 and ISBN 978-971-8845-31-8
• Heroes in the Attic, Termites in the Sala: Why We are Poor (2005)
• This I Believe: Gleanings from a Life in Literature (2006)
• Literature and Liberation (co-author) (1988)

• Zajatec bludného kruhu (The Pretenders) (Czech language, Svoboda, 1981)
• Po-on (Tagalog language, De La Salle University Press, 1998) ISBN 971-555-267-6 and ISBN 978-971-555-267-7
• Anochecer (Littera) (Spanish language, Maeva, October 2003) ISBN 84-95354-95-0 and ISBN 978-84-95354-95-2

• Tong (a short story from Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Philippine Literature in English by Luis Francia, Rutgers University Press, August 1993) ISBN 0-8135-1999-3 and ISBN 978-0-8135-1999-9

• Francisco Sionil José – A Filipino Odyssey by Art Makosinski (Documentary, in color, 28min, 16mm. Winner of the Golden Shortie for Best Documentary at the 1996 Victoria Film and Video Festival)[11]