Morning in Nagrebcan About the Author : Manuel Estabillo Arguilla (1911-1944) was anIlokano writer in English, patriot, and martyr. He is known for his widely anthologized short story “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife,” the main story in the collection “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Short Stories” which won first prize in the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940. His stories “Midsummer” and “Heat” was published in the United States by the Prairie Schooner. Most of Arguilla’s stories depict scenes in Barrio Nagrebcan,Bauang, La Union where he was born.
His bond with his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of Ilocos, remained strong even after he moved to Manila where he studied at the University of the Philippines where he finished BS Education in 1933and where he became a member and later the president of the U. P. Writer’s Club and editor of the university’s Literary Apprentice. He married Lydia Villanueva, another talented writer in English, and they lived in Ermita, Manila. He became a creative writing teacher at the University of Manila and later worked at the Bureau of Public Welfare as managing editor of the bureau’s publication Welfare Advocate until 1943.
He was later appointed to the Board of Censors. He secretly organized a guerrilla intelligence unit against the Japanese. In October 1944, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Japanese army at Fort Santiago. Setting : It was sunrise at Nagrebcan. The fine, bluish mist, low over the tobacco fields, was lifting and thinning moment by moment. Characters : Baldo – ten year old boy Ambo – seven year old brother of baldo Tang Ciako – father of baldo and ambo Nana Elang – mother of baldo and ambo Theme : Point of view : Third person Sypnosis : Title : Footnote to youth
About the author : Jose Garcia Villa was a consummate artist in poetry and in person as well. At parties given him by friends and admirers whenever he came home for a brief visit, things memorable usually happened. Take that scene many years ago at the home of the late Federico Mangahas, a close friend of Villa’s. The poet, resplendent in his shiny attire, his belt an ordinary knotted cow’s rope, stood at a corner talking with a young woman. Someone in the crowd remarked: “What’s the idea wearing a belt like that? ” No answer. Only the faint laughter of a woman was heard.
Or was it a giggle perhaps? Then there was one evening, with few people around, when he sat down Buddha-like on a semi-marble bench under Dalupan Hall at UE waiting for somebody. That was the year he came home from America to receive a doctor’s degree, honoris causa, from FEU. Somebody asked: “What are you doing? ” He looked up slowly and answered bemused: “I am just catching up trying to be immoral. ” Sounded something like that. There was only murmuring among the crowd. They were not sure whether the man was joking or serious. They were awed to learn that he was the famed Jose Garcia Villa.
What did the people remember? The Buddha-like posture? Or what he said? That was Villa the artist. There’s something about his person or what he does or says that makes people gravitate toward him. Stare at him or listen to him. Villa is the undisputed Filipino supremo of the practitioners of the “artsakists. ” His followers have diminished in number but are still considerable. Villa was born in Singalong, Manila, on 05 August 1908. His parents were Simeon Villa, personal physician of revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo, and Guia Garcia.
He graduated from the UP High School in 1925 and enrolled in the pre-med course. He didn’t enjoy working on cadavers and so he switched to pre-law, which he didn’t like either. A short biography prepared by the Foreign Service Institute said Villa was first interested in painting but turned to writing after reading Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio. ” Meanwhile, he devoted a good part of his time writing short stories and poems. Soon he started exerting his leadership among the UP writers. His ideas on literature were provocative. He stirred strong feelings.
He was thought too individualistic. He published his series of erotic poems, “Man Songs” in 1929. It was too bold for the staid UP administrators, who summarily suspended Villa from the university. He was even fined P70 for “obscenity” by the Manila Court of First Instance. With the P1,000 he won as a prize from the Philippines Free Press for his “Mir-i-Nisa,” adjudged the best short story that year (1929), he migrated to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico where he edited and published a mimeographed literary magazine he founded: Clay.
Several young American writers who eventually became famous contributed. Villa wrote several short stories published in prestigious American magazines and anthologies. Setting : The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Characters : Dodong – main character of the story who got married at the age of 17 Teang – regretted marrying at an early age Lucio – Teang’s other suitor who got married after she did and who’s childless until now Blas – Dodong and Teang’s oldest son who followed their footsteps in the end. Blas contemplated to marry Tona when he was 18. Tona – woman whom Blas wants to marry.
Theme : The theme of the story “footnote to youth” means that people would always go with their feelings, without hesitations, they will do anything for the sake of love. Point of view : Third person Sypnosis : It was a story of a boy who was only 17 when he decides to marry his love one. He was dodong, and he love teang so much that he could not wait for the right age to settle down in a relationship that is hard to escape. It’s the “marriage”. At the age of 17 dodong and teang got married without thinking of the risk being in an uneasy part of life. They just follow what they feel.
They don’t think what would happen in their future. They got a child. Teang realized how hard being a young parent. Her regret of she had done and think, what would be my life if i marry my other suitors instead of dodong? Can I have the same life as of now? She regrets so much of!! Until one day, when their son grow. He follows the footsteps of his parents. He wants to marry also at the age of 17. He told his parents what his plans. Dodong have nothing to do but explain how hard and how risky to be in “marriage “at the young age.. But like dodong before, his son also wants to pursue what he wants.
The lesson we can learn is that marriage can wait the right time, if we want to be in this stage of life, we must prepare ourselves against the risk of it. I know we can all be in to it if we like too but not at the young age. This would be a lesson for youth like me. Jose Garcia villa is a great write coz aside from having nice story; he also had the point of view where we can have the knowledge of something related to what will happen to us. Title : The Wedding Dance About the author : Amador T. Daguio was a poet, novelist and teacher during the pre-war. He was best known for his fictions and poems.
He had published two volumes of poetry, “Bataan Harvest” and”The Flaming Lyre”. He served as chief editor for the Philippine House of Representatives before he died in 1966. Daguio was born 8 January 1912 in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, but grew up in Lubuagan, Mountain Province, where his father, an officer in the Philippine Constabulary, was assigned. He was class valedictorian in 1924 at the Lubuagan Elementary School. Then he stayed with his uncle at Fort William McKinley to study at Rizal High School in Pasig. Those four years in high school were, according to Daguio, the most critical in his life. I spent them literally in poverty, extreme loneliness, and adolescent pains …In my loneliness, I began to compose verses in earnest. ”8 He was in third year high when he broke into print in a national weekly, The Sunday Tribune Magazine (11 July 1926), with a poem, “She Came to Me. ” He was going to be valedictorian or salutatorian, but his teacher in “utter lack of justice …put down my marks in history—my favorite subject. That just about broke my heart because then I would have had free tuition at the U. P. ”9 Thus out of school for the first semester in 1928, he earned his tuition (P60. 0) by serving as houseboy, waiter, and caddy to officers at Fort McKinley. He enrolled for the second semester with only P2. 50 left for books and other expenses. He commuted between the Fort and Padre Faura, Manila, walking about two kilometers from Paco station twice daily. He would eat his lunch alone on Dewey Blvd. and arrive at the Fort about 9 o’clock in the evening. This continued for three years. Then an uncle arrived from Honolulu who paid his tuition during his third year; before this, he worked Saturday and Sunday as printer’s devil at the U.
P. and served as Philippine Collegian reporter. During all this time, he learned the craft of writing from Tom Inglis Moore, an Australian professor at U. P. , and was especially grateful to A. V. H. Hartendorp of Philippine Magazine. His stories and poems appeared in practically all the Manila papers. One of ten honor graduates at U. P. in 1932, he returned to teach at his boyhood school in Lubuagan; in 1938, he taught at Zamboanga Normal School where he met his wife Estela. They transferred to Normal Leyte School in 1941 before the Second World War.
During the Japanese Occupation, he joined the resistance and wrote poems in secret, later collected as Bataan Harvest. 1 0 He was a bosom-friend of another writer in the resistance, Manuel E. Arguilla. In 1952, he obtained his M. A. in English at Stanford U. as a Fulbright scholar. His thesis was a study and translation of Hudhud hi Aliguyon (Ifugao Harvest Song). In 1954, he obtained his Law degree from Romualdez Law College in Leyte. Daguio was editor and public relations officer in various offices in government and the military. He also taught for twenty-six years at the University of the East, U.
P. , and Philippine Women’s University. In 1973, six years after his death, Daguio was conferred the Republic Cultural Heritage Award. Setting : Characters : Awiyao – a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. Lumnay – Madulimay Point of view : Sypnosis : This is sad story of a man, Awiyao, who in spite of being in love with his wife, Lumnay, feels the need to marry another in order to have a son. According to the story if a man does not have a son he is considered to be inferior to others in their community.
It is not a case of not loving Lumnay, which he does, but of his perceived necessity of a son to be considered a man. He is however, insensitive believing the answer to Lumnay’s sorrow would be to join the other women at the wedding dance. Little regard for her feelings and the willingness to abandon her seem to be the predominate thoughts in the author’s mind. She seems to obsess over the necklace of his grandmother which he had given her. Towards the end of the story I had the feeling she contemplated suicide but in the end changed her mind.
