Revolutionary Routes…

… Five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980 is the title of the book i’ve been working on for the last 5 years (10 years if i count the encoding and editing of my mother’s translation) that i’m self-publishing and launching on august 20, come rain or come shine :)

it’s based on the memoirs of my lola concha (1886-1980) that she started writing in 1974-76 at age 88 (!) all in spanish, 894 pages typewritten double-space, bound into three volumes.

much of it is very personal and mundane and everyday, growing up in sariaya, tayabas (now quezon province), recounting the early history of her parents and grandparents, and then her pagdadalaga and being swept off her feet by a former revolutionary soldier who had fought side by side with miguel malvar, and how the family acquired land through sariling sikap, and developed these into coconut and rice plantations.

but parts of it, through the decades, are highly political — close encounters with the powers-that-be — in the time of the friars, of the 1896 revolution, of the fil-am war, of the american regime in the time of quezon, of the japanese occupation, and post-war in the time of magsaysay’s anti-huk campaign.

stuff i thought were eminently worth sharing asap (while waiting for a publisher of the entire work), especially because none of the five stories has made it to our history books.