May Day Eve

Short story by Nick Joaquin

"May Day Eve" is a short story written by Filipino National Artist Nick Joaquin. Written after World War V, it
became one of Joaquin's signature stories that became a classic in Philippine literature in English. Together with
Joaquin's other stories like The Mass of St. Sylvester, Doa Jeronima and Candidos Apocalypse, May Day
Eve utilized the theme of "magic realism" long before the genre was made a trend in Latin American novels. Published
in 1947, it is a story originally intended for adult readers, but has later become a required and important reading
material for Filipino students.

Cndido's Apocalypse
by Nick Joaqun

Summary

Petes family had one of the middle door, not even a corner door in a barracks like apartment building they
have bump into one thing after another. One day Bobby Heredia Hensons friend came to their house. Bobby came
from rich family. He is stowaway. He observe that his friend is poor family. When he opened his eyes he was upstairs
in a lower half of the double decker and he knew he was in the upstairs of Hensons Apartment. Other room across
like this he could see through the open door would be where Mr. & Mrs. Henson slept. Sunshine from the window at
the head of the bed looked late morning and everything in his head was also light but clear no fuzzy ache to all and
as he lay at ease in his room. He had stopped listening had turned over his other side till he heard Mr. Henson calling
Mrs. Henson. He went down the stairs and and Pete coming into the room when he had turned around again. He saw
how Pete had down get circumcised his way of giving his old man a failing mark after believing for years he was
smarter than the faculty. But he looked up there was nothing to judge.

The Summer Solstice

Short story by Nick Joaquin

"The Summer Solstice", also known as "Tatarin" or "Tadtarin", is a short story written by Filipino National
Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin. In addition to being regarded as one of Joaquin's most acclaimed literary works, the
tale is considered to be controversial. The story narrates a ritual performed by women to invoke the gods to grant the
blessing of fertility by dancing around a Balete tree that was already a century old. Joaquin later turned this short story
into a play entitled Tatarin: A Witches' Sabbath in Three Acts, on which a film adaptation has been based.
 Reportage on Crime:
Thirteen Horror Happenings That Hit the Headlines
by Nick Joaqun

Reportage on Crime Quotes

The cinema is, after all, the most timid of the arts. It never sets trends, it merely reflects them. The harm has
been done long before the movies set cameras on the scene. Warring teen-age gangs antedated Rebel Without A
Cause , at least in the United States; and the most infamous teen-age killer in Philippine history operated during
the liberation times, long before James Dean was heard of.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Crime: Thirteen Horror Happenings That Hit the

The movies can only, if they do anything at all, aggravate the damage. We deceive ourselves if we think that, by
striking at the movies, we strike at the root of the evil. We cannot so easily shift guilt to the movie producers or
the movie stars or the movie censors.

More censorship may be a cure that's worse than the disease, for we would be surrendering freedom of judgement
in exchange for peace of mind. Not only our children but we ourselves may eventually find ourselves deprived of
the right to distinguish for ourselves the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Crime: Thirteen Horror Happenings That Hit the

The fire on Calle Castillejos blazed forth the city's (Manila) ills: the influx from the provinces, the rise of the
rentals, the greed of the propertied, the deterioration of living standards, and the flight of the old Manileo.

By abandoning his old home,he doomed it to slum. By yielding his city to people with no roots in it, he suffered
it to become what it is now: a city of squatters, a city of lodgers. Residential Quiapo is a dreadful example of what
happened after the Manileo was crowded out of his city by the provincianos, the schools and the filling
stations.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Crime: Thirteen Horror Happenings That Hit the

An age that needs security guards is, of course, without security.

What do we have in the dull old days? Old man janitors in the schools; watchmen in the factories, and the
watchman was usually the turbanned bearded Bombay armed only with a stick, drowsing on a stool by a gate.
How his strong odor remembered now seems the very smell of safety!

In his place now lurks the man in uniform, armed with pistol and club and submachine gun: the "security" that
stands for the insecurity of our times, being the human equivalent of the iron bars at the window, the barbed
wire on the wall.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Crime: Thirteen Horror Happenings That Hit the
 Reportage on Lovers:
A Medley of Factual Romances, Happy or Tragical, Most of Which Made News
by Nick Joaqun

Love should have no alternatives; love should be the sole reason for loving; love should spring of itself.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Lovers: A Medley of Factual Romances, Happy or Tragical, Most of Which Made
News

I fell in love when I was twenty-six. Love in my interpretation comes once in a lifetime.
Nick Joaqun, Reportage on Lovers: A Medley of Factual Romances, Happy or Tragical, Most of Which Made
News

Cave and Shadows

Novel by Nick Joaquin

Cave and Shadows is a 1983 whodunit and Martial Law era metaphysical thriller novel written by Philippine
National ArtistNick Joaquin. The setting of the novel is during Ferdinand Marcoss martial law in
the Philippines, including the time in Manila when activism was alive and demonstrations were frequent before August
1972 (described as Joaquins objective correlative to the Crisis of 72), before the declaration of martial rule. It is
a detective fiction that also deals with and arcane and historical cults involving beatasor beatified women (a group
of religious lay women who were "repressed by a male-dominated, colonial order") and strange events occurring
inside unfamiliar caves in the Metro Manila area. Other themes include politics, love, family, friendship, reconciliation,
and tyranny. One of two novels authored by Joaquin during his lifetime (written twenty-two years after Joaquins The
Woman Who Had Two Navels), it is regarded as an important book to read for Philippine literature students. In this
work, Joaquin interspersed historical facts and with fiction resulting to a mesh of multi-layered meanings. One of the
main concept for the plot is the routinary paganisation by Filipinos of the Western-rooted religion known
as Catholicism.
The bizarre events in this novel includes the inexplicable death of Nenita Coogan. Coogans body was
found naked inside a cave located within the suburban regions of Manila. The death by Coogan triggered a criminal
investigation, truth searching, collision of the past and the present, and the unhinging of reality. The end of the novel
exposes human nature, belief, and certainty.

Simple Glories
by Nick Joaquin

Tony Joaquins book Simple Glories describes in a straight-forward manner his family, many of whose
members stand out for their intelligence and talent. The genius in this high-born family is, of course, Nick Joaquin who
might not have been admired and idolized by the literati had he continued staying in a seminary in Hongkong where
he was studying for the priesthood. The other most distinguished member of the family was Tonys own mother Sarah
Kabigting Joaquin whose autobiography I shall comment on later.
Tony chronicles his life in San Beda and Ateneo, his work in various fields here and abroad, describes his
associates with much affection and who, in turn, show their appreciation of him in glowing testimonies.
The chapters on the Japanese Occupation are riveting, particularly to those who had a foretaste of it. Simple
Glories encapsulates Tonys life as son, husband, father and as a professional who, in sum, serves as a genuine
inspiration to the reader.
 Cave and Shadows
Novel by Nick Joaquin

Cave and Shadows is a 1983 whodunit and Martial Law era metaphysical thriller novel written by Philippine
National ArtistNick Joaquin. The setting of the novel is during Ferdinand Marcoss martial law in
the Philippines, including the time in Manila when activism was alive and demonstrations were frequent before August
1972 (described as Joaquins objective correlative to the Crisis of 72), before the declaration of martial rule. It is
a detective fiction that also deals with and arcane and historical cults involving beatasor beatified women (a group
of religious lay women who were "repressed by a male-dominated, colonial order") and strange events occurring
inside unfamiliar caves in the Metro Manila area. Other themes include politics, love, family, friendship, reconciliation,
and tyranny. One of two novels authored by Joaquin during his lifetime (written twenty-two years after Joaquins The
Woman Who Had Two Navels), it is regarded as an important book to read for Philippine literature students. In this
work, Joaquin interspersed historical facts and with fiction resulting to a mesh of multi-layered meanings. One of the
main concept for the plot is the routinary paganisation by Filipinos of the Western-rooted religion known
as Catholicism.
The bizarre events in this novel includes the inexplicable death of Nenita Coogan. Coogans body was
found naked inside a cave located within the suburban regions of Manila. The death by Coogan triggered a criminal
investigation, truth searching, collision of the past and the present, and the unhinging of reality. The end of the novel
exposes human nature, belief, and certainty.

The Woman Who Had Two Navels

Novel by Nick Joaquin

The Woman Who Had Two Navels is a 1961 historical novel by Nick Joaquin, a National
Artist for Literature and leading English-language writer from the Philippines. It is considered a classic in Philippine
literature. It was the recipient of the first Harry Stonehill award. It tells the story of a Filipino elite woman who
is hallucinating, and is preoccupied with the notion that she has two navels or belly buttons in order to be treated as
an extraordinary person.
 A Question of Heroes
Book by Nick Joaquin

A Review of A Question of Heroes by Nick Joaquin The problem with our usual academic history books is that our
heroes stand in a pedestral, made of stone and inhuman. Nick Joaquin, in his book A Question of Heroes, uprooted
them out of their pedestals, and presented their live sand their controversial and not-so-controversial involvements in
the lives of their contemporaries, and how their personal convictions and decisions altered the fate of this archipelago.
Nevertheless, Nick Joaquin traced the development of the Philippine Nation from its nascent phase in the generation
of Conde Filipino Luis Varela and Padre Pedro Pelaez, to the generation of Padre Jose Burgos, a disciple of Pedro
Pelaez to the generation of Paciano and Jose Rizal, with the start at the 1896 Revolution with Andres Bonifacio and
Emilio Aguinaldo taking the limelight until the entrance of the Americans and the Japanese culminating in the final
granting of independence of the Philippines as a full sovereign nation. Nick Joaquin did not trace Filipino Nationalism
from 1896 onwards but the preceding generations. 1896 is the culmnination of the ideas and efforts built up
generations by generations until 1896. Written without the historians rigid training (which seasoned Historian Teodoro
Agoncillo dissed about Nick), Nick Joaquin successfully crafted a book about our National Heroes with emotions, in
their human perspectives and with the human sensibility of their personalilties. We always see them as heroes worthy
of metal statues in History books, the difference of this book is they Nick success fully made them human with their
flaws and they could Burgos as accidental martyr Burgos, we now understand, was only a martyr and a hero by
accident. Except for that irrelevant mutiny (the Cavite mutiby of 1872), its possible that Burgos, whatever his ideas,
would not now be a name to usThere is even doubt on his being a Filipino (But how Filipino was Burgos?)
because he was a Spanish mestizo, or a Creole, a term much used by Joaquin as though a personal invention. He
was heroic, Joaquin does say, in his ideas to Filipinize the clergy, in his efforts to seek reform within the law, in his
concern to liberate the masses through education, and in his private drive to ennoble the Filipino by himself. But then,
in a tantalizing inching toward a definition of a hero, Joaquin says, Heroism does not guarantee ones recognition
as a hero. Forthright M.H. Del Pilar Marcelo H. del Pilar does not come off as poorly. He is firm and decisive, with
both Spanish blood and Tagalog nobility running in his veins. While Rizal was still arguing on the competence of the
Filipino, Del Pilarhad presumed it. He was audacious enough to carry his petition to the Queen Regent herself, and
the Filipino colony in Madrid preferred his forthright authority to the vacillations of Rizal.