 play in verse from the PH depicting the
PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION REVIEWER
ON 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE
PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
GRADE 11, SECOND SEMESTER
21ST CENTURY REGIONAL PH LITERATURE
 The PH has an archipelagic nature.
 diverse environment
 Our ancestors developed separate cultures
and languages. (182 living languages)
 Reading literature from other regions
 There is a need to read more works from
outside of NCR, wherein sophisticated and
popular literature is prominent.
 Literature from “the center” thus appears to
be more valid to the readers who do not
question the dated Manila-centric view of PH
literature.
 NCR authors are just of one group in the
constellation of PH authors.
 21st century technology can help propel this
goal into something obtainable.
 Some 21st century PH literature can be found
in blogs, online newspapers, online
magazines, online journals, etc.
 may help in building bridges across the
archipelago for us to be able to indulge in
regional literature
LITERARY GENRES
 Realism
 literary movement that represents reality by
portraying mundane, everyday experiences
as they are in real life
 movement in film, art, drama, and literature
 strives for an objective and accurate
representation
 Fantasy
 involves witchcraft or magic, taking place on
an undiscovered planet of an unknown world
 setting and story is “out of this world”
 “a whole new world”
 Fairytale – takes place in the real world but with
the touch of magic and supernaturalism
 PH Literary Types
a) Pasyon – epic narrative of the life, passion,
and death of Jesus Christ
b) Senakulo – theatrical rendition of life, death,
and resurrection of Christ performed annually
during Holy Week in lowland PH
c) Komedya
Christian saints, real events, or imaginary
kingdoms
 theater dramatization of the conflicts
between Christian and Muslim heroes
usually ending with the victory of the
Christian and conversion of Muslims to
Christianity
d) Corrido
 popular narrative song and poetry that
forms a ballad
 songs are often about oppression
 Novel
 long, fictional narrative which describes
intimate human experiences
 Narrative Prose: meant to entertain and tell a
story; a description of a chain of events which
includes a cast of characters, a setting, and
an ending
 Myths
 traditional stories that are created within
cultures in order to offer explanation for
phenomenon
 Main Characters: gods, goddesses,
superhumans
 Folklore
 collection of fictional stories about animals
and people of cultural myths, jokes, songs,
tales, and even quotes
 defined as stories, customs, and beliefs, in a
culture that are unwritten and passed down
orally
 “kuwentong bayan”
 Legends
 explain events and realities, but the former
are more secular narratives, which developed
out of closer ties to the local
 revolve around a cultural fact or given that
merits contemplation by members
FLOWERS IN THE CRYPT
BY CATHERINE GARCIA DARIO
The woman in the photos was not there when Lolo
died. She was not there when they wrapped up his
body and wheeled him to the morgue, nor was she
at his wake when each of us bent to kiss his cold,
pallid forehead. On the day the oven lit up, I
expected her to burst through the door, press her
face against the glass divider and weep while Lolo
turned into ash. But the funeral went by along with
the rosaries and novenas, plates of puto and pan
de sal; the ornate flower arrangements embellished
with long, silk ribbons that read: OUR DEEP
CONDOLENCES TO THE GARCIA FAMILY. I
waited for her; I imagined her wearing the siler
cocktail dress that we found under Lolo’s bed I
remembered how Lola whipped out her scissors
and cut it until it was nothing more but a pile of
shredded satin.
I did not know about Remedios—that was her
name, I found out soon after—because Lolo hid her
very well. She was invisible during our beach trips,
when he would prop me on his shoulders and carry
me along the shore. He would tell me all his stories
about his hometown, his adventures in the war, my
beautiful Lola and how much he loved her. He told
me neither of the house in Antipolo and the cousin
I’ve never met, and when I learned them through
the cigarettes and coffee my mother and her sisters
medidated over, I felt Remedios creep up on me
like a ghost. I did not know if Lolo really loved us,
and I was not sure if he really knew how.
There was a moment, sixty years ago, in his home
in Bataan. My mother told me that my great-
grandma stood at the top of the stairs, hurling at
her husband a heavy, leather suitcase. Lolo sat on
the carpet below, listening to her scream that she
did not love him, and she never did. Out his father
went and in came another. Lolo’s mother had been
making love to his gangly pieano teacher for years,
and it took only the departure of his father to finally
conceive the three stepsiblings that Lolo eventually
grew up with. The next time he saw his father, he
was dressed in a black suit and standing over a
bullet-laden corpse. He was twelve-years-old with
half-a-dozen more siblings pressed against another
woman’s breast. He said that the woman didn’t
even know of him; he never expected her to.
He left for the war. The year the Japanese broke
into his house and took two of his half-sisters was
the same year he found himself outside their
military camp, telling the soldiers that he knew how
to cook rice and polish shoes. For nearly three
years he starched uniforms and poured sake,
almost collapsing under the defeaning siren of the
air raids that jolted him awake at night. When the
war was over, he went back home to his mother’s
house. By that time his piano teacher had died of
lupus, and she sat alone on the wicker chair,
scarcely lifting her head as as she told him: “Oh,
Exequiel. Buhay ka pala.”
He could not forget those words; how his mother’s
vacant eyes looked past his broad, stocky
shoulders and the moustache that grazed his upper
lip. He did not know her at all, and after she had
sold their piano, the only sound in their house was
the tapping of her fingernails against her tocador.
When Lolo left for university, she sat on the bench
and watched the bus whisk him away. He did not
say good-bye.
It was in Manila where Lolo started smoking; selling
handwritten poems off to friends and classmates
who wanted to please their lovers. He was
driftwood—taking in all sorts of odd jobs to pay for
the series of apartments that he rented. The only
way to finish his studies was to wake up at dawn
and open the gates of the university every morning,
and he was relentless at it. He became a journalist,
a businessman, a husband. He married Lola two
months after he published an article about the most
beautiful girl on campus: Narciza Cortez, 18 years
old. 5”1, curly hair, high cheekbones. Cebuana.
I had often thought that it was their abrupt,
passionate romance that led their marriage to ruin.
Lola sold her mother’s jewellery in order to pay for
the wedding, and not until Lolo landed a steady job
in the newspaper did they move out of his sister’s
house. He worked nights chasing after politicians,
inspecting car accidents; searching for tapeworms
in eateries. He came home to a wife too young and
too eager to bear a man with his ambition. She had
pools to swim in and cigarettes to smoke; she could
not wait for the phone to ring and Lolo’s Mustang to
appear in the garage. It was almost inevitable that
Remedios would come along.
I never met the woman, but all I know is that she
had long, white legs and copper hair at the time
Lolo hired her to work in his office. I do not know if
she was his secretary or another journalist—Lola
never told me, and my mother could not bring
herself to. But as the Polaroid showed, she was
tireless on the dance floor and she loved drinking
champagne. She was not as beautiful as Lola, but
Lolo took her to Japan and Switzerland; bought her
gowns and diamonds. He took their children to the
beach, and he also propped them on his shoulders
as they walked along the shore.
For years, I harbored a coagulated bitterness inside
me. My mother told me of the moment her car
came to a halt at the traffic light and found herself
staring at Lolo’s Mustang humming right next to
her. In the backseat was a girl wearing school
uniform, about ten years younger than she was.
That evening, when Lolo sat me on his lap and
read to me his copy of Don Quixote, his words
seemed to muck out of his throat. I could not listen;
could not look at him. How could I love somebody
who did not know how to love?
I was eleven years old when he got a stroke. The
phone call at two in the morning informed us that
Lolo had collapsed in his apartment and suffered
multiple seizures. The CT scan showed that his
brain had several distensions and swelled up his
skull like a balloon. I did not shed the lightest tear,
not even after he slipped into a coma. When the
drugs had seeped in and he finally opened his
eyes, he was no longer Lolo. He was a vegetable.
He lived for two more years. After months in
Medical City, we transferred him back to his
apartment in Makati. My mother converted his
bedroom into a hospital ward, and soon the
curtains smelled like antiseptic and drone of the
lifeline monitor filled our ears. I hated visiting him,
and I fabricated stories so that I wouldn’t have to
go: piles of homework, a migraine, “Sorry, I think I
have practice for the school play.” I grew numb to
the weeping of my family. Lolo was a shell, and so
was I.
On April 19, 2008, I held Lolo for the last time. I
remember standing above his pale, stiff cadaver as
the man wiped his face with an acrid-smelling
ointment. My mother insisted that the morgue was
too heavy for a young girl like me, but I insisted on
going. I wanted to know what it was like to look at a
dead person enveloped inside a cold casket. I
expected Lolo to open his eyes, sit up, stretch his
arms and say, “That was a good nap!” while
ambling out of the coffin with a glow on his face. It
was a scary, bizarre idea and when I touched the
icy coldness of his skin, I could not believe that I
wanted it to happen.
My family told me to give him a eulogy. I declined.
After watching Lola break down during the wake, I
was afraid that the same thing would happen to me.
I listened to my titos and titas recite speeches,
quote poetry or movies that Lolo liked. Friends of
his would come up to the podium and repeat
themselves with: “Exequiel was a remarkable man”
over and over again. I went home with the words
generous and loving glued to my brain. My chest
tightened as I thought about them.
The post-funeral events kept my family busy.
Distant relatives would appear out of nowhere,
carrying baskets of wine or fruit and sending in
cards that read: “We offer our deepest comforts.”
So many people came to the house to comfort my
heartsick Lola, and I could not count the number of
masses we attended; how many candles we lit;
how many friends that told me that my Lolo was in
a better place. I wondered if Lolo really went to
heaven. When I saw the flowers hanging on the
knob of his crypt, I knew that he did.
I was alone when I saw it. There hung a humble
bouquet of baby’s breath that was so small and
plain that it disappeared behind the extravagant
flower arrangements that spelled out Lolo’s name.
What drew me to it was the small card attached to
the thin ribbon that held the flowers together. There
were names written on it—the names of Lolo’s
other children. Below theirs was Remedios’
signature. Remedios—the woman who did not
come to Lolo’s funeral, the woman wom he had
four children with, the woman Lolo loved.
In that moment, I could see Remedios pacing
restlessly by her phone, waiting for somebody to
call the moment Lolo got his stroke. I could imagine
her hysterical in the arms of her children, begging
to see him as his brain engorged its memories
away. And I could imagine her sneaking timidly into
the crypt; attaching the flowers to the knob and
slipping away before anybody could see her.
Remedios mourned alone.
I could have pulled out the flower, torn them up like
her cocktail dress and her letters and her pictures.
But I could only think of Lolo, how he carried his
other children the way he carried me as I balanced
gingerly on his shoulders when he walked me down
the shore. How he pointed out the horizon, teased
me for being scared, and said, “You can try to swim
so far and never touch the sun,”—I realized that it
was not because Lolo did not know how to love, but
it was because he loved too much. I left the flowers
there, retreating back to the pew as my family lit
more candles and prayed. I thought of his father
walking out the door, the Japanese soldiers tugging
at his sisters’ hair; his nonchalant mother smoking
on the porch. It was then when I stood up, joined
my family and prayed.
EMMANDINIO
Highlight mo na lang yung major details sa story
or you want hanap ka ng summary sa internet
Pero mas maganda kung diyan ka na magbasa