It’s the second day of the week! It’s also time for a Top 5 Tuesday update. Top 5 Tuesdays was initially created by Shanah @ the Bionic Bookworm but is now currently being hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads.

This week’s topic: Top 5 books with rainbows on the cover

Unfortunately, I can’t find that many books with rainbows on the cover. As such, I will be deviating from this week’s topic. In its stead, I will be featuring five works of Philippine literature on my TBR. This is timely as the Philippines just celebrated its 125th Year of Independence yesterday. Happy Tuesday everyone!

Title: Marcosatubig
Author: Ramon Muzones
Translator: Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava
Publisher: Ateneo de Manila University Press
Publishing Date: 2012
No. of Pages: 220

Synopsis: 

Ramon L. Muzones claims his rightful place in the national literature of the Philippines with Cecilia Locsin-Nava’s English translation of Margosatubig, a Hiligaynon novel that was to re-write the history of the West Visayan fiction when it first appeared as a serial novel in 1946 in the pages of the popular magazine Yuhum. Muzones tells the story of a fictive Muslim state in Mindanao that loses its legitimate rulers through intrigue and treachery and how the hero-heir Salagunting leads the struggle to recover Margosatubig from the usurpers. Muzones shows himself a master of narrative invention in 30 installments that unfold a wealth of precolonial lore that blended romance, adventure, fantasy, subtle eroticism, and geographic information that so fascinated magazine readers and made Yuhum‘s weekly circulation jump from 2,500 to 37,000.

Dr. Nava’s is a wonder-work of an English translation, literate and literary, a rare, readable English version of a regional literary treasure. It is a lucid, unornamented rendition of the original Yuhum novel that manages quite effectively to suggest the delicious sensation of following the development, chapter by chapter, of the serialized popular novel. Through her labors, she has effectively secured for Muzones a position in the line-up for the title National Artist for Literature.

Title: The House on Calle Sombra
Author: Marga Ortigas
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2021
No. of Pages: 374

Synopsis: 

Portrait of a mixed race family grappling with identity and betrayal in a turbulent tropical island nation.

The House on Calle Sombra follows the fates and fortunes of the esteemed Castillo de Montijo family over three generations. Set in the Philippines – a tropical island nation where truth blends with fiction – none of the Castillos is quite as perceived. Successful patriarch Don Federico arrived from Spain a penniless orphan. Formidable matriarch Doña Fatimah is a native Muslim fugitive. And their brood of privileged descendants is struggling to live up to their famed and crested motto: FAMILY FIRST

Mirroring events int he country’s turbulent history, the Castillos’ perfect facade begins to fracture as shadows form their past return to claim their due.

Sardonic, witty, and brutally frank, The House on Calle Sobra is an ode to family, and a compelling exploration of how greed, love, and trauma are passed down through generations.

Title: I Was the President’s Mistress!!
Author: Miguel Syjuco
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publishing Date: 2022
No. of Pages: 362

Synopsis: 

Vita Nova, introverted megastar, only wished for a quiet life as the Philippines’ most-liked influencer, famous for her viral dance hit, the Mr. Sexy-Sexy – yet somehow she’s now headlining a rollicking impeachment and a battle royal for power.

In these previously unreleased transcripts, collected by Miguel Syjuco, the ghostwriter of her tell-all memoir, Vita rips the bodice of society to bare her heaving story. But some of her former lovers tell it differently, asking us: ” Who’s more sinful, the seduced or the seductress?”

You must decide, as thirteen indelible voices come alive in I Was the President’s Mistress!!, a dizzying tale of democracy in peril – which isn’t about the Philippines but a society uncannily like yours.

Come, confront today’s last taboos and hurtle headlong into love, sex, politics, freedom, faith – and the war over who will tell the stories the world will know as truth.

Title: Dogeaters
Author: Jessica Hagedorn
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 1991
No. of Pages: 251

Synopsis: 

Welcome to Manila in the turbulent period of the Philippine’s late dictator. It is a world in which American pop culture and local Filipino tradition mix flamboyantly, and gossip, storytelling, and extravagant behavior thrive.

A wildly disparate group of characters—from movie stars to waiters, from a young junkie to the richest man in the Philippines—becomes caught up in a spiral of events culminating in a beauty pageant, a film festival, and an assassination. In the center of this maelstrom is Rio, a feisty schoolgirl who will grow up to lice in America and look back with longing on the land of her youth.

Title: Crying Mountain
Author: Criselda Yabes
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 179

Synopsis: 

In Crying Mountain, the Moro Rebellion that broke out in the Sulu archipelago in the 1970s, and that continues to wound the nation, is seen vividly through the lives of the mestiza Rosy Wright, the Tausug girl Nahla, the rebel leader Professor Hassan, the soldier Captain Rodolfo as well as in the quest of the book’s narrator.

In Crying Mountain, the Moro Rebellion that broke out in the Sulu archipelago in the 1970s, and that continues to wound the nation, is seen vividly through the lives of the mestiza Rosy Wright, the Tausug girl Nahla, the rebel leader Professor Hassan, the soldier Captain Rodolfo as well as in the quest of the book’s narrator.

Title: The Preying Birds
Author: Amado V. Hernandez
Translator (from Tagalog): Danton Remoto
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Publishing Date: 2022 (1969)
No. of Pages: 434

Synopsis: 

A novel that continues the flaming social realism in the novels of the Philippine national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal.

Mando Plaridel is the lead character in this novel of social realism. His character combines the qualities found in Simoun and Ibarra, the two lead characters in national hero Jose Rizal’s novels: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Simoun is the passive character in Rizal’s novels while Ibarra is the active propagandist who wakes up the people from their centuries-old sleep under Spanish colonialism.

Mando starts out as Andoy, a houseboy in the house of the powerful Montero family. He works hard and gets himself a good education. After the war, society begins to know him as the brave editor of the Kampilan newspaper. He later becomes involved in the problems of the farmers with the abusive Monteros.

Told from an omniscient point of view, Hernandez is able to enter the consciousness of the wealthy characters. He shows how the ruling classes – the politicians, landowners, judges, deputies and bishops – only protect their own interests, that is why they do not want to change the status quo.

Dr. Sabio is the progressive president of a university founded by Mando, who used the treasure thrown into the sea at the end of Rizal’s second novel to help improve society. The money is used to fund Freedom University and set up Kampilan, the brave newspaper. The novel points to the cooperative system of land ownership as the way out for the landless poor. It implies that change can only begin when the eyes of society have been finally opened.