Epic Tales of the Philippines is an anthology of epic stories, retold in narrative form, from original ballads and poems of major tribal groups of the country. Hitherto unpublished and published epics are expertly compiled and edited for individual reading and an invaluable source in the study of Philippine folkloristics and Asian literature.

Philippine Folk Literature: The Epics presents 23 folk epics collected from some 14 ethnolinguistic groups in the country. This is the eighth volume being added to the original 7-volume Philippine Folk Literature Series. Folk epics are long heroic narratives in verse which recount the adventures of tribal heroes and in the process express the customs, beliefs, and ideals of the people who sing them. The introductory essay, The Philippine Folk Epic, gives a detailed discussion of the features and characteristics of Philippine folk epics--their geographic distribution; epic singing and singers; the epic hero, his adventures and his outstanding qualities; epic conventions; dominant motifs; and the customs, beliefs, and values expressed in them. The epics are arranged in geographic order from north to south, starting with Lam-ang (Northern. Luzon), then to Labaw Donggon (Visayas), and on to Mindanao, w the greatest number of our folk epics come from (Tuwaang, Agyu, Bantugan, etc.). A distinctive feature of Philippine epic literature is that while other countries have one national epic hero, e.g., England's Beowulf, Spain's El Cid, etc., the Philippines has no national epic hero but more than a dozen tribal epic heroes. This volume thus gives the reader an opportunity to get acquainted with these folk epic heroes and the values and ideals they stand for. As in the other volumes in the Philippine Folk Literature Series, the selections are given in English translation, but a sampling of the text in the original language is given at the beginning of each selection.

From time to time since the American occupation of the Islands, Philippine folk-tales have appeared in scientific publications, but never, so far as the writer is aware, has there been an attempt to offer to the general public a comprehensive popular collection of this material.

The Historical Dictionary of the Philippines, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries.

Philippine Folk Literature: The Proverbs is Volume VI of the author's eight-volume Philippine Folk Literature Series. The present collection focuses on the proverb--a terse didactic statement, handed down through generations, the wisdom of many and the wit of one. It ordinarily suggests a course of action or passes judgment on a situation. This work is a national collection of Philippine proverbs--a putting together of available proverbs from allover the country, listed alphabetically, in dictionary fashion, according to the most significant word in their English translation. Thirty-six Philippine languages are represented in this collection. As an introduction to the collection, the essay Philippine Proverb Lore, is reprinted, to provide readers with an overview. For each entry, the following kinds of information are given: (1) the English translation, (2) the proverb in its original Philippine language or languages, (3) language label and source (collector/collections); and (4) foreign parallels, if any.

With Dusk (originally published in the Philippines as Po-on), F. Sionil Jose begins his five-novel Rosales Saga, which the poet and critic Ricaredo Demetillo called "the first great Filipino novels written in English." Set in the 1880s, Dusk records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales. Here commences the epic tale of a family unwillingly thrown into the turmoil of history. But this is more than a historical novel; it is also the eternal story of man's tortured search for true faith and the larger meaning of existence. Jose has achieved a fiction of extraordinary scope and passion, a book as meaningful to Philippine literature as One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature. "The foremost Filipino novelist in English, his novels deserve a much wider readership than the Philippines can offer."--Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books "Tolstoy himself, not to mention Italo Svevo, would envy the author of this story."--Chicago Tribune

The voluminous book provides a range of international theories and methodologies in analytical folklore investigations, and a classification scheme based on genre is offered as the system of taxonomy for Philippine traditional materials. Lopez counts on the regional folklorists to refine the classification according to the texts of their respective areas. The different genres, too, are explained and examined in another part of Lopez's study. The reader will definitely find interesting and useful, the illustrative examples for each genre.

In this wide-ranging cultural and political history of Filipinos and the Philippines, Vicente L. Rafael examines the period from the onset of U.S. colonialism in 1898 to the emergence of a Filipino diaspora in the 1990s. Self-consciously adopting the essay form as a method with which to disrupt epic conceptions of Filipino history, Rafael treats in a condensed and concise manner clusters of historical detail and reflections that do not easily fit into a larger whole. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History is thus a view of nationalism as an unstable production, as Rafael reveals how, under what circumstances, and with what effects the concept of the nation has been produced and deployed in the Philippines. With a focus on the contradictions and ironies that suffuse Filipino history, Rafael delineates the multiple ways that colonialism has both inhabited and enabled the nationalist discourse of the present. His topics range from the colonial census of 1903-1905, in which a racialized imperial order imposed by the United States came into contact with an emergent revolutionary nationalism, to the pleasures and anxieties of nationalist identification as evinced in the rise of the Marcos regime. Other essays examine aspects of colonial domesticity through the writings of white women during the first decade of U.S. rule; the uses of photography in ethnology, war, and portraiture; the circulation of rumor during the Japanese occupation of Manila; the reproduction of a hierarchy of languages in popular culture; and the spectral presence of diasporic Filipino communities within the nation-state. A critique of both U.S. imperialism and Filipino nationalism, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History creates a sense of epistemological vertigo in the face of former attempts to comprehend and master Filipino identity. This volume should become a valuable work for those interested in Southeast Asian studies, Asian-American studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies.

Dreadful and frightening monsters have come to destroy a small rural village. Only Isdaman, the little Filipino superhero, dares to stand up to them! However, he is just one boy-does he have what it takes to defend the village and bring back the peace? Join Isdaman as he battles foe after foe throughout the breathtaking lands of the Isles of the Philippines.