On the Subject of the Nation ― Filipino Writings from the Margins, 1981 to 2004

On the Subject of the Nation looks at fiction and nonfiction produced since the martial law era in light of two historical developments that have definitively shaped Philippine experience: revolution and migration. The volume examines the critical interfaces between the personal and political that frame the utopian visions of Bai Ren's fictional autobiography about the education of Filipino-Chinese sojourners, Robert Francis Garcia’s firsthand account of the communist purges, Cesar Lacara's memoirs of a veteran revolutionary, Zelda Soriano's feminist narratives, Peter Bacho's novelistic dissection of Filipino-American identity crisis and Rey Ventura's ethnography of illegal migrant workers in Japan. They illuminate the ongoing transformation and redefinition of the Philippine nation-state while highlighting the ways in which the individual and collective experiences, struggles, dreams, and aspirations of Filipinos serve to rethink and reinvent notions of belonging, sacrifice, learning, labor, and love that underpin the theory and practice of nation-making.