Edgardo G. Calansingin was born in 1931 in a small town of the Philippines, a third world archipelago of more than 7,100 islands and islets, an exotic country in the Far East. Orph...view moreEdgardo G. Calansingin was born in 1931 in a small town of the Philippines, a third world archipelago of more than 7,100 islands and islets, an exotic country in the Far East. Orphaned by his father at age six, his mother remarried a year later. He lived with his paternal grandparents at the beginning of World War II, doing manual labor. A bleak future, misfortunes, hard labor, lost opportunities, and poverty—Calansingin underwent them all. Handicapped by a loss of hearing and stammering since childhood, he completed elementary, secondary, and college education. The book is a story of survival.view less