Writers and Their Milieu: An Oral History of First Generation Writers in English, Part 1

By Edilberto Alegre and Doreen Fernandez

Within the pages of this volume run writers and their lives, writers and their works, writers and their readers. Anyone seriously interested in the history, development, and future of Philippine literature has no choice but to submerge himself in the now shallow, now deep waters of reminiscences and recollections, self-appraisals and gossip, regrets and successes. Featured Filipino writers in English in this volume: Paz Marquez Benitez, Casiano T. Calalang, Luis G. Dato, Angela Manalang Gloria, Leon Ma. Guerrero, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, Fernando L. Leaño, Maria Luna Lopez, Salvador P. Lopez, Arturo B. Rotor, Bienvenido N. Santos, Loreto Paras Sulit, Jose Garcia Villa, and Leopoldo Y. Yabes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712727375

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CONTENTS

TWO WORDS AREN’T A PREFACE, A FOREWORD, OR AN INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ

CASIANO T. CALALANG

LUIS G. DATO

ANGELA MANALANG GLORIA

LEON MA. GUERRERO

MARIA KALAW KATIGBAK

FERNANDO L. LEAÑO

MARIA LUNA LOPEZ

SALVADOR P. LOPEZ

ARTURO B. ROTOR

BIENVENIDO N. SANTOS

LORETO PARAS SULIT

JOSE GARCIA VILLA

LEOPOLDO Y. YABES

Two Words Aren’t a Preface,

A Foreword, or an Introduction

This book, begun as a Diamond Jubilee publication project of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center, supported by the Ateneo de Manila University, and now seeing print under the aegis of De La Salle University, creates its own occasion.

It is a first, the first of its kind, a model of it. It is a tremendous work of collaboration.

I am grateful and happy for whatever I have had to do with it.

FRANCISCO ARCELLANA

14 November 1983

UPFC 1074

INTRODUCTION

To read this collection of interviews with fourteen of the first generation Filipino writers in English is to read not one book, but book after book after book after book. Within the pages of this volume run writers and their lives, writers and their works, writers and their readers. Anyone seriously interested in the history, the development, and future of Philippine literature has no choice but to submerge himself in the now shallow, now deep waters of reminiscences and recollections, self-appraisals and gossip, regrets and successes, that run like the rivers of our country through familiar, yet uncharted land. This book is not merely one dish to chew and digest, but a whole feast, a buffet table from which one must pick and choose at first, but which, eventually, must be completely consumed, given enough time and enough guests.

Two suggestions come to mind before one reads a volume such as this. First, what goodies lie waiting for the literary gourmet among these pages? Second, of what use is the whole enterprise, that of transcribing oral words from writers whose identities were created by written words?

To the first question, the question of achievement, the answer is simple: a lot. As you go through the interviews, you will discover that these writers of the twenties and thirties had so much in common. For one thing, they were all educated in English, taught to think and speak and write in English. Eventually they taught others how to think and feel in English. They were also, for the most part, all known to each other, some as the most intimate of friends, others as familiar names in the same small universe. Most of them, in fact, attended classes in writing taught by Paz Marquez Benitez, who is set apart by her age and her stature from the rest of the writers in this volume. All of the writers, including Benitez, were published. Not only were they publishing their already written pieces; they were being asked to write new ones for publication. They were also paid handsomely, according to the standards of the time. Even their roots turn out to be almost identical: almost all of them were heavily influenced by Wilbur Daniel Steele, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway.

You will find, if you’re interested in literary gossip, several tidbits of potentially embarrassing, but eventually significant, information. S.P. Lopez, then editor of Mid-week Magazine, edited Nick Joaquin’s first submission, a short story. Joaquin expectedly got mad. How would I know he would turn out to be Nick Joaquin, National Artist? explains Lopez, I only knew that it was my right and duty to edit anything submitted to me. Any writer who has been subjected to the same indignity of being edited by an editor—no matter how famous or respected—can recreate the atmosphere of tension that must have prevailed at that time.

You will find, if you have been disturbed by the two published versions of The Day the Dancers Came, the reason for the confusion. Bienvenido N. Santos, who—according to the current theory of textual criticism—should be the final authority on the matter, says, Sometimes I like one; sometimes I like the other. You will, therefore, be enlightened about why there is a problem, but you will not find the solution here.

You will find a long-standing rumor finally dispelled. Jose Garcia Villa, it has been repeatedly said, was expelled from the University of the Philippines because of some dirty poems he wrote. Leopoldo Yabes reveals that Villa was not expelled, but merely suspended for one year. Arturo B. Rotor adds an even more startling fact: contrary to what the poet himself and Yabes say, Villa returned to U.P. He was in the medical school a few weeks, says Rotor, he was my partner in dissection. It seems more romantic to claim that our National Artist was expelled from the state university for obscenity; the witnesses, however, do not support that illusion.

If you like trivia, you’ll find a lot here, such as Villa’s swollen feet, N.V.M. Gonzalez’s three typewriters, Angela Manalang Gloria’s habit of writing in pencil in Bureau of Education notebooks, Carlos P. Romulo’s entrance test to his writing class, (CPR was looking for men like us, says Fernando L. Leaño, who could go to any newspaper and write on any subject against a deadline), Leon Ma. Guerrero hating his oft-anthologized, What are Filipinos Like?, and Villa’s praise of A.E. Litiatco because he was well read because he was from La Salle. Some of these trivia, of course, may eventually prove to be of major importance.

As far as achievement is concerned, then, we have to say that Edilberto N. Alegre and Doreen G. Fernandez have succeeded in doing something no Filipino scholar has ever attempted before: to put down on paper a generation.

To the second question, that of significance, we cannot give an outright answer. In a post-New Critical academic community, is it still possible to defend the use of biographical material in the understanding of literary works?

One of the books still in use in Philippine universities is Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature. We can all still quote from memory Wellek’s dismissal of biography as a critical tool: No biographical evidence can change or influence critical evaluation. Wellek went to a lot of trouble debunking what he recognized as the three major reasons for studying the lives of writers, VIZ., in his own words, biography can be judged in relation to the light it throws on the actual production of poetry; but we can, of course, defend it and justify it as a study of the man of genius, of his moral, intellectual, and emotional development, which has its own intrinsic interest; and, finally, we can think of biography as affording materials for a systematic study of the psychology of the poet and of the poetic process. How many of us, in our own generation (which, incidentally, does not share this burden with the generation of Benitez, Calalang, and colleagues), have grown up believing that the words of Wellek: are as sacred as the words of the New Testament? How many of us, in fact, still believe that anything taking us away from the work itself and into the realm of biography must make us guilty of the intentional fallacy made abominable by the New Critics?

If Alegre and Fernandez’s book were published twenty years ago, we should not have any hesitation condemning it to the garbage bins of literary scholarship as just another example of painstaking, but ultimately worthless busy work. Fortunately for our two young scholars, as well as for our generation of literary buffs, the tides of critical theory have changed. We are, indeed, in a post-New Critical age. Not only is biography now considered a valid discipline in literary scholarship, it is even regarded now as the discipline.

Think of the tremendous advances in literary understanding achieved by the critics of consciousness, who have made the study of authors not only a scientific discipline, but a separate art in itself. Think of the advances of the structuralists, even of the earlier, now-unfashionable ones, who rushed into the lives of authors and made these lives as valuable as the authors’ works. Think of the most recent works of the post-structuralists, works such as Michel Foucault’s What is an Author?, where the author finally regains the primary he was entitled to all along. We are finally where we were before the New Critics managed to sidetrack us, before we fell into the fallacy of thinking the intentional fallacy a fallacy. In short, today, all over the world and soon even here in our own country (with post-structuralists such as Gemino H. Abad, Soledad S. Reyes, and Reynaldo C. Ileto leading the attack on the cobwebbed formalism of Philippine academe), the study of the lives of writers will soon overrun the study of individual works in urgency and importance.

You do not have to share the excitement of literary critics to enjoy the exchanges that occur in the interviews in this book. Terms such as ecriture and deconstruction do not have to echo and re-echo in your consciousness as you follow the trends of thought of the writers whose recollections are collected here. But it helps to know that, from the viewpoint of the most advanced, most enlightened, most correct literary theorists, the technique of interviewing living authors and asking them about their personal lives, their milieu, and their works is a technique that is not only valid, but necessary. Literary history today has merged with literary biography, as well as with literary criticism, in a coming together at last of synchronic and diachronic approaches, formalist and Marxist, structuralist and post-structuralist, critical and creative, literary and human. That seems to be a lot to claim for a volume that purports merely to record fourteen writers talking about themselves, but it is the job of the literary critic to see beyond what is on the surface. What we see is a collection of interviews. What lies beyond is a new direction in Philippine literary scholarship.

ISAGANI R. CRUZ

De La Salle University

January 1984

PREFACE

This oral history project was first conceived in 1971, and some initial moves were made by consulting with Professor Francisco Arcellana who later became director of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center. The names of the oldest living writers were listed, and basic research in the primary sources was begun at the U.P. Library. Martial Law was declared the following year, and lives changed direction. The authors met a decade later. Professor Arcellana was fortunately still the director of the UPCWC. The project was launched anew. Perhaps because of the loss of ten years, the interviews were no longer viewed as single articles for UP publications. Instead, they became a planned five-volume project—of which this is the first volume—that would span Philippine writing in English from the 20s to the early 80s.

The interviews aimed at catching the writer in his milieu. These authors were known to us then only as the names of creative writers. We wanted to find information unavailable in print, and retrieve as well data on how a generation was taught a foreign language, how it reacted to the issues connected with literature, what concerns and aspirations were held by its writers, how these were formed by education and interaction with teachers and colleagues, how they were affected by the dynamics of the writing and publishing world, how they had gone beyond the days of writing on the campus. Since the literary works and the biographies had already been established, we hoped to capture the world that lay between these—through their own words. The past is reflected in their memories, and the words are prisms, conveying in themselves and the mosaics they design, the milieu, and the man within it.

As young writers, this generation were in the middle of a period of creative ferment in Philippine literary history. Since no predecessors could supply models, their exemplars were foreign works and writers. Unknowingly, their writings were in turn to become the models for later Filipino writers in English. Everything that they wrote and wanted published, was published. Writing did not only mean having one’s works printed in campus publications, or selecting one’s best for the annual Literary Apprentice. The national publications were hospitable to their writing, and even as students they were already earning money by their ability to write.

A few of these writers, such as Arturo B. Rotor, Loreto Paras Sulit, and Angela Manalang Gloria, were already masters of the English language even in their first published works. Others developed from a self-conscious, affected, sometimes derivative manner of writing, to one of ease with English. Jose Garcia Villa’s growth is astounding—from lachrymose, stilted prose to graceful poetry. Bienvenido N. Santos began as an ordinary poet and short story writer, and became an elegant, precise troubadour of the passionate Filipino. Salvador P. Lopez began by writing forgettable sonnets, became a prodigious columnist then editor, and authored a landmark in Philippine literature: Literature and Society.

Tertiary education hammered off the dross in their writings, the literary excesses that they would recall in embarrassment decades later. The newspapers and national magazines offered space for the polishing process. The writers formed a select coterie—young masters of the emergent language, whose names often appeared in print. And the remuneration was, in the context of the times, very good.

Among this first generation there is a reticence to criticize each other. They were few, and they say everyone had a different talent. Mrs. Paras Sulit rightfully claims that they were all good writers, and that they did not do badly at all. This warm, appreciative regard for each other—even between the UP writers and the sole Atenean—marks the character of their generation. There was encouragement among themselves, and media outside the campus sometimes courted their manuscripts. No wonder writing in English surged ahead, in unbridled strides.

Historically, the pioneer generation of Filipino writers in English were educators—Jorge Bocobo, Maximo Kalaw, Leopoldo Uichanco, Vidal Tan—and writing was not their profession. The real first generation of Filipino writers in English, fourteen of whom are interviewed in this book, were professional writers, although some were educators as well. They were paid for their writings; they made a livelihood out of their ability to write. And the distinctive, as against imitative, Philippine literature in English was established by their generation.

II

We found the writers alive in mind, and mostly active. Five of the fourteen were ill or weak when interviewed, but they spoke lucidly, even brilliantly: Paz Marquez Benitez, Casiano T. Calalang, Luis Dato, Leon Ma. Guerrero and Maria Luna Lopez. Calalang, Guerrero and Benitez have since passed away. The others are still actively writing.

The first one we were able to get in touch with was Angela Manalang Gloria, who lives in Tabaco, Albay, in the premises of the rice mill she runs (along with farms, plantation, businesses). Her niece assured us that she was still writing—copiously, in notebooks, in pencil. She was elusive and shy, and only two year after did we get our full interview—in Tabaco, accompanied by Bienvenido N. Santos and a mother who had been her high school classmate. There she was warm and lively, engagingly hospitable, and able to consider the idea of publishing again.

Loreto Paras Sulit was possible to locate through the Red Cross, where she had spent decades in writing and administration. In here home, with a gardenful of trees outside, she reflected on a life of writing and civic work, and considered that she had not done too badly. Although in her 70s, she had started on a new job in the education of underprivileged youth, and she thought she might gather all her old stories together, and perhaps write again.

S.P. Lopez was at the time of the interview writing four columns weekly in a national newspaper and a magazine. Shakespeare had never had to speak into a tape recorder, he protested, and therefore the silliness was not in evidence. Neither was the brilliance, we pleaded. The lights went out halfway through the interview, and he never paused for a beat, so intent was he on ordering and reordering a life as writer and public person. That, he concluded, was the value of oral history—the reordering in the long view, on the wide screen.

With a typhoon lashing the garden outside, Bienvenido N. Santos spoke without reservations, expressing beliefs, doubts, fears, analyzing the reasons behind a lifetime of writing. He had just returned to the Philippines after many years, on the saddest of journeys—to bury his wife in her native Camalig, Albay, Yet he generously opened to us the man behind the author who had spent years writing about the exiled, the absent, the lonely.

Dr. Arturo B. Rotor was surrounded by myth. A recluse, it said, impossible to interview. Banking on what seemed then a flimsy connection—his wife Emma had taught us as college freshmen—we called. The first interview became a series of visits, twice with Franz Arcellana—to discuss not only the writer and the milieu but also books, the current scene, publications, politics. The scientific mind was in high gear, and the active interest in life and letters was far from retired.

Leon Ma. Guerrero had retired from the foreign service, and was a self confessed recluse. In the Filipino way, we went to him through his niece Lisa Nakpil. On a memorable morning, we sat entranced by his memories, his wit, and his sense of theatre. He died in June 1982, honored by the country he had served well, and it was his wife Margaret who read and commented on the transcript of that interview.

Locating Jose Garcia Villa in New York was comparatively easy, since everyone knew where Doveglion had made his lair in the latest decades, but actually getting the interview was done through poet Luigi Francia and a chain of relatives. Even for poets and unicorns, the Filipino network is necessary. The interview ended with a guided tour through the Gotham Bookshop, which JGV called the best bookstore in the world.

We would have wanted to return to quiet Casiano T. Calalang, but he was frail of health, and died less than a year after the interview, in June 1982. We also proposed to interview General Carlos P. Romulo who, like Paz Marquez Benitez, had taught some of the writers. Although CPR had agreed when asked in person, his public relations assistant later told us he thought he might not remember the details we sought—so early were they placed in such a long career.

Conversations with Paz Marquez Benitez were such inspiring events that we hoped that they would continue beyond the book, for which they had to be written as a personal essay. There was no other way to express the impact of that glowing presence.

Through all these interviews, it was to Professor Francisco Arcellana that we returned again and again—for information on writers and works, for confirmation of our impressions, for retrieval of elusive data, to report successes and joys. Inevitably, the oral history project came to be under the aegis and the blessing of Professor Arcellana and the UP Creative Writing Center, of which he was director. Because of it, we were both appointed research associates of the Center by President Edgardo J. Angara, a step to being elected members of the UP Writers Club.

III

This is a prodigious, lovely generation. And a very tough one that is difficult to equal. At this writing, Maria Kalaw Katigbak is planning more books; Leopoldo Yabes has other anthologies in preparation as well as a history of the UP College of Law; Bienvenido N. Santos has had The Praying Man and The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Liked Robert Taylor published, has a volume of poetry with a publisher, and two novels in progress; SP. Lopez continues writing columns; one expects publications from Angela Manalang Gloria, Loreto Paras Sulit, Arturo B. Rotor.

The interviews are presented as they happened, edited by us and by the person interviewed—only for accuracy, clarity, and coherence, away from repetitiousness. The tapes and a lightly edited typescript of some 500 pages (second draft) are stored in the Rizal Library of the Ateneo de Manila, where they are available to scholars, students, literary historians. The interviews are the raw material for literary history, for the final reading of that space between man and work, of that world of man in milieu, which we tried to explore. Inevitably, the years intrude, and with them the treachery of memory. But since the fact can be checked, and a memory reveals primacy of perception, we have left these as they are, to be seen against the other converging memories.

The interviews are also records of the oral quality of the interaction—of speech and word patterns, of living voices. In them are visible the intellectual energy, elegance of discourse, analyses of facts and linkages, currency of interests, broadness of vision, the many facets of humanity, that a directed conversation can discover and record. As the voice-print of the writers, they are actual documents in themselves, which may be examined not only for the information they contain, but for the language, the style, the personal imprint of the speaker, as well as the diction, the usage, and the thought not of individuals but of a whole generation.

Although oral history is generally regarded as a mine for historians, we maintain that it can be gold in itself, and that its worth is immediately perceivable. We trust that this collection of interviews represents not only history, but a new picture of humanity, through the voices of writers shaped in a milieu now past.

EDILBERTO N. ALEGRE

DOREEN G. FERNANDEZ

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Any shortcomings or oversights, we apologize for, and claim as ours alone. It is our pleasure to acknowledge the research grant from the Faura Research Center, Inc., of the Ateneo de Manila University; the interest of President Edgardo J. Angara of the University of the Philippines in this project, expressed in his appointment of us both as research associates in oral history of the Creative Writing Center; Dr. ma. Lourdes Bautista, Mike Luz and the staff and publication office of the De La Salle University, which undertook to publish this inter-university project; the constant advice and encouragement of Professor Francisco Arcellana; the generosity of the fourteen writers interviewed for this book, and that of their families; the invaluable help of Bienvenido N. Santos and his children, Lily and Tito Anonas, Arme S. Tan and Lina S. Cortez, and of Bettina Manalang, Lisa Nakpil, Luigi Francia, Margaret Guerrero, Emma Unson Rotor, in enabling and facilitating the interviews; Eva Datayan, Gabriel G. Besa and Juan Angelo G. Besa, for technical assistance; the U.P. Main Library and the Ateneo Rizal Library; Antonio N. Lucero, Jr., and Luis Ma. Guerrero, for relevant advice; Mariano and Rosie Dy of Legaspi City; our mothers, Evangelina N. Alegre and Dr. Alicia Lucero Gamboa, to whom we owe our interest and grounding in the early period of Philippine writing in English and much more; and to Wili Fernandez for technological and moral support. Without them, the work would have been less possible and less pleasurable.

To

PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ

1894-1983

Member of the first freshman class of the University of the Philippines; graduate of class 1912; UP faculty member from 1916 to 1951; writer, editor, teacher supreme,

we dedicate this book about a generation she helped to shape.

PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ

On March 3, 1983, Paz Marquez Benitez turned 89—a lively, luminous, lovely 89. Her mind still active and curious, her speech enviable in its clarity and grace, she says, I am almost 90! Isn’t that something? But it is a problem, because I have lost all my contemporaries. Of course, ‘There is no age, only time.’ I was lonely for my contemporaries one day, and so I tried to locate someone. I found Imay Pecson, but of course she is younger. Trining Legarda is chair-ridden, because she had a fall and broke her hip. When I am in one of my complaining moods, my daughter Jeanie tells me: ‘Count your blessing.’"

The words come like carved crystal, careful, precise, letting the light through. There are no pauses or hesitations, only a cadence of grace, an absolute sureness and clarity. One can see why she is the teacher of teachers, remembered by all of the first—and many of the second—generation of Philippine writers in English, even those who were never her students. Bienvenido Santos tells of his turning point as a writer, when, after a discussion by his classmates of his story, The Years Are Very Long, someone thought to ask Mrs. Benitez what she thought of it, and she said, I think it is the best short story that I have ever read, written by a Filipino. "Ang Sarap!" he says, attributing to that moment his decision to become a writer. Arturo Rotor was not in her class, but asked her permission to sit in. Maria Kalaw Katigbak to this day carries around a little notebook, because Mrs. Benitez had told them to write down ideas wherever they were, never to waste a thought, because it would never come back. They do not recall techniques—perhaps no manipulation showed because there was none, only a teacher who sincerely encouraged, who coaxed out the gems and the glories in a generation who became writers, diplomats, university presidents, teachers, deans and directors, lawyers and doctors who never left writing behind.

She remembers them all too. Loreto Paras Sulit is a natural, I never had to urge her to write. Of S.P. Lopez, she says in masterly understatement, I think S.P. knows English. Bienvenido Santos’ achievement, the fact that at 72 he is still writing new novels, is nice, but I am not responsible for all that. Maria Kalaw Katigbak has a strong ironic vein, an ironic viewpoint... I remember Manuel Arguilla especially, she says, then asks, of Ben Santos’ new novel: Is it esoteric? Is there sex in it? Arturo Rotor has both feet on the ground.

Teaching is her proudest achievement, and she declares that she wants her epitaph to say that I was a good teacher. Teachers have good days, she says, days you know are going to be good—you throw it all out of them, and they throw it back at you. This excites her, and she glows as she says, I have been a teacher all my life, and the greatest joy is having a responsive class. The relationship between a teacher and a responsive class is, they say, the truest form of intercourse. [But] I do not, of course, claim credit for all that they become.

I met Mrs. Benitez when she was in her young 70s, as the mother of a good friend. And so, even before I learned that she was first Filipina short story writer, the author of Dead Star, a story that was to set a standard, a trend, a direction. I knew her as Rafael’s mother. At that time, she was actively editing and writing for the Philippine Journal of Education, founded in 1918, which circulates to all elementary and high school teachers in public schools. She was also personally running her mango orchard in Cavite, administering a poultry farm and selling eggs from her house on F. Benitez Street (named after her husband) in San Juan, taking lessons in piano and in Spanish literature, and taking active part in the operation of the Journal Press, which was family-owned, and which printed the Philippine Journal of Education. When we went to the Benitez compound to swim one day, she walked over, borrowed a bathing suit, and dove in, showing that her erect grace translated into superb swimming form—even beyond her 70th birthday. In those days we would talk often about writing children’s stories for the Journal, an idea which excited her. In those days I already told her son that I wanted to age as his mother had—still alert, enthusiastic, and involved. That was aging without growing old; that certainly was growing—in wisdom, age and grace.

After Rafael, her favorite among her three sons, left to live in the United States, I heard that she had been ill, and often. First her only daughter Virginia Benitez-Licuanan and her sons had to take over some of her work, but she held on to the Journal. Now, although she is still involved in it—and not only in signing checks—the Journal has a managing editor, her grand-daughter Dr. Patricia Licuanan (Ateneo trustee, professor, and former chairman of the Department of Psychology).

When this oral history project started, I went to see Mrs. Benitez, and found her even more beautiful than I remembered. She is much thinner now, and so the handsome bone structure shows, and the planes of her face are like spare sculpture. Her white hair is carefully combed, and tucked into a hair net; her face is powdered and she wears rouge and lipstick tastefully. Her gesturing hands are delicate and manicured; her feet narrow and high-arched. In the early morning sun on her sun porch, in a butaca of wood and rattan, she sits in silk pajamas embroidered with flowers, reading the newspapers.

And reading many other things, as well. No tape recorders, she told me, but come as often as you like. One day I brought her a copy of Caracoa, since she had earlier asked me: What became of poetry? What became of English? At the next visit, she professed not to understand many of the poems. Asking me to explain Gemino Abad’s Lord of Death, she said, I do not understand these poems. I understand the words; they certainly write English, but I do not understand what they are trying to say.

Questions about her illness she quickly dismissed, with: There are two years of life that I cannot remember. My children say that I was taken from hospital. Her nurse says that she always fell ill around February, near her birthday. Rafael has in fact come home thrice in recent years to see her and help coax her back to health. But she does not dwell on illness, as many people do—the present is more involving. And this year she did not fall ill, and was well on her 89th birthday, even if she declared, No contemporaries. I am the only one left.

Often we still talk about children’s literature. Her daily companion now is a great grandson, Paolo, who at six years old is beginning to read. Mrs. Benitez is concerned about what there is in Philippine writing for a six-year-old to read. One day, I brought her a selection of Adarna books, and she was more than interested, choosing some for Paolo to read, and asking what she could do for the books besides buy them. Comment on them, I said. She not only commented on them; she examined them critically as teacher and great grandmother. She was analytical about the illustrations, about their child-appeal, about the effectivity of using human-like figures rather than just shapes, even evocative ones. She liked the books that utilized folk literature, because she had earlier said I would like to see children’s books written about our legends. Is there enough material available for research on historical figures of the 17th and 18th centuries? She also liked the books that taught about numbers and colors, although she suggested that all such books do their teaching within a narrative line. She was especially fascinated with a book called May Kuwarta sa Basura, because she had long been thinking about the garbage problem: "Why can’t we do something about our basura? Can’t we make it worth someone’s time to take all the tin cans and make of them cheap roofing? fireproof?" She also analyzed the linguistic level of the books, the vocabulary range, the sounds introduced. She was teaching Paolo how to make the ng sound, which was still new to him. There seemed to be much joy in this relationship across generations: My great grandson is really something. His name is Paolo, and we call him Pao-Pao. He draws on the floor; he tries to create likenesses. He will be something—how can he help it, being part of a family like ours?

The family is a strong background to this very strong, very individual personality. Her late husband, Francisco Benitez, she often refers to as The Dean. One remembers, of course, how many other Benitezes figure prominently in the history of Philippine education. Her own family, the Marquezes of Quezon province, produced another writer as well, Natividad, who sometimes wrote poetry under the pseudonym Ana Maria Chavez. Of Natividad, Mrs. Benitez says, She had a poetic soul, but became religious. If you are a good Catholic, you cannot write poetry; you have many confusions. Natividad eventually joined a group of lay missionaries, and died in India, Why India? asked Paz of her sister. We have so many poor right here in the Philippines...But perhaps she needed to join a group that was already organized, she adds.

The Marquez girls, daughters of Gregorio Marquez, of Tayabas landed gentry, and Maria Jurado of Magsingal, Ilocos Norte (said to be known as such a beauty that she was referred to as La Estrella del Norte) went to school in groups, Mrs. Benitez recounts: Socorro and Paz; Natividad and Conchita; then Carolina, Isabel and Dolores. School was the Normal School in Manila, the first teacher-training institution established by the American insular government. Paz Marquez thus belonged to the very first generation of Filipinos and teachers educated in the American educational system.

All her teachers were American, she recalls, except for one whose only duty was to give the next day’s lessons, and who only knew enough English for that work. What Mrs. Benitez calls miscellaneous student—assorted in age and ability and size—were gathered together in a schoolroom, and taught English. Asked if any of her teachers were memorable, Mrs. Benitez answers without hesitation: I remember one teacher. She was lovely. Her name was Mrs. Muerman. Mrs. Benitez describes her young, gradeschool self in Lucena, Tayabas, as a very unlikable, homely child—something one can hardly believe now—in love with this teacher, who gave her a first contact with books. One day, Mrs. Muerman asked the class to stay, and read them a story from a small, brown, unprepossessing book. It was the story of Ulysses, and Paz was entranced. After the rest of the class had gone home, she stayed behind. Asked why, she said, I want to borrow that book. The teacher made a face—She didn’t like me, and I could feel it, Mrs. Benitez remembers. But she persisted, and got the book, and to this day has not forgotten about Ulysses going home to Ithaca, and not finding his way home.