Miguel Syjuco
Miguel Syjuco
Miguel Syjucois a Filipino writer from Manila and the grand prize winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his first novel Ilustrado...
NationalityFilipino
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth17 November 1976
Miguel Syjuco quotes about
appeals creating discussion learned trying
I've learned that I have to be happy with creating discussion and debate and that I shouldn't be trying to write a book that appeals to the consensus.
existing jaded teaching
If I were to go back to the Philippines, I would probably end up teaching creative writing at a university. I wouldn't be able to write, for I would become too jaded to be able to view the existing situation objectively.
cabinet government grew ministers privileged running served
I grew up with a very privileged background. My father served as one of the cabinet ministers in Arroyo's government, and he's been a congressman for many years, and he's running again.
patience perfect perspective
Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective.
telling-the-truth martyr changed
History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.
home away-from-home honest
To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.
memories cities shopping
You can’t bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I’m hardly speaking in metaphor. It’s the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that?
home long champion
I'm home and safe and filled with the comfort of being somewhere I've already been. The ruckus of homecoming is brutally enjoyable and everyone makes me feel like a champion. And all I had to do was stay away long enough.
tyrants humanity tails
The slaves of today will become the tyrants of tomorrow--the proletariat overthrows the hegemon to become the hegemon itself, only to be eventually overthrown by a proto-hegemon that will in turn lose its position. It is this dizzying cycle that keeps humanity chasing the tail it lost millennia ago
objectivity subjectivity reactions
Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was about subjectivity. Where modernism sought a singular truth, postmodernism sought the multiplicity of truths.
powerful teaching iraq
Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.
long-ago long not-alone
Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago.
lost-love lost remembered
Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love.
want human-condition angst
Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.