Publisher's Synopsis
I was born in a grass hut on a piece of wasteland. It was not possible to be closer to the earth unless to be under it. Among vivid landscapes, the descriptions place your feet in the mud of the green paddy fields or on the stones of the dusty roads. Subject to fierce extremes of life-threatening weather and natural phenomena, the pleasures of finding sufficient food, the smell of wood smoke and freshly cooked fish do much to compensate for a life set against the many privations. Moving through the rural and maritime setting, and later the equally threatening urban realities of life in a dirty city, a host of strange and sometimes wild characters are conveyed by their actions and attitudes, giving a striking insight into their cultural identity. All but the grimmest episodes are written with an understated but irrepressible wry humour. The stories in this book are a chronicle of the events that happened to me and around me during the first twenty years of my life. Although they are roughly consecutive, each episode is self-contained. What was it like for me as a poor girl growing up in the Philippines? What were the forces ranged against my desire to extricate myself from poverty? How could I be prevented from succumbing to exploitation and oppression? Although some details, names and places have been changed, the essential facts of my experience remain true. Because of my age and possible availability, many of the stories centre on the various proposals put to me. Aspects of life there were undoubtedly cruel and many people were damaged or destroyed by poverty, illness, bad luck, bad judgement, inertia, fatalism and unfounded egotism. All of this set against a background of a hazardous and uncertain environment. But I did not consider my own upbringing to have been uniquely harsh in the context of the Philippines, or indeed of the world as a whole.
