Understanding Jose Rizal

Understanding Jose Rizal Renato Perdon, PO Box 1267, Darlinghurst NSW 2010, Australia, also available from the National Bookstores and Powerbooks in Manila. Manila Prints Australia, $20.00 Reviewed by Aila Lenard Many historians have already written about Jose Rizal. And now Renato Perdon has joined the ranks of the many. For his part, Perdon does not relate Rizal’s narrative at face value or superficially. His intent is to present episodes from Rizal’s life that show Rizal’s character to be typically Filipino. Perdon uses the term ‘ordinariness’ to convey his belief that Rizal’s character was in fact typically Filipino. According to Perdon, it is essential to understand that there was nothing extraordinary about Rizal, except the circumstances he was thrown into. “We should emulate his life as an ordinary but gifted man, as a member of a typical big family, with loves, frustrations and tribulations, a person with the usual romantic interests as a young man, and not as a person on a high pedestal beyond our comprehension.” So how ordinary was Rizal? Undoubtedly he possessed a great intellect, and that can’t be ordinary. But in Perdon’s account, his genius is just incidental to the fact that like everyone else, Rizal was capable of emotions typical of his age and his culture. He was forlorn when he (or others) made mistakes of national consequence. He felt joyous in his many loves. He felt deeply attached to his family, to his religion and to his people. He laughed a lot too which is typically Filipino. His sense of humour, which could some-times border on the scato-logical, is very much apparent in his race. Laughter is a way of life for every Filipino. It sustains them in times of hardship, just laughter helped ease the isolated life Rizal led in a foreign land. Many OFWs, Filipino migrants and poverty-stricken Filipinos find solace in laughter. Like the many Filipinos in this century, Rizal also sought comfort in the company of other expatriates like himself. According to Perdon, the gatherings he attended in Paris were no different from the get-togethers and parties Filipino migrants organise in other foreign lands. Filipinos abroad are drawn to people like themselves. Rizal, just like present-day Filipinos in diaspora, sought a semblance of home in another land by enjoying the company of his fellowmen. So how relevant is this knowledge of Rizal’s ordinariness to Filipinos at this particular point in our history? Filipinos, particularly those who live a

שנה

2011

שפה

English

הוצאה

Manila Prints

מהדורות

1

עמודים

148

ISBN

9780980482744

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata