Po-on

F. Sionil José

2 ideas

1. Istak's family walks away from Ilocos

   Istak, a young Ilocano trained by a Spanish priest in letters and healing, leaves his home village in the 1880s with his family after a clash with colonial and church authority makes staying impossible. With a carabao, a sled and only what they can carry, they cross rivers, mountains and hostile country to clear new land in the south. Along the way they bury their dead and abandon possessions, and the settlement they found becomes the root of a family line.

2. Colonizer's education as double-edged inheritance

   The literacy and skills a colonized person gains from the colonizer's institutions become tools for survival and later resistance. The same training also sets that person apart from his own people and ties his identity to the order he must reject. Look at who taught the rebel, and you see both his power and his estrangement.

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