Forthcoming books to look forward to this February

February is packed with celebrations and commemorations–from arts month, valentine’s day, to the EDSA People Power Anniversary. This month promises to keep you busy, not only with observances but with highly anticipated releases to go with your learning journey.

Be the first to know (and order) what’s coming out next month!

Babaylan Sing Back by Grace Nono

Category: Nonfiction | Philippine Indigenous Peoples | Indigenous Music

Babaylan Sing Back depicts the embodied voices of a number of Philippine ritual specialists popularly known as babaylan. These ritual specialists are widely believed to have perished during colonial times or to survive on the margins in the present day. They are either persecuted as witches and purveyors of superstition or valorized as symbols of gender equality and anticolonial resistance.

Drawing on fieldwork in the Philippines and the Philippine diaspora, Grace Nono’s deep engagement with the song and speech of a number of living ritual specialists demonstrates Native historical agency in the 500th year anniversary of the contact between the people of the Philippine Islands and the European colonizers.

Special pre-order price: P400 (retails at P470)

Pre-order here.

Martial Law in the Philippines: Legacies and Lessons, 1972–2022 edited by Edilberto C. De Jesus and Ivyrose S. Baysic

Category: Nonfiction | Politics & Society | Martial Law Literature

The writers in this book lived through martial law and tell it like it was—fake and tarnished gold. Dictatorship and its aftereffects explode on the scene as twenty-two experts take us through the ups and downs of seven presidential administrations since that fateful 1972 declaration. Each specialist focuses on a particular topic. The resulting collection offers something for everyone. Under Society and Culture, readers can select from cultural politics, dictatorial fantasies, populism and authoritarianism, religion, urban poor organizing, indigenous people, Filipino-Chinese identity, and Filipino values in a global context. More interested in Political Economy and Governance? Explore party politics, electoral reform, media roles, the Constitution, population management, and crony economic governance. Still more? The Peace and Security chapters spotlight terror and violence, the move from Marcos Sr. to Marcos Jr., and the Left. Lessons and legacies, rigorously studied, give an informative fifty-year overview and end with a final chapter assessing the uncertain prospects facing us in 2022 and beyond. Almost everything you ever wanted to know about martial law and its long-term effects leaps out of these pages.

Special pre-order price: P675 (retails at P795)

Pre-order here.

Tales of the Post-Plantation: Unlikely Protagonists of Modern Philippine Banana History by Robin Thiers

Category: Nonfiction | History | Banana Trade

Since the late 1960s, the hinterland of the southern Philippine city of Davao has been the epicenter of commercial production and export of Cavendish bananas in Asia. Against a backdrop of elite interests pushing a paradigm of banana plantation modernity, Robin Thiers opts to tell this story through the tales of more unlikely protagonists: small-scale farmers, a fungus, and the banana itself. Drawing on original fieldwork and transdisciplinary empirical and theoretical literature, he pushes us to imagine plantations as more-than-human assemblages, both underpinning and subverting the imaginaries of capitalist discipline and anthropocentric control. Destabilizing the epistemic and ontological foundations of the modern plantation, this book is first and foremost an invitation: could we imagine a post-plantation?

Special pre-order price: P675 (retails at P795)

Pre-order here.

False Nostalgia: The Marcos Golden Age Myths and How to Debunk Them by JC Punongbayan

Category: Nonfiction | Politics & Society | Economics | Martial Law Literature

Was the Philippines really the wealthiest country in Asia during the 1970s and 1980s? Did martial law eradicate hunger and poverty? Did the Marcos regime produce a “golden age” of infrastructure? And did the Marcoses really fight the oligarchy and own a million tons of gold?

For decades, a myriad of myths about the Marcoses have proliferated and are being spread exponentially today in social media. So pervasive are these myths that the prevailing notion now—even among the youth—is that martial law was the “golden age” of the Philippines.

False Nostalgia aims to set the record straight. Weaving together hard data and facts in clear and accessible prose, this book aims to debunk the “golden age” myths one by one. In the process, it paints a clearer, more complete, and therefore more honest picture of the Philippine economy at that time. More than anything else, this book reminds us why—in this time of mangled histories and fragile memories—it has never been more crucial to fight for the truth and to never forget.

Special pre-order price: P450 (retails at P530)

Pre-order here.

For more information about forthcoming Ateneo University Press titles, book review proposals, bulk pre-orders, and collaborations send us an email at marketing.unipress@ateneo.edu.