Lives at the margin : biography of Filipinos obscure, ordinary, and heroic / edited by Alfred W. McCoy.

Published in cooperation with center for Souteast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This volume is a compilation of life stories of men and women who have emerged from social and geographical margins of Philippine society to mobilize, through their individual talents, a mass following. Their skills have been many and varied - charisma, cunning, violence, integrity, and duplicity. Some may have acted as self-conscious agents of change, leading their constituents in a struggle for social justice. Most occupied the strategic middle strata of their society, using their skills to mediate between the state and an impoverished populace. With few exceptions, they failed in their challenges to the social order and ended their careers marginalized, impoverished, imprisoned, or dead. Some of the names included in this volume were famous (such as Pedro Calungsod) and some were notorious, but almost all are now largely forgotten. Their biographies are lacking in moral example, stirring saga, or ready significance of textbook heroes. Nonetheless, by looking through the prism of their lives, we can view worlds now obscured at the margins of the Philippines states and its history.