Emergent literature : essays on Philippine writing / Elmer A. Ordonez.

The essays in Emergent Literature : Essays on Philippine Writing vividly recreate the dizzying ferment in the literary scene of the late 1960s and subsequent years for students born too late to have experienced the tremors and jolts that shook the academe all over Metro Manila during those critical years. The year 1968 was when the Communist Party of the Philippines was reestablished and activists of the national democratic movement disseminated the political and cultural essays of Mao Zedong. The subject matter of the essays suggests that cumulative impact of the ideas of the great Chinese leader on the literary scene. Ideas on art and literature developed during China's revolutionary struggle introduced Filipino terachers and writers to a literary theory they could pit against the tenets of the New Criticism which, under the political conditions prevailing in the 1960s, was proving itself to be reactionary.... Dr. Ordoñez upon his return from Canada threw himself into the thick of the struggle and found himself in the company of fellow professors in the forefront of the movement. -Bienvenido Lumbera.