Patrick Everard

Snakes In The Grass

There is something to be said about stories that humanize fascists and imprerialist players like Laurel and Marcos. In this novel, Marcos will eventually be shown as a dictator, but thats all he will be in terms of label. The story shows him as, ultimately, a good person who helped a lot of people in his life, and that he had good intentions in the first place. Tell me why we are equipping Pro-Marcos propagandists with more things to unvalidate the dissenters’ concerns? Also, the story seems to lean more towards showing Imelda as a villain, so why not Marcos? Imelda is the “Kingmaker”, yes, but Marcos is accountable for all of his crimes.

Also possible that I am just too radicalized and can see that this book obviously lacks class analysis and the nuances of it. I suggest looking into who voted this book to win PNA 2022 lol, because despite being branded as progressive, there is a lot of things that has me questioning that intent. Or maybe Everard’s intent just fell thru idk.

For a Marcos and ML story, there is a gaping inexistence of activism, the left, and the proletariat, all of which were main movers during the Marcos era. We do not need a perspective from a maralita that makes people think “You see, Marcos was a good guy who got corrupted by the system “. We dont need it. It is entirely unfair to the millions of victims under Martial Law and his reign. Dictators do not need to be humanized, their victims do.

Im not saying that a white man can’t write about PH history in a storyteller way, but a lot of Filipino sensibilities and nuances are lost. I am always distracted by the English dialogue, because it sounds very American. PH lit in Eng readers will know the diffference. And more obviously: a lot of “facts” are untrue.

Too many to put into a review, but I am astonished by the inaccuracy on the Chico River Dam struggle and on the Cordillera people. Everard claims his story is ficitional, but the happenings is true. For me, that’s such an easy way to escape accountability as a historian and/or as a fiction writer.

(On the fiction side) The story was written from the pov of Saduj, son of a poor farmer. Although promising at first, his story was sorely empty and disenteresting, his narration and development not making sense for me. He is supposed to be the 1st POV narrator, which is unbelievable. He is literally just a tool and device, because outsider from the “I” sentences, the whole book is just a boring biography with lazy fact checking.

funaay

There is something to be said about stories that humanize fascists and imprerialist players like Laurel and Marcos. In this novel, Marcos will eventually be shown as a dictator, but thats all he will be in terms of label. The story shows him as, ultimately, a good person who helped a lot of people in his life, and that he had good intentions in the first place. Tell me why we are equipping Pro-Marcos propagandists with more things to unvalidate the dissenters’ concerns? Also, the story seems to lean more towards showing Imelda as a villain, so why not Marcos? Imelda is the “Kingmaker”, yes, but Marcos is accountable for all of his crimes.

Also possible that I am just too radicalized and can see that this book obviously lacks class analysis and the nuances of it. I suggest looking into who voted this book to win PNA 2022 lol, because despite being branded as progressive, there is a lot of things that has me questioning that intent. Or maybe Everard’s intent just fell thru idk.

For a Marcos and ML story, there is a gaping inexistence of activism, the left, and the proletariat, all of which were main movers during the Marcos era. We do not need a perspective from a maralita that makes people think “You see, Marcos was a good guy who got corrupted by the system “. We dont need it. It is entirely unfair to the millions of victims under Martial Law and his reign. Dictators do not need to be humanized, their victims do.

Im not saying that a white man can’t write about PH history in a storyteller way, but a lot of Filipino sensibilities and nuances are lost. I am always distracted by the English dialogue, because it sounds very American. PH lit in Eng readers will know the diffference. And more obviously: a lot of “facts” are untrue.

Too many to put into a review, but I am astonished by the inaccuracy on the Chico River Dam struggle and on the Cordillera people. Everard claims his story is ficitional, but the happenings is true. For me, that’s such an easy way to escape accountability as a historian and/or as a fiction writer.

(On the fiction side) The story was written from the pov of Saduj, son of a poor farmer. Although promising at first, his story was sorely empty and disenteresting, his narration and development not making sense for me. He is supposed to be the 1st POV narrator, which is unbelievable. He is literally just a tool and device, because outsider from the “I” sentences, the whole book is just a boring biography with lazy fact checking.

Snakes In The Grass

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