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Tree (novel)
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Wikipedia article
'Tree' is a 1978 historical novel by Filipino National Artist F. Sionil Jos. A story of empathy and subjugation, it is the second in Joss series known as 'The Rosales Saga' or the 'Rosales Novels'.Yoser, Elizabeth G. [https://www.jstor.org/pss/40144014 Under the Balete Tree: F. Sionil Joss Rosales Novels], World Literature Today, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), University of Oklahoma, pp. 82-84, jstor.org The tree in the novel is a representation of the expectations and dreams of Filipinos.
Description
Set in the 1950s in the Philippines,[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375752439 "Tree" by F. Sionil Jos], Don Vicente: Two Novels, Modern Library Paperbacks, amazon.com 'Tree' was the story about an unnamed Filipino boy, the son of a plantation manager and subjugator of other Filipinos, who grew up in an Ilocano town known as Rosales, Pangasinan. He was surrounded by acquaintances beneath his social class, relatives, and servants.[https://www.amazon.com/dp/9718845143 "Tree" by F. Sionil Jos], amazon.com He was described as a youth who searched for parental love and a place in a society with rigid class structures. He was also the grandson of the landlord protagonized by Jos in the novel 'Po-on'. In 'Tree', the boy narrated the weakening relationship between the peasants and landowners in Ilocos, including how Don Vicente Asperri took over their lands.
Once the center of rice trading in eastern Luzon, Rosales became insolvent, thus making the protagonist child a witness to a series of social inequalities, humiliations and tragedies, making him despise his father, the overseer for the wealthy provincial and feudal landowner known as Don Vicente Asperri[http://www.tribo.org/bookshop/jose.html "Tree" by F. Sionil Jos] , Don Vicente: Two Novels, tribo.org (Asperris illegitimate son, Luis Asperri, became a main character in Joss My Brother, My Executioner) The Philippine revolution brought no changes in the feudal system of the Philippines agrarian economy, except for the shift from Spanish to American colonialism. Only the Filipino landowners, their people, and the industrial leaders benefited from the free trade that was established between the Philippines and the United States. The tenants of the land and industrial laborers became impoverished. In spite of the injustices and suffering during the American period, the poor tenants became guerrillas to fight the Japanese occupiers in return for improved living conditions.[http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401500542.html "Tree"] by F(rancisco) Sionil Jos, Contemporary Novelists, 2001, The Gale Group Inc., Farmington Hills, Michigan, encyclopedia.com The inequalities received by the tenants of the plantations resulted to the birth of an uprising that would change Philippine society forever.
References
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