Book review: The Singing Detainee and the Librarian with One Book: Essays on Exile (2023) by Michael Beltran

As founding chairperson of the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968, Jose Maria Sison’s life is inscribed in the revolution. He penned tracts on the history of the CPP, prospects of the National Democratic revolution and international solidarity building. However, his life story is mainly told in the interview format to show the foremost Filipino revolutionary answering questions to an interested reader. Interspersed with political analysis regarding the Philippine semi-feudal and semi-colonial state, he narrates his ancestry from the landed elite in Ilocos Sur, political awakenings and student activism in the University of the Philippines, rebuilding of the movement, torture and arrest during Martial Law, and exile in the Netherlands after the 1986 EDSA Revolution.