Filipinos, stay home and read

NOW that Filipinos have been called to restrict their movements and spend more time at home in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus, it is time to reclaim an activity that many of my Filipino friends confess to me they never do: read. They tell me they do not have time, but I want to believe that for many Filipinos this excuse will be over for a few weeks. The confession of my friends is more appalling when you think that the national hero of this archipelago, José Rizal, was an essayist, a novelist, a poet and a prolific writer of letters. Wouldn’t this be a good opportunity to be in touch with his excellent works?

My father was a seaman and my mother was a housewife. And although I remember that my father liked to read cheap adventure novels set in the American Old West, we had no books at home apart from the mandatory schoolbooks we bought yearly with national scholarships. I remember I had no patience to continue reading anything. I just focused on the illustrations, then I got bored and went out to play football, as many Spanish children do.