Long out of print, Revaluation is a compilation of Bienvenido Lumbrera’s critical essays on the Philippines literature, cinema, and popular culture between 1962 and 1984. The 1997 edition adds 22 new articles and an interview to the original 13 essays of the 1984 edition, all hallmarks of Lumbrera’s consistent nationalist and democratic outlook. The result is an impressive survey of the Philippine culture as reinterpreted-and-revaluated-by an important critic and teacher who has exercised a strong influence on the directions Philippine cultural scholarship has been taking three decades now.
“Few cultures in Asia have been so profoundly affected by contact with the West as that of Filipinos. Spaniards and Americans brought to the islands, among other things, their own languages and literary forms. While Filipinos rejected some foreign elements, they adopted others and formed a unique Asian culture of their own. Inevitably, perhaps, the higher arts came to be dominated by Western models. Literature was written in Spanish, or English; everything else was Filipiniana. This was the view, at least, of the academic establishment and the most members of the Spanish- and English-speaking classes. BIENVENIDO LUMBERA has challenged this point of view and restores the poems and stories of vernacular writers to an esteemed place in the Philippines.
“…Language, says LUMBERA, is the key to national identity. Until Filipino becomes the true lingua-franca of the Philippines, he believes the gap between the well-educated classes and the vast majority of Filipinos cannot be bridged. ‘As long as we continue to use English,’ he says, ‘our scholars and academics will be dependent on other thinkers,’ and Filipino literature will be judged by Western standards and not, as it should be, by the standards of the indigenous tradition itself. Discerning such standards is an important part of LUMBERA’s work. He is learning, say his students, to see Filipino literature through Filipino eyes.
“In electing BIENVENIDO LUMBERA to receive the 1993 Ramon Magsaysay Award for journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his asserting the central place of the vernacular tradition in framing a national identity for modern Filipinos.”
---From the Ramon Magsaysay Awards citation