Filipino Literature in English

The first Filipino literature published in English in the United States was in the early 1930s, a decade before Santos's arrival in the country. The writer who made this breakthrough was José Garcia Villa (1914-1997), whose poems and stories were published by Scribner's in 1933 as Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others. Villa lived in the United States, and his short stories, which were highly praised by critics, were included in Best American Short Stories of 1932 and Best American Short Stories of 1933. Despite the success of his fiction, however, during the 1930s Villa decided to write only lyric poetry. His Selected Poems and New was published in 1958. Although scholars acknowledge the merits of his pioneering work, Villa is little read today.

In the 1940s, poet and short-story writer Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956) came to the forefront of Filipino writers. Like Santos, Bulosan...