‘Inspired insightful writing’

The past – if its mere recall evokes nightmares – is best forgotten. However, if remembrance of things past brings about tender nostalgia and can serve a didactic end then, as one historian notes, the past, indeed, has its uses. Santayana warned us about the dangers of ignoring our past, saying: "Those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them."

Azucena Grajo Uranza uses the past in her latest novel, Feast of the Innocents – and how creatively she has used it~! This work together with her two published novels, Bamboo in the Wind and A Passing Season, and a forthcoming novel, Women of Tammuz, comprise a tetralogy with a time span of about a hundred years.

Significant landmarks in the Philippine historical landscape provide a sweeping panorama which serves as the setting for stirring saga of two middle-class clans caught in the cross-currents of historical events, testing their endurance and their commitment to the age-old values of faithfulness, self-respect, and decency.

The revolution against Spain in 1896, followed by the Philippine-American War (denigrated by the Yanquis as an insurrection); the Pacific War that brought to our shores the Japanese invaders notorious for their brutality; the oppression perpetrated by a dictatorship, and its downfall toward the end of the twentieth century – these furnish the backdrop for A. G. Uranza’s series of novels. Throughout this succession of catastrophic events, the Eduarte and Herrera families of Manila, representing all decent families everywhere, confront violence, falsehood, and greed that threaten to stamp its indelible imprints upon their essence and being.

The universal family, localized in the Philippine historical setting and personalized by the novels’ characters, bears the brunt of political and economic oppression that threatens eventual destruction. It is to the credit of the courage and tenacity of its members that it achieves survival and triumph in a world ruled by institutional cruelty, injustice, and neglect.

A. G. Uranza holds up the mirror to show the faults and failures inherent in our society which claims as victims the family, that nuclear unit required for societies to survive.

Feast of the Innocents brings us to the conclusion of the saga of the two families whose story encapsulates in miniature the country’s travails and triumphs. A. G. Uranza’s unique way of inspired insightful writing, viewing the family life-story as a sustained moving narrative juxtaposed with highlights of historical happening, may well set a new paradigm of social history as a literary genre.