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On December 9, Vibal Foundation will launch Lolo José: An Intimate and Illustrated Portrait of José Rizal, a unique biography of the Philippine national hero written by his grand-niece Asuncion Lopez Bantug. Filled with family lore and anecdotes the Rizal clan has passed down from generation to generation about their most illustrious relative, the book promises to introduce José Rizal in a whole new light as it tells his life story the way only his family could.
Written by Lopez-Bantug as a young girl, Lolo José was first published in 1982 by the Intramuros Administration with a preface by the manuscript's editor, Nick Joaquin. Vibal Foundation releases the biography more than twenty years after its original publication as part of its Filipina Clasica series, which aims to keep culturally and educationally significant books in print.
Says Joaquin of Lolo José: “Even the now all too familiar events of the Rizal story take on new color and suspense because the reader feels that all this is not research but reportage: the words of witnesses, the testimony of primary sources, the gospel of disciples. But even more exciting is the unfamiliar material, the private details known only to and lovingly cherished by the family.”
In reading the book, he adds, “You may feel you're getting to know Rizal for the first time.”
To aid the reader's rediscovery of the national hero, Lolo José also contains an album of more than three hundred of Rizal's photos, a complete bibliography of his visual, literary and political works and an illustrated timeline of his life. The book also presents a genealogical chart that documents Rizal's ancestors dating back to the seventeenth century as well as seven generations of descendants.
Vibal Foundation will release the hardcover edition of Lolo José with a companion CD-ROM entitled Codex Rizal, which features the complete bibliography of Rizal, full texts of his most notable literary works and previews of his other writings, including his third novel Makamisa. All are linked to Filipiniana.net. The CD also contains copies of Epistolario Rizalino, Teodoro M. Kalaw's compilation of Rizal's letters in Spanish, and the landmark biographies of Rizal written by Wenceslao E. Retana, Austin C. Craig and Rafael Palma.
Lolo José will be launched at 6 pm on December 9 at the Almacenes Reales in Fort Santiago, Intramuros in an event that will also gather and pay tribute to all members of the Rizal clan, especially Asuncion Lopez Bantug.
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