When you live in the Philippines or a country like that, you develop something of a very thick skin because you're confronted every day with all of the problems all around you.

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• Miguel Syjuco:

  I don't see myself as any different from all the other Filipinos who have gone abroad looking for o

• Miguel Syjuco:

  I have to believe that literature can effect change; otherwise, I would have no purpose in my life

• Miguel Syjuco:

  What I do know is that writing is the thing I am best at, and I don't have the stomach, the ability

• Miguel Syjuco:

  With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularl

• Miguel Syjuco:

  I look at western literature and especially North American literature, and I feel like it gets bogg

• Miguel Syjuco:

  Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first

• Miguel Syjuco:

  I love my homeland, but it's an absurd country. Politics in the Philippines is like spectator sport

• Miguel Syjuco:

  There is that potential of the expats coming back to the Philippines. But sadly they are no opportu

• Miguel Syjuco:

  If I were to go back to the Philippines, I would probably end up teaching creative writing at a uni

• Miguel Syjuco:

  'Illustrado' is not an autobiography. Only the ideas are autobiographical; the ideas of bitterness,