BANYAGA: A SONG OF WAR
Charlson Ong
Banyaga chronicles the lives of three families from times of peace and the Second World War to the tumultuous landscape of the Philippines’ New Society and contemporary era.
In the late 1920s, enslaved brothers Ah Puy and Ah Kaw meet Ah Tin, Ah Sun, and Ah Beng on a ship bound for Manila. The five ambitious boys find common ground and become sworn brothers.
Adapting quickly is imperative to their survival in this harsh, foreign land. Ah Puy and Ah Kaw are sold to a candle maker as replacement sons. To prove worthy of the roof above them, cousins Ah Sun and Ah Tin must learn dye-making under Ah Sun’s business-savvy uncle. Ah Beng’s estranged father reluctantly trains him to manage their family store.
With nothing but grit and a taste for retaliation, they struggle to sit atop the pecking order in a new country that stripped them of their identities.
978-971-828-157-4
Category: Fiction/Cultural Heritage
Language: English
Copyright Year: 2025
Weight & Dimensions: 0.45 kg, 5” x 8”
Pages: 456
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlson Ong is a writer, film producer, and director. He has won the Philippine National Book Award for both short fiction and novel. He has four short story collections: Men of the East and Other Stories (Kalikasan Press, 1990); Woman of Amkaw and Other Stories (Anvil, 1992); Conversion and Other Fictions (An-vil, 1996); and Of that Other Country We Now Speak and Other Stories (University of the Philippines Press, 2016). He has four novels: An Embarrassment of Riches (Philippine Centennial Commission, 2000); Blue Angel/ White Shadow (UST Publishing House, 2010); and White Lady, Black Christ (Milflores Publishing, 2021). He is the writer, co-producer, and director of the acclaimed film Tanabata’s Wife, which won him Best Picture in the Tofarm Film Festival in 2018 and Best Adapted Screenplay for 2019 at the Filipino Acade-my of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS). In 2024, his complete short stories were compiled and published as a book titled Sojourner, Settler, Seer: The Complete Stories of Charlson Ong (Milflores Pub-lishing, 2024).