Today, May 4, 2024, is the 107th birth anniversary of National Artist Nick Joaquin.
Nicomedes M. Joaquin is regarded by many as the most distinguished Filipino writer in English writing so variedly and so well about so many aspects of the Filipino. Nick Joaquin has also enriched the English language with critics coining “Joaquinesque” to describe his baroque Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of English based on Filipinisms.
Aside from his handling of language, Bienvenido Lumbera writes that Nick Joaquin’s significance in Philippine literature involves his exploration of the Philippine colonial past under Spain and his probing into the psychology of social changes as seen by the young, as exemplified in stories such as Doña Jeronima, Candido’s Apocalypse and The Order of Melchizedek. Nick Joaquin has written plays, novels, poems, short stories, and essays including reportage and journalism. As a journalist, Nick Joaquin uses the nom de plume Quijano de Manila but whether he is writing literature or journalism, fellow National Artist Francisco Arcellana opines that “it is always of the highest skill and quality”.
Read more: https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/national-artists-of-the-philippines/nick-joaquin/
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