That a Man Dies Ignorant When He Has Capacity for Knowledge, is Tragedy

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The author, Amado D. Valdez, draws on his life experiences to write this remarkable book which reads like a literary novel. Valdez ran away from home when he was sixteen, leaving behind his treasured memories of the small Ilokano town he grew up in. This flight was propelled by the author seeking new ideas, and an urge to break away from what he perceived to be the increasing illogicality, or restrictive nature, of his father's entrenched religious ideas. He ran to Manila to study, where he fell in with students in the well-known university belt in Quiapo. This meeting and place became, for Valdez and all his contemporaries, a crucible in which to forge ideas, dreams, beliefs and to thrash out what it meant to be human in 1960s Philippines. The author remarks that his mother nourished him and says, "I grew with the sunlight of reason nourished by the fertile soil of experience. It was nature repeating itself in my life." This lyrical book is a must-read because it is not about the idle dreams of university students but about what it means to be human; what it takes to change; where one goes with one's ideas and what one eventually becomes because of them.