Bienvenido Santos

Bienvenido N. Santos (1911-1996) is a very important Filipino-American fictionist, poet and nonfiction writer. He was born raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years where he is widely credited as a pioneering Asian-American writer.

Santos received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the Philippines where he first studied creative writing under the tutelage of pioneering fictionist Paz Marquez Benitez. Santos was a government pensionado (scholar) to the United States at the University of Illinois, Columbia University, and Harvard University in 1941. During World War II, he served with the Philippine government in exile under President Manuel L. Quezon in Washington, D.C. together with the playwright Severino Montano and Philippine National Artist Jose Garcia Villa.

In 1946, he returned to the Philippines to become a teacher and university administrator. He received a Rockefeller fellowship at the Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa where he later taught as a Fulbright exchange professor. Santos has also received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a Republic Cultural Heritage Award in Literature as well as several Palanca Awards for his short stories. Scent of Apples, his only book to be published in the United States, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1980.

Santos received honorary doctorate degrees in Humanities and Letters from the University of the Philippines, and Bicol University (Legazpi City, Albay) in 1981. He was also a Professor of Creative Writing and Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Wichita State University (Kansas, U.S.A.) from 1973 to 1982. Santos also received an honorary doctorate degree in Humane Letters from Wichita State University in 1982. After his retirement, Santos became Visiting Writer and Artist at De La Salle University in Manila.

De La Salle University honored Bienvenido Santos by renaming its Creative Writing Center after him.

Works

Novels

• Brother My Brother (1960)
• The Volcano (1965)
• Villa Magdalena (1965)
• The Praying Man (1977)
• The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Charles Taylor

Poetry

• The Wounded Stag: 54 Poems
• Distances: In Time

Nonfiction

• Memory's Fictions: A Personal History
• Postscript to a Saintly Life
• Letters: Book 1
• Letters: Book 2
• My Most Memorable Christmas

Awards, Honors and Prizes

• Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the University of Iowa
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Republic Cultural Heritage Award
• Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for short fiction (1956, 1961 and 1965)
• Fulbright Program Exchange Professorship
• American Book Award from Before Colmbus Foundation
• Honorary Doctorate in Humanities and Letters, University of the Philippines
• Honorary Doctorate in Humanities and Letters, Bicol University (Legazpi City, Albay, Philippines)
• Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, Wichita State University (Kansas, U.S.A.)

External links

• Bienvenido Santos in infoplease
• People: Bienvenido Santos
• The Literary Encyclopedia
• Immigration blues
• Filipino-American literature
• A guide to literary criticism on the internet for Bienvenido Santos
• Up from benevolent assimilation: at home with the Manongs of Bienvenido Santos by Victor Bascara
• Filipino Writers Album
• Books of Bienvenido Santos
• Filipino-American Literature at Emory University
• PALH Books on Philippine Literature
• Introduction to Asian Pacific American Literature at the University of Oregon
• De la Salle University
• Rereading History, Rewriting Desire: Reclaiming Queerness in Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart and Bienvenido Santos' Scent Of Apples by Melinda L. de Jesus
• Wichita State University