Paz Latorena

Paz M. Latorena (January 17, 1908 – October 19, 1953), one of the foremost writers of the first generation of Filipino English writers, in both literary writing and education was a poet, editor, author, and teacher.

Paz Latorena, the oldest among the ten children of Magda Manguera and Ricardo Latorena, was born on Jan. 17, 1908 in Boac, Marinduque. She finished basic schooling at St. Scholastica’s College in Manila and the Manila South High School (now the Araullo High School). In 1926, she took up Education at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila where she also attended a short story writing class under a key figure in Filipino literature in English, Paz Marquez Benitez of “Dead Stars” fame. In 1927, Latorena received an invitation from Benitez to write a column for the Philippines Herald Magazine, of which Benitez was the literary editor. That same year, Latorena, along with other campus writers, founded the UP Writers’ Club. The Literary Apprentice, the UP Writers’ Club’s publication, then ran a short story by Latorena, “A Christmas Tale. ”Latorena also wrote poetry under the pseudonym, Mina Lys, which, according to Tanlayco, had a “romantic significance,” for the then young writer. Before the year ended, the Marinduque native won the third prize in Jose Garcia Villa’s Roll of Honor for the Best Stories of 1927 for her story, “The Small Key.” For her final year of college in 1927, Latorena transferred to UST to finish her Education degree. She became the literary editor of the Varsitarian and published her poems, “Insight” and “My Last Song,” under her nom de plume Mina Lys. She shortly earned her master’s and doctorate degree while teaching literature courses in UST. In 1934, her doctoral dissertation, “Philippine Literature in English: Old Voices and New,” received the highest rating of sobresaliente. Latorena’s former students are now giants in Philippine letters: F. Sionil Jose, Nita Umali, Genoveva Edroza Matute, Zeneida Amador, Ophelia Dimalanta and Alice Colet-Villadolid, to name a few. source

All through graduate studies, Latorena worked as a faculty member at U.S.T., teaching a wide range of English subjjts, from Freshman English to Shakespeare to Philosophy of Literature. She steadily rose from the rank of Instructor I to Full Professor in 1941. As PHILIPPINE STUDIES early as 1939, she joined the U.S.T. Graduate School (General Bulletin, 1931, 1936 and 1939). rv By the time Latorena went to college (1926), English had replaced Spanish as medium of instruction, and literature in English had begun to flourish. The University of the Philippines became the acknowledged literary center of the country, and it was here Latorem's talent for creative writing was developed (Ramos and Valeros 1953, 7). 

Among her contemporaries on campus were Jose Garcia Villa, Arturo Rotor, Loreto Paras and Angela Manalang. An account of the almost frenetic literary activity of these days is given in Manlapaz (1993, 15-25). Latorena's formation as a writer owes much to the influence of Mrs. Paz Marquez-Benitez, her teacher in English 101 (Short Story Writing) (Relarnpagos 1957,56). Impressed by her fiction, Mrs. Benitez asked her to submit her short stories to Herald Mid-Week Magazine, which she was editing at the time. It was also Mrs. Benitez who suggested that she write a weekly column in the same periodical under the title "Poems in Prose." Latorena used "PL" or "Minna Lyq" her pen name, to sign the column (Jardin 1958, 16). One of her articles published in the 3 July 1927 issue, 'With Our Poets," featured an interview with Angela Manalang, then a student at U.P. and acclaimed as the most promising of the young writers (Manlapaz 1993, 149). Among the other tutors who influenced Latorena were Ignacio Manlapaz, Carmelo Jarnias, George Pope Shannon, Tom Inglis Moore and Harold P. Scott. Shannon and Moore were the most influential American teachers at that time. 

These men were responsible for the introduction of a new tone and spirit in Philippine letters. A strong wave of liberal ideas took possession of the writers' imagination, and within a short period writers were dabbling, not only in ancient classical studies, but in modern forms of expressions, such as free verse, symbolism and expressionism (Hernandez quoted in Ramos and Valeros 1953, 8). The College Folio and the Philippine Collegian, student publications at the U.P., encouraged artistic productivity among student-writers. With her friend Loreto Paras, Latorena who was later to become a prominent fiction writer wrote what they called "prose poems" for the Collegian (Jardin 1958, 24). In 1927, Latorena and Paras became founding members of the U.P. Writers' Club, which subsequently published the Literary Apprentice, PAZ LATORENA later the leading college literary publication in the country Uardin 1958, 16). Fernando Leano, reporter and editor of the Collegian from 1925 to 1929, recounts how the members of the U.P. Writer's Club would come together to discuss current literature. Sometimes Prof. Moore or Dean Conklin were invited to join them in discussing: Such matters as the style of Wilbur Daniel Steele and of William Saroyan . . . also the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, ' Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell, and the plays of Bernard Shaw, Vidal Tan, Carlos P. Romulo and each other's stories and poems (Alegre and Fernandez 1984, 124). Latorena also became a member of the Literary Guild, the purpose of which was to help the writers publish their works in book form (Alegre and Fernandez 1984, 124). 

However, her real ascent in the literary world was her admission into an exclusive literary circle of national significancethe Philippine Writers Association (P.W.A.) then composed of Jose Garcia Villa, Arturo Rotor, Alfredo Litiatco, Bienvenido Santos, Mercedes Grau Sta. Maria, Clemencia Joven and Loreto Paras among many others. The members of the P.W.A., conscious of themselves as "constituting the nucleus of a great move ment with national implications," wrote ardently. Latorena doubled her writing efforts. Her stories found print not only in student publications at the U.P., but also in the country's leading magazines and journals, namely: The Philippines Herald, Graphic, Philippines Free Press and Women's Home Journal (Jardin 1958, 17). However, compared to other Filipino fictionists, her total output was small. In an interview, Latorena claimed that during her student days and immediately after her graduation, she wrote "about twenty-five stories" (Relampagos 1957, 56). Until the present time there has been no compilation of her stories available to interested readers. In 1963, the late Dr. Alfredo Tiamson of U.S.T. and later of U.P. brought together in typescript nine short stories. 

The present researcher has gathered from various sources the titles of thirty stories and the names of the magazines or journals where they originally appeared. They are listed below according to the years of their publication. The sources of these titles in the list are: Laureano Jardin's M.A. thesis, 'The Art of Paz M. Latorena," (UST, 1958); "Index of Short Stories Published in Phil. Magazines, selected by Jose Garcia Villa (1926-34) and by the Literary Guild of the Philippines (1930-32): Osmundo 0. Sta. Romana, PHILIPPINE STUDIES ed., Best Filipino Short Stories (Wightman Printing Co., 1935), pp. 141- 149, and Florentino B. Valeros and Estrellita V. Gruenberg, Filipino Writen in English: A Biographical and Bibliographical Directory (New Day Publishers, 19871, p. 135. Asterisks mark those stories presently available and constituting the materials for the present study. In as much as the recovery of Paz Latorem's stories is still in the process, and many of the stories found are available only in typescript, this article does not indicate the pages from where direct quotations are drawn.source.