Manila: A Memoir of Love & Loss
Product Description
A beautifully written memoir making a distinctive contribution to Australian literature concerning the immigrant experience.
Purita Echevarria de Gonzalez was born in Manila in the 1920s and describes an enchanted world, forever lost, with great poignancy and compelling immediacy. The reader suffers with her as this world is savagely destroyed by the outbreak of war, the Japanese occupation and the annihilation of the city by American saturation bombardment. The author is equally adept at describing without sentimentality, the halcyon pre-war time of her childhood and teens, and without sensationalism, the horrors of starvation and disease, brutality and massacre.
Manila: A Memoir of Love and Loss makes the past come alive, with its skilful blending of the personal, including a love story which runs through the narrative, and the historical (we briefly glimpse Marcos as a youthful partisan). Finely written, and inspiring in its portrayal of courage and compassion in the face of suffering, this memoir has a haunting quality which makes it impossible to put down.
Manila: A Memoir of Love & Loss
Filed under Books by on Mar 4th, 2010. Comment. 
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Comments on Manila: A Memoir of Love & Loss
This book has been an excellent, excellent read. I particularly enjoyed the way in which the author (Purita) painted a picture of Manila before, during and after the war.
A friend of mine lent me a book and I am now buying it for my parents.
Rating: 5 / 5
Purita de Gonzalez’s account of prewar and WWII Manila will tug at the heartstrings of anyone with some knowledge of what a gracious city Manila was before the Japanese destroyed it in the last months of WWII. One’s mind boggles to learn that the Basque community in Manila regularly performed Basque folk dances, or that there was tension between Francoist and pro-Republic Spaniards in Manila. (The Basques, despite generally conservative cultural leanings, were for the secular, even atheistic, Republic, because it guaranteed the political autonomy of the Basque region, whereas Franco was centralist and hostile to regional identities.) These aspects of prewar life in Manila (albeit, of the Hispanic community), from the viewpoint of a current reader, seem quaint and alien, but also touching. My heart broke when she described the sufferings of her female relatives at the hands of the Japanese. I wonder whatever happened to the young man she loved, and whose name she never mentions in the book?
Rating: 4 / 5
I bought this book while on vacation in Sydney in 2000. I read the book in 2 days as it was engaging and very hard to put down. I’ve always loved hearing about prewar Manila from my grandparents and their friends – it was a gracious, happy time where the city truly was ‘the pearl of the orient’. The book starts off with Purita’s childhood memories – her school life, everyday activities with friends and family. As someone who lives in Manila now, these mundane activities were fascinating as most of the places she described no longer exist. Through Purita’s memoirs, you get a glimpse into the life of a family living through this golden age. Which makes the coming of war and the atrocities committed during the war (and documented very honestly and graphically) all the more heartbreaking. As it hints in the title, this is a story of love and loss — the loss of Purita’s innocence, her first love and the permanent loss of the city that Manila once was. I have to add that the photos in this book are also worth seeing. I have purchased 2 more copies of this book which I have lent to many friends and family members. They all loved it as well. Purita, thank you for sharing your memories.
Rating: 5 / 5