On Culture, Art and Literature

Jose Maria Sison: "Inasmuch as culture is a reflection of economics and politics, literature and art are the finest and most sensitive ideological forms for summing up social reality. We can create revolutionary literature and art only by carefully and meticulously keeping to the revolutionary stand, viewpoint and method of the class which leads the broad masses of the people in the life-and-death struggle between progress and reaction."

About the Author

Jose Maria Sison has written books on a wide range of subjects, encompassing Philippine history, society, revolution, politics, economy, culture, art and literature. His books of poems include Brothers, Prison and Beyond and The Guerrilla Is Like a Poet (using as book title his best known poem and including his latest poems).  His poems have been included in Philippine and world anthologies of poetry.

He is a recipient of  the  Literary Achievement Award for poetry and essay from the Writers' Union of the Philippines in 1985 and the National Book Award for Poetry (Prison and Beyond), Manila Critics Circle in 1985. He won the Southeast Asia WRITE Award for poetry in 1986. He was lauded for the social vision and artistry of his poems.

About the Series

The International Network for Philippine Studies (INPS)  is publishing a series of thematic books by Jose Maria Sison under the rubric of Sison Reader Series. On Culture, Art  and Literature is the first to be published. The INPS plans to publish the following: On the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,  Critique of the Philippine Economy and Politics,  On the New Democratic Revolution, On the Communist Party of the Philippines, On Protracted People's War, On the National United Front, On the Labor Movement in the Philippines, On the Peasant Movement and Land Reform, On the Youth Movement, On the Women's Liberation Movement, On US Imperialism in the Philippines, On the Environment, On the World Proletarian Revolution, and so on.