FAMILY TAPESTRIES

In my senior year of college, I was assigned to read, for a memory studies class, the memoir Subversive Lives, a generational portrait of the Marcos dictatorship years written by the Quimpo siblings.

- SEAN CARBALLO

In my senior year of college, I was assigned to read, for a memory studies class, the memoir Subversive Lives, a generational portrait of the Marcos dictatorship years written by the Quimpo siblings. The book was revelatory in the way it wove together a family's reckoning with political action and the variety of responses that accompany moments of upheaval and turmoil. How can a memoir manage to simultaneously highlight the specific and individual while also unraveling the social world that encompasses and encroaches upon each experience? How does a family tell its story without sacrificing the perspective of each individual member?

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