Fictionalized History in the Philippines: Five Narratives of Collective Amnesia

The paper analyzes five historical fictions for children in the Batang Historyador (Young Historian) series which detail five periods in Philippine history. The books discuss the issues of child labor in precolonial Philippines, child labor and the right to education regardless of gender during the Spanish colonial period, child labor during the American Occupation, children as witnesses of history in the Japanese Occupation and Martial Law periods. The narratives reveal (consciously or unconsciously) how distortedly and inaccurately the past is told from the perspective of a colonized mind. The struggles of historians to review and revision history from a pro-Filipino consciousness were totally unheeded. The works attempt to throw light on issues of class, gender and children’s rights but Filipino issues regarding culture, identity, politics and history were obliterated because the framework was tied to a ‘‘universal’’ notion of history