Micheal Beltran, a young journalist, was granted access to interview the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison, and his wife, Julie de Lima, in 2019 on condition that he write this book.

Sison passed away in December 2022, making this book a record of one of the last and arguably lengthiest interviews he ever gave. The essays track the couple’s prolonged stay as refugees, how the Philippine liberation movement found a home in Europe, and how migrants and activists gravitated toward each other while adrift from their homeland. “Exile,” Beltran says, “is imprisonment by displacement […] when people are condemned to leave their lands dressed in invisible chains.”

Michael Beltran is an activist and journalist whose articles have appeared in many publications in the Asia-Pacific, including Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post. Covering human rights, the shrinking democratic space in the Philippines, and forced migration, eviction, and displacement. He also volunteers for Pinoy Weekly.

Publisher: 
BUGHAW: Ateneo de Manila University Press, Philippines

Publication Date:
2023

Format: 
Softcover / 9 x 5 inches / 265 pages / BW

Language:
English

ISBN: 978-621-448292-4