Growing out of highschool Rizal
Jose Rizal ate tuyo and spent most of his money buying books. he despised a chinese merchant in Dapitan and an american traveler, he got high from hashish and walked the red light districts in Europe. His mother was said to be from the illegitimate line of Alberto and he always knew he would never reach 30. Inspite of carrying Dr., he was not able to take the certification exam that would have made him a licensed medical practitioner and he once said he did not want to be a farmer but ended up tilling the soil of Dapitan.
These are the things I did not know even after two years of secondary school Jose Rizal, two semesters of Spanish class on Rizal works and one summer of PI 100 (all about Jose Rizal), that I was able to get out of reading Ambeth Ocampo’s “Rizal without the Overcoat”. The book reads like a tabloid but with Ambeth’s eloquency and journalist wit, which is just half of the charm. It also takes off on tid bits and seemingly hearsy anecdotes that soon enough, one will find out is based on factual evidences, carefully researched by the writer.
Jose Rizal has never been as interesting as without his overcoat.
