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UP and Popular Bookstore RememberedPriscilla Susan Po-Rufino B.S. Foreign Service 1966 Let every voice in the Woman's Club Our dear beloved UP Woman's Club! I was still in grade school when my older sister Lucille (B.S. BA 1961) started taking me along to UP Diliman those Saturdays when her group had to practice the song for Miss Clemente’s Euthenics class. I roamed around the cottage and picked bougainvillea blooms as I watched the young ladies enjoy their afternoon social in the low-ceiling sawali cottages. Sometimes, I dropped some petals on the palms of ladies who held their arms crossed at their backs. Even as I played around while waiting for them to finish, the melody stayed with me until it was my turn to learn the entire song under Miss Rafols’ Euthenics class five years later.When our father passed away in 1998,1 realized just how UP was more inextricably woven into our family life than those walls of sawali and the now quaint Woman’s Club anthem. Almost every college of UP Diliman and UP Manila was represented during the wake - by faculty members, former and current students, administration officials, retired and adjunct professors. Dr. Francisco "Dodong" Nemenzo (UP president 1999-2005) pulled me aside and told me that "your father was responsible for my ideological education." He recalled his early days in Manila as a young UP student from Cebu, he would visit Popular Bookstore. Dad had noticed him in the store... introduced him to several authors and gradually expanded his reading fare to the progressive minds produced by the Eastern and Western worlds. Dodong said that the bookstore was his hangout in those days. It dawned on me that the bookstore founded by our father and his three brothers was an extension of the university - both as a physical (a nice, long smog-free trip from Diliman to Santa Cruz, Manila) as well as an educational resource center. Intellectuals, university professors, students, journalists, business people and even government officials gravitated toward this hole-in-the-wall bookstore laden with readings on literature and art, philosophy, politics, psychology, social and natural sciences, and more.
In the early 1950s, the Philippine government mimicked the anti-Communist McCarthy "witch hunting" days in the United States. Three Po brothers (one happened to be away) were picked up by the Philippine military for questioning about alleged ties to Communists. Our dad Joaquin was detained longer and tortured in Camp Murphy (now Camp Aguinaldo). Many of the bookstore’s Journalist-customers were also arrested, including labor leader and writer Amado V. Hernandez (now National Artist). Ideological repression would be repeated , through the years and became more dangerous during the Marcos martial law regime Popular Bookstore would survive, just like UP.
Thus, when I started my first two years at UP Diliman (then referred as University College) -I got used to being asked: how are you related to Popular Bookstore? I heard the question from Dr. Cesar Adib Majul, Dr. Alfredo Lagmay, Dr. Concepción Dadufalza, the professors Epistola and the professors Arcellana, among many, many others. This kind of "welcome" from the faculty made me feel at ease with my move (my Dad’s decision really) from a lifetime behind the convent walls of an all-girls' school to this "god-less" university as portrayed by the nuns. Contrary to the fears raised by the good nuns, the UP culture did not come as a shock to me... after all, that was what Popular Bookstore fostered with the books that it sells or dares to market: free and independent thinking, social justice, continued inquiry of established norms and the bourgeois mindset, clean government and accountability, the Filipinos as first-class citizens of its own country, and service to the country.
Joaquín Po’s children who are UP-Diliman alumni: Lucille Po-Deniega, B.S. Business Administration, 1961Alexander Po, Institute of Applied Geology, Post-Graduate, 1966-1967Priscilla Susan Po-Rufino, B.S. Foreign Service,Katherine Po-Palomera, A.B. English,1966 -1968Flor Melissa Po-Artillaga, B.S. Hotel and Restaurant Management, 1972Julie Po, A.B. Fine Arts, 1980
In the early 1950s, the Philippine government mimicked the anti-Communist McCarthy "witch hunting" days in the United States. Three Po brothers (one happened to be away) were picked up by the Philippine military for questioning about alleged ties to Communists. Our dad Joaquin was detained longer and tortured in Camp Murphy (now Camp Aguinaldo). Many of the bookstore’s Journalist-customers were also arrested, including labor leader and writer Amado V. Hernandez (now National Artist). Ideological repression would be repeated , through the years and became more dangerous during the Marcos martial law regime Popular Bookstore would survive, just like UP.
Thus, when I started my first two years at UP Diliman (then referred as University College) -I got used to being asked: how are you related to Popular Bookstore? I heard the question from Dr. Cesar Adib Majul, Dr. Alfredo Lagmay, Dr. Concepción Dadufalza, the professors Epistola and the professors Arcellana, among many, many others. This kind of "welcome" from the faculty made me feel at ease with my move (my Dad’s decision really) from a lifetime behind the convent walls of an all-girls' school to this "god-less" university as portrayed by the nuns. Contrary to the fears raised by the good nuns, the UP culture did not come as a shock to me... after all, that was what Popular Bookstore fostered with the books that it sells or dares to market: free and independent thinking, social justice, continued inquiry of established norms and the bourgeois mindset, clean government and accountability, the Filipinos as first-class citizens of its own country, and service to the country.
-Article from Memories... University of the Philippines Alumni and Friends United
Joaquín Po’s children who are UP-Diliman alumni: Lucille Po-Deniega, B.S. Business Administration, 1961Alexander Po, Institute of Applied Geology, Post-Graduate, 1966-1967Priscilla Susan Po-Rufino, B.S. Foreign Service,Katherine Po-Palomera, A.B. English,1966 -1968Flor Melissa Po-Artillaga, B.S. Hotel and Restaurant Management, 1972Julie Po, A.B. Fine Arts, 1980
Lucille and Susan in front of Popular Bookstore
For years, Popular Bookstore was located at 298 Doroteo Jose, Santa Cruz, Manila. It then moved to 1573 Doroteo Jose. It is now located at 305 Tomas Morato Ave., Quezon City. Phone: 08-372-2162
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