Bienvenido N. Santos Biography PDF

[Bienvenido N. Santos,] also called *Ben*, was born in [Tondo, Manila on March 22, 1911]. He finished his [elementary and secondary education in public schools]. He graduated from the [University of the Philippines (UP) in 1932] with a teacher's degree.\ After graduating from UP, Santos [taught in e...

[Bienvenido N. Santos,] also called *Ben*, was born in [Tondo, Manila on March 22, 1911]. He finished his [elementary and secondary education in public schools]. He graduated from the [University of the Philippines (UP) in 1932] with a teacher's degree.\ After graduating from UP, Santos [taught in elementary and high schools in Albay]. He was also a prolific writer whose writing career started at nineteen when his first story, [*The Horseshoe*, was published in the *Graphic* in 1930].\ In [September 1941, after winning first place in a government competitive examination], he left for the United States of America as a government pensionado whose scholarship was granted by the Philippine Commonwealth government, leaving his wife and three daughters in the Philippines. There he studied his [master of arts degree program in English at the University of Illinois.] After [obtaining his master's degree in 1942, he further took graduate courses at Columbia and later at Harvard], where he learned short stories from American experts. [Caught by World War II (1939-1945]), Santos was unable to return home and found himself an exile in America. This event in Santos' life characterized the development of his writing career as it is mostly the central theme of his stories. While stranded in the United States, many pensionados, including Santos, were called by the Philippine government-in-exile to serve the embassy where Santos became a [public relations officer]. While the war was ongoing, Santos was sent across the [US to give a lecture about the Philippines]. In his travels, he met many people curious about the Philippines, including his fellow Filipinos who never returned home. As a result, many of Santos' stories are influenced by his travels and conversations with the Filipinos in the US. The settings of most of his stories are [in Chicago, New York, and other states in the US.] [In January 1946, Santos returned to the Philippines]. It was four years that Santos was unable to reunite with his wife and daughters in the Philippines, which was then occupied by the Japanese forces. Upon his coming home, he worked as a [professor and administrator in a school in Legazpi City], and he published two collections, [*You Lovely People* (short stories, 1955)] and [*The Wounded Stag: Fifty-Four Poems* (1956).]\ Santos [returned to the US in 1958 as a Rockefeller], [Guggenheim, and Iowa Literary Foundation Fellow at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop], where he also taught for five years at the university. The scholarship allowed him to finish his first novels, [*Villa Magdalena* and *The Volcano,* published in Manila in 1965] when he also won the [Philippine Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Literature.]\ In the 1960s, Santos would travel from the Philippines to the US to continue his writing stints. In the 1970s, Santos' plan to go home permanently with his wife halted because of the martial law declaration during the Marcos regime. It was also at this time that his novel, [*The Praying Man*,] which criticized government corruption, was banned in the Philippines but was later [published in 1982.] [From 1973 to 1982, Santos stayed in the US] with his wife as he worked as a distinguished writer in residence[. Two years later, in 1979, after he became a US citizen in 1976,] he published his collection of short stories, *[Scent of Apples]*, the only book of Santos\'s short stories published in the United States. Moreover, this book [won the 1980 American Book Award.]\ Santos and his wife returned home in 1982 from their stay in the [US]. After his wife died, he worked as a visiting [writer and artist at De La Salle University-Manila. Santos died in the year 1996.]