Si Tandang Basio Macunat

An old farmer of Tanay, Tandang Basio, tells a visitor why he will not hear that his children should go to study in Manila, and reads out the story his dead father Antonio wrote down. It follows a decent family ruined by the wish to raise a son above his station, in letters between the student Próspero and his parents. A Tagalog satire and moral tale of the 1880s by the friar Miguel Lucio y Bustamante. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the Book Guide explains these words where they occur.

Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.