Bienvenido Santos

American novelist

Bienvenido Nuqui Santos (March 22, 1911 – January 7, 1996) was a Filipino American fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer. He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years where he is widely credited as a pioneering Asian American writer.

Santos received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the Philippines where he first studied creative writing under Paz Marquez Benitez. In 1941, Santos was a government pensionado (scholar) to the United States at the University of Illinois, Columbia University, and Harvard University. He had arrived in San Francisco on October 12, 1941, aboard the leaving his wife and three daughters in the Philippines. When war in the Pacific came to the Philippines on December 8 (December 7 Hawaii time) he feared he would never see his family again—a reality that "not only interrupted his study of realism; it was overwhelming it" leading to a transformation in his sense of national consciousness and identity. That crisis changed the nature of his writing into a less carefree style to one mixing laughter and pain; described by Florentino Valeros as "a man hiding tears in his laughter." During World War II, he served with the Philippine government in exile under President Manuel L. Quezon in Washington, D. C., together with the playwright Severino Montano and Philippine National Artist Jose Garcia Villa. Santos left for home on January 17, 1946, aboard the arriving in early February. In 1967, he returned to the United States to become a teacher and university administrator. He received a Rockefeller fellowship at the Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa where he later taught as a Fulbright exchange professor. Santos has also received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a Republic Cultural Heritage Award in Literature as well as several Palanca Awards for his short stories. Scent of Apples won a 1980 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Santos received an honorary doctorate degrees in humanities and letters from the University of the Philippines, and Bicol University (Legazpi City, Albay) in 1981. He was also a Professor of Creative Writing and Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Wichita State University from 1973 to 1982, at which time the university awarded him an honorary doctorate degree in humane letters. After his retirement, Santos became Visiting Writer and Artist at De La Salle University in Manila; the university honored Santos by renaming its creative writing center after him.