“Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?” RespectPhilippinesColonizationRizalPhilippine History Book:Rizal Without the Overcoat Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat
“Rizal" is a compulsory course in school, but few teachers make Rizal's novels interesting. If students are taught to enjoy Rizal's works as literature instead of as a lodemine of 'patriotic' allusions I am sure they would not mind reading and rereading the 'Noli me Tangere'.” PhilippinesRizalPhilippine History Book:Rizal Without the Overcoat Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat
“We make Rizal in our own image and likeness. Our image of Rizal is usually formed or deformed in school through numerous biographies with flattering titles.” Rizal Book:Meaning and History: The Rizal Lectures Source: Meaning and History: The Rizal Lectures
“I was to discover that like the overcoat that snugly wraps Rizal in all his statues and photographs, Rizal is obscured by countless myths and preconceived ideas... Without his overcoat, Rizal was human, like you and me.” PhilippinesRizalPhilippine History Book:Rizal Without the Overcoat Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat
“Doreen Fernandez' foreword to "Rizal Without the Overcoat": His essays remind us that history need not and should not be relegated to schoolbooks and classrooms, where it often becomes a set of names and dates to memorize and spew out on test papers. History is a living and lively account of what we were and are; it could and should be as real to each of us as stories about family or about recent and past events.. If all of that makes us understand humanity better, so does history make us understand ourselves, and our country infinitely better, in the context of our culture and our society.” PhilippinesRizalPhilippine History Book:Rizal Without the Overcoat Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat