E. San Juan Jr., the US-based Filipino Marxist critic whose work spans literary studies and anti-imperial critique, gathers essays from the early 2000s that read the Philippines as a neocolonial formation caught between US imperial power and persistent popular resistance. The collection ranges across extrajudicial killings under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Filipino diaspora and overseas contract labor, the NPA and Moro insurgencies, and readings of Carlos Bulosan, Jose Rizal, and Amado V. Hernandez. Writing from a committed anti-imperialist position, San Juan treats culture and literature as terrains inseparable from the country’s unresolved national-democratic struggle.