A review by yvespiders
Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country by Patricia Evangelista

dark informative sad medium-paced

5.0

 I want to preface this review by saying that I don’t know how someone who was born in the Philippines would feel about this book. I read this memoir as a Filipina-American and as someone who hasn’t set foot in my parents’ country for over two decades. My feelings about the book’s topic are influenced by what I’ve learned from my father when he lived under a dictatorship. Take my words with a grain of salt. If you can, seek out reviews from those who lived there in the past six to seven years to get another perspective. 

 

That said, the reason why I am rating Evangelista’s book so highly is because I believe it is a tour de force of journalistic integrity. It is an excellent example of how inconvenient truths can be told without sensationalizing them and how investigative journalists risk their safety and lives to uncover the truth. The stories of the victims and families of the war on drugs were written with so much empathy and clarity. Though the book is a memoir of her harrowing experiences as a trauma journalist, Evangelista chooses to center the oppressed in response to how the mainstream news and the former president himself often dehumanized them. She also details the historical and social-political context of her country when explaining the events that led to Duterte’s rise in power. Her claims about the former president will surely fire up many die-hard supporters, but she lays out her arguments clearly and meticulously. 

 

This frustration over the passages that dissect English and Tagalog grammatical structures and vocabulary is understandable, though I would argue these sections were necessary to bolster Evangelista’s main points. The evolution of Tagalog and Philippine English is a very significant part of the country’s cultural history against oppression. Not to mention, she points out that words have been weaponized by certain presidents to maintain their power and to keep people down. 

 

Highly recommended, though you may want to prepare yourself emotionally for this one.