Axel Timo Purr meets Filipino author Bebang Siy, who broke new ground with her book It's a Men's World: humorous, written in Filipino, and about the lives of ordinary people. Siy talks about her childhood in Manila's red-light district, about novena booklets, cheap romance novels, and schoolbooks that got her reading—and about the good fortune of always meeting people who believed in her at just the right time. Her professor recognized her thesis as a finished book, which later became a bestseller. Today, Siy works as a cultural worker because hardly anyone can make a living from writing alone. She talks about the language divide that still divides the country and her call for literature that makes people angry – literature that exposes corruption, injustice, and social inertia.

Location/Date: Manila, August 20, 2025

This podcast is part of the reportage Literary Travels in the Philippines.

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