“Footnote to Youth” is a short story written by Filipino author José García Villa, first published in The Frontier in January 1932. It centers on Dodong, a farmer’s son living in the Philippines who wishes to marry at the tender age of seventeen. Dodong eventually regrets his decision to marry young, but he fails to stop his eldest son from making the same mistake. “Footnote to Youth” explores themes of masculinity and establishing one’s own independence.

While the story is now known as one of the author’s best works, Villa originally had a difficult time finding a publisher for Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others. This could be in part attributed to the effects of the Great Depression, which led to a drastic decrease in book production and consumption at the time. As such, short stories—especially those by relatively unknown authors—were notoriously hard to sell. In 1931, Villa finished the manuscript of his short story collection, entitled Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, and submitted it to publishing houses such as Alfred Knopf, Macmillan, and Jonathan Cape—all of whom replied with sympathetic rejection letters, explaining that current market conditions were not favorable. Finally, Scribner accepted Villa’s proposal of publishing the book using the author’s own funds—the first arrangement of its kind in the publishing house. After Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others finally saw publication in 1933, Villa shifted his interest from prose to poetry.

Unlike the more abstract works Villa penned late in his literary career, “Footnote to Youth” is a modest and heartbreaking portrait of rural life. Apart from it being set in a provincial and poor area in the Philippines, it also utilizes native Filipino words, such as batalan (a specific worktop area in a traditional Filipino kitchen), sawali (a woven bamboo mat), and papag (a low bamboo bed). This is one of the story’s characteristics that mark it as Filipino—that while its themes are universal, its characters and events are demarcated to a specific milieu. The significance of positioning the story as such can be seen in the reality of its main conflict, as teen marriage is an issue often attributed to poverty, insufficient education, and the lack of other opportunities. In fact, Dodong impregnates Teang less than a year after their marriage, with many children following through the years—something which frustrates him deeply, as he cannot seem to prevent it. This makes the point that there is a severe lack of sex education and family planning services in their area. While these details are not explicitly divulged in the story, that Dodong and Teang’s early marriage is set against such poverty makes the story more realistic. It is worth noting, however, that Villa does not seek to make such pointed sociopolitical comments in “Footnote to Youth”; rather, he attributes Dodong’s and Blas’s decision to marry young to the fickleness of youth.

Although Dodong does not look down on his work in the fields, he has grown tired of it. This is evidenced by his apparent disinterest and impatience with certain aspects of farm life, such as the worm that crawls on his foot and the carabao he uses to plow the fields. His ambitions of marriage are exacerbated by his yearning for a different kind of life. Because he has grown in height and has pimples on his face, he feels that he is already a “man grown”—that he can do almost anything. While Dodong’s decision to marry young is tied to his personal notions of masculinity, however, the story eventually asserts that the...