Jose Rizal's classic works cannot be left out of a list of important Filipino books. Despite Rizal's stance as a reformist and not a revolutionist, his novels helped to create a domino effect that inspired Filipinos to stand up to their colonisers. In his books, he artistically yet openly depicted the truths of Spanish brutality and corruption, painting a picture of this kanser ng lipunan (social cancer). Now known as the National Hero of the country, Rizal was forever immortalised through his published works and ideas.  

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Now more than ever, it has become important to safe keep even the darkest histories from our past (lest we forget). Primitivo Mijares' The Conjugal Dictatorship is the perfect example of such. In his foreword, Mijares writes: "I thought that, if I did not perpetuate this work for posterity, Marcos might unduly benefit from a Laurelian statement that, when a man dies, the virtues of his past are magnified and his faults are reduced to molehills."

The Conjugal Dictatorship reports on the atrocities and excesses of the Marcos dictatorship. It was a first-of-its-kind book at the time of publication in 1976. Shortly after it was published in the United States, the author disappeared and his son, Boyet Mijares, was later found dead after being brutally tortured. An important book in and of itself, the Filipino people mustn't waste the immense sacrifice—at least two human lives—that it took for this book to reach our hands. 

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A political tale structured as a romance, Lope K Santos' Banaag at Sikat is often acknowledged as an important read for the Filipino working class. In fact, it has been hailed as Asia's first proletariat novel. But the ideas of social realism weren't the book's only contribution to the Filipino literary scene. It also helped cement Tagalog as a language for literary writing. In fact, historian Teodoro Agoncillo has acknowledged the book as a major contributor that "started the system of writing a Tagalog novel". 

The Philippines is perhaps one of the more conservative countries in Asia. Despite much Western influence, Filipinos are still traditionalists at heart, and due to the prevalence of Christianity and Catholicism, Filipinos are also averse to ideas deemed offensive or taboo. These include ideas such as abortion, divorce, and even homosexuality. Only recently has there been a movement towards inclusion, but in the late '90s, the term "bakla" or "gay" was still deemed an insult.

At this time, discrimination was rampant, which is why Danton Remoto and J Neil Garcia's anthology titled Ladlad was a breakthrough in the literary scene. It was a first of its kind in the country: a book that explored the experiences of gay men. Often robbed of their voices, people were finally given a platform to share their stories through poems, plays, and short narratives. Now, more than twenty years after its publication, Ladlad has become something of a classic in many gender studies circles. 

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