Nicomedes "Nick" Marquez Joaquin (Tagalog: [hwaˈkin]; May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquin was conferred the rank and title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He has been considered one of the most important Filipino writers, along with José Rizal and Claro M. Recto. Unlike Rizal and Recto, whose works were written in Spanish, Joaquin's major works were written in English despite being literate in Spanish.
Nicomedes "Nick" Joaquin y Marquez, fondly called "Onching" by close family and friends was born on May 4, 1917, in Paco, Manila. There are varying accounts on the date of his birth, some cite it as September 15, 1917. This could stem from how Joaquin himself refrained from revealing his date of birth because he disliked the fuss of people coming over and celebrating his birthday.
Joaquin was the fifth out of the ten children of Don Leocadio Joaquin and Salomé Marquez. Don Leocadio fought in the Philippine Revolution by the side of his friend General Emilio Aguinaldo, and reached the position of Colonel. He retired after he was wounded in action and moved on to a prolific career as a lawyer in Manila and the southern province of Laguna. Salomé Marquez was a well-educated woman who taught at a Manila public school. She was trained by Americans in English to teach at the public schools when the United States colonized the Philippines.
The Joaquin family lived in a two-story residential and commercial building, greatly uncommon at that time, on Herran Street (now Pedro Gil Street) in Paco, Manila. Joaquin was said to have had an extremely happy childhood. The Joaquin children were tutored in Spanish & piano, and were encouraged to have an interest in the arts. The Joaquin household communicated in Spanish and heard mass regularly. Joaquin was a notably devout Christian and continued being so his whole life.
The Joaquins had lived a handsome life until Don Leocadio lost the family fortune in a failed investment on an oil exploration project in the late 1920s. The family moved out of their Herran home and into a rented house in Pasay. Don Leocadio passed not long after. The young Joaquin was only twelve years old and this signalled a big change in their family.
Nick Joaquin attended Paco Elementary School and went to Mapa High School for secondary education. However, in his third year he informed his mother that he wanted to drop out because he felt that the classroom was too confined for him and that he learned more outside of it. His mother Salomé, a former teacher, was devastated by the news, but still allowed him to do so.
After leaving school, Joaquin worked as an apprentice in a bakery in Pasay and later on in the publishing company TVT (Tribune-Vanguardia-Taliba.) This allowed him a small taste of an industry he would spend most of his life in.
An avid reader, Joaquin, used this time to pursue his passion for it. He was described as having a "rabid and insane love for books" by his sister-in-law Sarah K. Joaquin. His parents had encouraged his interest in books early on. He already had a borrower's card at the National Library when he was ten. He purveyed his father's personal library and loved the bookstores in downtown Manila. He read voraciously and intently, he read everything that had caught his eye. He enjoyed the "poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Vachel Lindsay to the stories of Anton Chekhov, to the novels of Dostoyevsky, D. H. Lawrence, and Willa Cather. He read American magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Magazine) and discovered the fiction of Booth Tarkington, Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway."
Very early on, Joaquin was already exploring his literary voice. At age 17, he published his first English poem about Don Quixote, in the literary section of the pre-World War II Tribune, where he worked as a proofreader. It was accepted by the writer and editor Serafin Lanot. Joaquin had felt a strong connection with the story of Don Quixote; he felt like he could identify with the character. Later in life, he used a similar iteration of Quixote in his various pen names, Quijano de Pacó and Quijano de Manila.
A little later, in 1937 he published his first short story in the Sunday Tribune Magazine, "The Sorrows of Vaudeville" telling the story of the vaudevilles in Manila—a city he was endlessly enamored by. It was accepted by the writer and editor Serafin Lanot.
After Joaquin won a nationwide essay competition to honor La Naval de Manila, sponsored by the Dominican Order, the University of Santo Tomas awarded him an honorary Associate in Arts (A.A.) and a scholarship to St. Albert's Convent, the Dominican monastery in Hong Kong. There he was once again close to his family's original goal for him to enter the seminary. Joaquin and his family were devoutly Christian. He notably heard mass daily and was fond of praying the Holy Rosary. He only stayed in Hong Kong for two years before returning to Manila.
Joaquin continued publishing stories and poems between 1934 and 1941 in the Herald Mid-Week Magazine and the Sunday Tribune Magazine. The Commonwealth years were a particularly vibrant era in Philippine literature. Later, the Japanese occupation closed down the Tribune and other publications. The young Joaquin had to look for ways to support his family.
Throughout the occupation, Joaquin had continued writing. "The Woman Who Felt Like Lazarus" and the essay "La Naval de Manila" were borne out of this war period Joaquin had detested. His work had appeared in the Philippine Review, an English-language journal, in 1943. His story, "It Was Later Than We Thought" and his translation of Rizal's Mi Ultimo Adios were also published. He was beginning to spark an interest from readers. However, the reticent Joaquin shied away from recognition. He had created this mysterious and distant author.
After returning to the Philippines, Joaquin joined the Philippines Free Press, starting as a proofreader. He soon attracted notice for his poems, stories and plays, as well as his journalism under the pen name Quijano de Manila. His journalism was both intellectual and provocative, an unknown genre in the Philippines at that time, and raised the country's level of reportage.
Joaquin deeply admired José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, paying him tribute in such books as The Storyteller's New Medium – Rizal in Saga, The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal, and A Question of Heroes: Essays in Criticism on Ten Key Figures of Philippine History. He translated the hero's valedictory poem, in the original Spanish Mi Ultimo Adios, as "Land That I Love, Farewell!".
Joaquin represented the Philippines at the International PEN Congress in Tokyo in 1957, and was appointed as a member of the Motion Pictures commission under presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand E. Marcos.
After being honored as National Artist, Joaquin used his position to work for intellectual freedom in society. He secured the release of imprisoned writer José F. Lacaba. At a ceremony on Mount Makiling attended by First Lady Imelda Marcos, Joaquin delivered an invocation to Maria Makiling a diwata and the mountain's mythical maiden. Joaquin touched on the importance of freedom and the artist. After that, Joaquin was excluded by the Marcos regime as a speaker at important cultural events.
Joaquin died of cardiac arrest in the early morning of April 29, 2004, at his home in San Juan, Metro Manila. He was then editor of Philippine Graphic magazine, where he worked with Juan P. Dayang, the magazine's first publisher. Joaquin was also publisher of its sister publication, Mirror Weekly, a women's magazine, and wrote the column "Small Beer" for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Isyu, an opinion tabloid.