INTRODUCTION My Sister Sarah She came into my life late in the 1920s, marrying my brother L/ Ping, when he was Manila's vaudeville King of Jazz, and I was an aspiring writer, age 12.1 had a portfolio of sketches: the story of a child beginning to observe and ask questions. She took charge of those early effusions-corrected the English, edited the style, and sent off the more promising ones to her friends in the magazine world. She knew everybody! In this way, I was first published: a slight vignette of mine titled-if my memory serves me right-"Shooting Stars." She was also the first to write about me: a droll article titled "My Brother Nick" that appeared during the war and aroused the wrath of the then high priest of Philippine letters: Federico Mangahas, who rightly protested that a serious journal-Philippine Review-edited by Vicente Albano Pacis, should waste space on somebody who had only a handful of tales and verses to his name. "Who?" asked Mr. Managahas, is Nick Joaquin?" But that only gave Sarah a stick with which to whoop Mr. Mangahas, a good friend of hers. After the war, she was with a theater group that put on plays like Garcia Lorca's House ofBemardaAlba and was criticized for not putting on native drama. So Sarah asked me to write them a play, a three-act play. I demurred. I was no longer a playwright and wouldn't know how to dramatize action or build up dialogue. "Just do what you can," said Sarah, "and I'll edit it." So I wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino, with her in mind doing the role of Paula. Sarah went through the huge bundle of manuscript and shook her head. "But this is impossible!" she cried. I agreed with her and dumped my play on a shelf where it gathered dust until it was discovered by Daisy Hontiveros-Avellana. The rest, as they say, is history. Years later, I wrote another play for Sarah: The Beatas where she was to have played the role of Mother Francisca. Sarah was eager to do it... but again, it was not to be. She had to migrate to America. Sarah would have been terrific as Mother Francisca, that great dynamic feminist of I7, h Century Manila. When I think of Sarah, I see dynamos. Physically, intellectually, spi- ritually-she's a dynamo. And I speak from a knowledge of her dating back to my childhood. I'm happy to hear she is still effervescing. I doubt she'll ever burn out. Nick Joaquin November 199