Imperfect Tense and Times Book

₱560

1 review
By Nicole Aboitiz

Author: Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz
Editor-at-Large: Charlie S. Veric

What is collected here comes in the imperfect tense. These essays are meditations on self, as well as historical and social commentary on the Philippines. The things and thoughts collected here are those that mattered to the author in the worlds that she has been studying, reconsidering, and losing. They are meditations on privilege, humanity, and the Philippines, and they render her positionality centrally in all such thinking.
Her critiques of the elite are issued from self-critiques. Her philosophical explorations were consciously bracketed by age. Such disparate political, personal, and philosophical explorations unite in their shared secular negotiation with morality—with the possibility of crafting it for oneself and of reforming the ones that confronted her.

 

REVIEWS:
“Not quite a memoir, nor an academic history. Not quite poetry, nor prose. Not quite sanguine, nor anguished about her country. The eloquent not-quites of Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz’s essays are the necessary puzzles of contemporary Philippine life.”
— Lisandro Claudio,
University of California Berkeley


“This small volume is suffused with autobiography, which tracks the author’s philosophical explorations before she moved on to writing a groundbreaking dissertation exploring the Philippines’ relations with Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. Imperfect Tense and Times is also about locating herself in a country riven by class differences and patrimonial jobbery. In his study, The Patchwork City: Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila, sociologist Marco Garrido portrays a fragmented metropole where residents of slums, middle-class subdivisions, and the Golden Ghettos never interact despite their proximity. Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz refuses to be constrained by these walls as she tries to understand what happens on the other side while trying to find something good about her own place. An unusual, perhaps Quixotic, but totally admirable quest.”
— Patricio N. Abinales,
University of Hawai‘i at Manoa


Size: 5" x 8"
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Vibal Foundation Inc.
Imprint: World Nonfictions
Copyright: 2025

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M
Marja Abad
From Privilege to Purpose: A Book That Calls the Elite to Account

Imperfect Tense and Times is more than just a collection of essays—it’s a quietly powerful book that weaves together personal stories, cultural commentary, and socio-political insight with disarming clarity. Written by Nicole Aboitiz—my friend, a fellow surfer, and a brilliant thinker—this book struck a personal chord with me as a Filipino who is deeply aware of the complexities and injustices in our country’s system.

Some essays landed with particular weight, not only because of Nicole’s sharp, introspective writing but because they mirrored struggles I’ve lived through, questions I’ve asked, and truths I’ve felt in my bones. What makes this collection even more compelling is the voice behind it: someone from the country’s elite, choosing to use her “pen” to question the very structures that uphold inequality.

I’ve come to know Nicole through surfing—a place where many social lines dissolve in the water. She belongs to a world I once thought I’d never understand, shaped by wealth and influence, a world I used to assume was full of “coño snobs” I could never relate to. But Nicole has challenged and disproved that assumption. Through her writing and the way she shows up in and out of the water, she’s shown that solidarity and depth can come from the most unexpected places.

This book gives me hope. Hope that conversations like the ones Nicole initiates can ripple outward. Hope that the people with power and privilege will read this and feel called to dismantle the very systems that keep that power concentrated.

If you’re Filipino—especially if you’ve ever felt like you’re living between worlds—this book will move you. And if you’re someone with privilege, may it challenge you, too. Imperfect Tense and Times is an invitation: to think deeper, to live more consciously, and to act.