Pages: 428
Goodreads Rating: 4.20 / 5 stars
My Rating: 5/5 stars
Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir
Publication Date: October 17th 2023
Publisher: Random House
Synopsis:
A fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a journalist of international renown
“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.”
Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.
Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.
The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”
A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.
My Review:
Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, without a shadow of a doubt deserved to be in The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023 list. The book centers about the extrajudicial killings happened during President Duterte’s administration. The rampant war on drugs in the Philippines caught attention all over the world.
Please be minded that this book is incredibly descriptive and you may need to take a deep breath. It has heavy themes about violence and murder.
Some people called this book an anti-Duterte. You’re wrong. Patricia Evangelista’s brutally honest take on this is incredibly descriptive. She never sugarcoated as the victims’ families shared their side of story. About their grief, trauma and loss of their love ones. I find myself pausing once in a while because it’s heart-wrenching. I rarely read nonfiction books and I like annotating on this one. I am loss of words for what I have just read.
Confessions of a Pinay Bookaholic 
I wanted to read this one before her book signing, but didn’t have the emotional capacity to do so. 🥺 I also bought a bunch of children’s books about martial law. Really need to find the energy to read them!!
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It will drain your energy because of how graphically detailed parts. I had goose bumps when Patricia Evangelista read an excerpt of her memoir. I think it’ll be more immersive when you listen to the audiobook.
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