Spot Shelf: Patricia Evangelista's Some People Need Killing Is an Ode to Truth

(SPOT.ph) How do I start writing about acclaimed journalist and trauma reporter Patricia Evangelista and her book Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country? How do I write about a book of such huge importance? How do I write about a writer I’ve admired since her Y-Speak and Storyline days over a decade ago?

Far more eloquent writers have already praised both the book and the writer. Compliments that are so richly deserved.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, calls it a "journalistic masterpiece" and "one of the most remarkable pieces of narrative long fiction" he has read in a "long, long time."

On top of these, he calls Evangelista a "very rare talent," a compliment—I’m quite certain—only a few dare question.

The New York Times has included Some People Need Killing in its Looking-Forward-To list and has already published its own review, with its writer Jennifer Szalai calling Evangelista’s voice "evocative and exacting."

Evangelista was, after all, awarded the Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions. She was a writing fellow of the Headlands Artist in Residence, the Logan Nonfiction Program, the New American ASU Future Security, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the Columbia Journalism School, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.

Local reviews have also started coming in. Award-winning writer and Palanca Hall of Famer, Alfred "Krip" A. Yuson, describes the book as "five years of commitment to journalistic excellence and the determination to complete a difficult narrative with an exceptional literary voice." He adds that as "first-rate literature, it [the book] weighs heavily in favor of truth and humanity."

Book Review of Patricia Evangelista's Some People Need Killing

As I was writing this piece, I thought to myself that there was no way for me to match what these esteemed critics have been saying about the book. Perhaps what I can do instead, as an ordinary Filipino with middling writing skills, is to share a few reasons why you should read Some People Need Killing.

With 82 pages of detailed notes at the end, there is no question that the book is backed by the truth. And when the truth speaks, it must be heard—and in this case, it must be read.

Some People Need Killing recounts Evangelista’s investigation and experiences covering the so-called "war on drugs" waged by former President Rodrigo Duterte from 2016 to 2022.

During this period, the Philippine National Police estimated the number of casualties at about 8,000. Evangelista says the total is probably much higher, with the highest estimate pegged at about 30,000 dead.

More than the numbers, staggering as they are regardless of whether it's 8,000 or 30,000, are the innumerable lives profoundly changed—all for the worse because nobody wins in a war.

You are left with orphaned kids, widowers, and parents who lost their sons and daughters, and there’s no word for the grief a mother and father feel when they have to bury their child. No parent has to go through that, whether you’re the tatay of a drug peddler or the nanay of a shabu junkie.

The book draws its title from one of Evangelista’s sources, a vigilante who chose to be called by the name Simon. "I’m not really a bad guy. I’m not all bad. Some people need killing," he told Evangelista during an interview in a hotel room.

The statement "some people need killing" sends chills down the spine, not only because it means that death is deserved by some, but that killing is required of, even begged by the one whose life is about to be snuffed out by a bullet. The responsibility of killing rests not on the doer of the action but on the receiver of it.

And it was on this thinking that people like Simon, a.k.a. the DDS (short for Diehard Duterte Supporters or Davao Death Squad, depending on the context), have justified the killings, salvagings, the tokhang.

Simon, like so many others, from the police to vigilante groups who chose not just to believe but also act on Duterte’s words, thought they were just making their communities safer for their children if some people, indeed, needed killing.

The thinking that these durugistas, these drug peddlers, users, and addicts are all schizophrenic, violent, and less-than-human was peddled by no other than Duterte himself, who argued that drug users could rape your mom or your sister or a goat if no human being is readily available for defiling.

As Evangelista deftly narrates some of her most indelible cases—from 11-year-old Love-Love’s tragic losses to the epileptic Djastin’s overkill on a railroad track—she also examines how language and the corruption of it, has led to the soaking of the country’s streets in blood. 

Now, why should you read it? Why do I think it should be required reading?

Aside from it being a meticulous, well-researched account of those harrowing six years under the Duterte regime, it is a cautionary tale of how something as seemingly banal as language—all of us use language, after all—when twisted so much so that the last vestiges of the truth can no longer be discerned, can often lead to fatal consequences.

The killings may have abated under the current administration, but every single day, truths are still distorted to become lies, lies that are so happily devoured by so many who choose to ignore facts when these inconvenience them. The consequence may not be as deadly as it had been from 2016 to 2022 but can be just as devastating.

We should read Some People Need Killing for Evangelista’s prose, spare yet powerful, objective but compassionate all at the same time.

Ruminating on how quickly life turns to death, she writes: "There should have been an explosion, a mushroom cloud, something, somewhere, signaling the sudden turn from life to death." She then realizes an unsettling truth: that “it takes longer to type a sentence than it does to kill a man.”

Many literary works could lay claim to being masterpieces. There are only a few, however, which everyone should read. Some People Need Killing is among those select few, in the company of great literary works such as Elie Wiesel’s Night or, more recently, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Some critics have even compared it to Hannah Arendt’s seminal work Eichmann in Jerusalem.

As the death toll increases, the names are forgotten and faces are even more blurry. Some names become etched in our collective consciousness—Kian delos Santos, Carl Arnaiz, Michael Siaron—but far more are reduced to mere statistics. 

Evangelista’s book, through her singular voice, humanizes these people and gives them a face—a story. Some People Need Killing is a touching requiem for the thousands whose lives were cut short in the six years the old man from Davao resided in Malacañang.

In her interview with Remnick for The New Yorker, Evangelista said she doesn’t know if her stories can change anything.

"If journalism doesn’t save the world—and it doesn’t; we both know that—I would like to have honored the people who risked their lives to tell their stories. They didn’t have to talk to me, and they did. They are living examples of what happens when autocrats and dictators rise, and we let them.”

Evangelista risked—and continues to risk—her life to tell these stories. To read her book is to honor her and the people who chose to speak out against the horrors.

Buy the book. Gift it. Read it. Read it again. Never forget that once upon a time, not too long ago, blood covered the streets of the Philippines, and the people cheered and applauded. 

And it should not be allowed to happen again. Not on our watch.

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country (Penguin Random House, 2023) by Patricia Evangelista is available at Fully Booked for P1,176.

Also read: 20 Brutally Honest Placards That Protest Duterte's War on Drugs