Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista
Publish date:First published October 17, 2023
Genre: Memoir
Content warnings: Graphic violence and killings, child death, trauma and grief, state violence and corruption, threats and fear, substance use
Short description: Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista is a gut-punch of a memoir about covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war in the Philippines. Evangelista takes you straight into crime scenes, grieving homes, and courtrooms, telling the stories of the people left behind while dissecting the language and politics that made the killings possible. It’s about the human cost, the trauma of witnessing, and the messy truth of doing journalism in a country where justice feels out of reach.
This was such a powerful read. It looks at Duterte’s drug war through clear, unflinching prose, how language fueled violence, the human cost behind the numbers, and the complicity that let it all happen. What struck me most was how it balanced perspectives, or at least how much a journalist works to get information and how much power limits them. It doesn’t preach, but if people would just open their minds, they’d understand why so many people are asking big questions demanding answers that until now, we are looking for. It’s also incredibly emotional to learn the stories that never make it to the news or social media. It’s not an easy read, but it lingers with you in the best way.
Remembering matters.
Why and how I picked this book, and my first impressions
I picked Some People Need Killing because why noooot?? I think books like this matter because they slow us down in a way headlines can’t. News clips and social media posts give us the “what happened”, but books like this ask us to sit with the “what it means” for the victims, for the people left behind, and for us as a society.
It was name-checked on year-end lists like The New York Times’ Top 10 Books of 2023 and Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2023. Beyond that, the title itself hit the spot. It’s unapologetic and urgent and thought-provoking.
I bought the book with the sense that I was holding more than a memoir. (Also, it’s signed!) From the outset, I felt a knot in my chest because trauma journalism, by its very nature, doesn’t do “comfort”. It makes you understand and ask more questions at the same time.
My reading experience
I read this book when I was staying in a hospital, accompanying my mom for her surgery. Yes, personally, I was going through something heavy already, but what else could relax my mind? Of course, another stressful read. Lol.
Reading this memoir felt like walking through a gallery of horror and heartbreak. Evangelista’s writing is deceptively simple with short sentences, straightforward words, intentionally slapping me awake in every page. It’s easy to read, but heavy.
I felt physically exhausted and emotionally shattered by the end. I expected that, obviously. And yet, in the darkness of those pages, Evangelista gave me something to hold onto. It made me realize the clarity that storytelling, even in its starkest form, is an act of defiance.
Themes, messages, overall impact
1. The Grammar of violence
Evangelista shows how violence isn’t just physical. It lives in our words, our rhetoric, the labels attached to people. Terms like “salvage”, “tokhang”, “drug addict”, even “enemy” are flattened down into repeated weapons. When the state, or its supporters, say they’re not human, or some people need killing, it isn’t just propaganda. It becomes invitation and permission.
It made me feel angry, unsettled, almost nauseous. I was crying in every chapters. And it’s even more frustrating because I cannot do anything but cry. And that exact thought is also my guilt, because aside from reading, writing, expressing my thoughts, crying, voting for people who are not this scary, what else can we do?
There’s something deeply disturbing about how fast language warps into justification. Reading those sections, I felt complicit too and shoveled into awareness that words matter in life-and-death ways. And it matters more if people are listening.
2. Human cost behind the numbers
This book doesn’t allow us to hide behind statistics. Pat (yes, I’m calling her Pat) introduces us to Love-Love, Ivy, Djastin, parents who bury children, mothers who hold grief in every moment. What might otherwise be a death toll becomes shattered futures, haunted memories, unanswerable questions.
It is very heartbreaking. I found myself pausing, closing the book, and still can’t imagine how it feels like to lose someone in the way these families did. It makes you realize how little we see behind the headlines and how much is lost when people are just “cases” or “news” rather than people, a child, a parent.
This book doesn’t allow us to hide behind statistics. Pat (yes, I’m calling her Pat) introduces us to Love-Love, Ivy, Djastin, parents who bury children, mothers who hold grief in every moment. What might otherwise be a death toll becomes shattered futures, haunted memories, unanswerable questions.
It is very heartbreaking. I found myself pausing, closing the book, and still can’t imagine how it feels like to lose someone in the way these families did. It makes you realize how little we see behind the headlines and how much is lost when people are just “cases” or “news” rather than people, a child, a parent.
3. Complicity and the erosion of justice
One of the more chilling messages is that violence was not only committed by individuals or masked killers. It was enabled by broad societal consent, legal loopholes, silence, and fear. This book forces us to see how democracy and justice can erode not only from above but from below, when ordinary people accept the framing, cheer the speeches, or turn away from what’s happening in their own neighborhoods. Uggh.
I feel so frustrated, so ashamed, uneasy, but also awake. There’s a bitter sting in realizing that many of us (or our communities) are part of that “we” Pat talks about. Let’s be true. Part of the problem are those who let things slide. It hurt, but it lit up parts of conscience that were dormant. This is probably the main reason why I want you to read this, too. GO NA, BHE.
4. Trauma, grief, and bearing witness
Pat is very aware of what it means to carry stories of trauma not only for the victims’ families, but for herself and for readers. She doesn’t shy away from grief, from the pain that lingers, from the scars left after loss. But equally, she shows what it means to bear witness honestly. To allow stories to be told by people themselves, on their own terms, with consent, with dignity, and with more impact which unfortunately are fading.
Some chapters felt like walking through a storm, like grief so raw you can almost smell it. But there was also solace in seeing survivors’ voices honored, in seeing someone saying “yes, this happened”, “yes, it matters”. It reminds me that witnessing is not passive. It is an act of care, a form of resistance.
5. The power and limits of journalism
Some People Need Killing is that one memoir that shows journalism at its strongest and its most fragile. It can uncover truth, preserve memory, challenge impunity, it can push back against forgetting. But it also has limits. It was repeatedly acknowledged that stories don’t always lead to justice, that promises are broken, that power is heavily stacked against the vulnerable. Journalism can stir anger, force conversation, but cannot always stop the killing, cannot always deliver redress.
On one hand, I felt admiration of how brave it is to document, to go into harm’s way, to insist on truth. On the other hand, I felt the deep frustration of knowing that exposing wrongs doesn’t always stop them, doesn’t always heal them. It’s a hopeful kind of pain, a yearning for more than words, but recognizing words themselves have gravity.
Reading this book changed something in me. It made me less able to look away. It enlarged my empathy, pressed on all the small ways I might have taken justice for granted. It raised a painful question of how many atrocities begin not with just bullets but with language or silence? No, this book doesn’t haveany answers. But it reminds us that accountability begins when someone listens, when stories are told, and when people refuse to let horrors slide into oblivion. And we want that to happens
View my vlog about Some People Need Killing!
Spent a lot of quiet hours in the hospital while accompanying my mom for her surgery, and I ended up diving into Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista. Reading this book in that setting made its themes hit even harder. It’s a heavy, necessary read that unpacks state violence, grief, and what it means to bear witness. In this vlog, I share my thoughts on the book, how it felt to process these stories while waiting in sterile hospital halls, and why it’s important to sit with uncomfortable truths.
Here are other reads if you liked or interested with Some People Need Killing
Click the book covers to go to Goodreads.
Dekada ’70 by Lualhati Bautista
Dekada ’70 follows the Bartolome family as they navigate life under the shadow of Ferdinand Marcos’ Martial Law in the 1970s. Told through the eyes of Amanda, a mother who learns to find her own voice, the novel captures the political and personal upheavals of the time—sons pulled into activism, a country sinking deeper into dictatorship, and a woman discovering her strength in the midst of repression. It’s both a family story and a political awakening, showing how the turmoil of the nation seeps into the walls of a single home.
Gun Dealers’ Daughter by Gina Apostol
A young woman pieces together her troubled past in this story of rebellion and romance set in the Marcos-era Philippines.
Soon after she leaves home for university in Manila, Soledad Soliman (Sol) transforms herself from bookish rich girl to communist rebel. But is her allegiance to the principles of Mao or to Jed, the comrade she’s in love with? Can she really be a part of the movement or is she just a “useful fool,” a spoiled brat playing at revolution?
Far from the Philippines, in a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, Sol confesses her youthful indiscretions, unable to get past the fatal act of communist fervor that locked her memory in an endless loop. Rich with wordplay and unforgettable imagery, Gun Dealers’ Daughter combines the momentum of an amnesiac thriller with the intellectual delights of a Borgesian puzzle. In her American debut, award-winning author Gina Apostol delivers a riveting novel that illuminates the conflicted and little-known history of the Philippines, a country deeply entwined with our own.
Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan
‘This harrowing mystery, winner of the Philippine National Book Award, follows two Catholic priests on the hunt through Manila for a brutal serial killer
Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila’s Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf.
In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands. Father Gus Saenz is a respected forensic anthropologist, one of the few in the Philippines, and has been tapped by the Director of the National Bureau of Investigations as a backup for police efforts. Together with his protégé, Father Jerome Lucero, a psychologist, Saenz dedicates himself to tracking down the monster preying on these impoverished boys.
Smaller and Smaller Circles, widely regarded as the first Filipino crime novel, is a poetic masterpiece of literary noir, a sensitive depiction of a time and place, and a fascinating story about the Catholic Church and its place in its devotees’ lives.
One Comment
swerte77
Great breakdown! It’s refreshing to see such clear analysis of odds and strategy. If you’re into casino games, checking out Swerte77 could add some fun variety to your routine with their live dealer games and slots.