How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

Ressa recounts her childhood in the Philippines and her family’s move to the United States when she was ten years old in 1973. She frames her life story in decade-long segments, each marked by key themes and inflection points.

Born in 1963 in Pasay City, Manila, Ressa spent her early childhood in poverty after her father died in a car accident. Her mother Hermelina took Ressa and her sister Mary Jane to live with their great-grandmother. In 1969, Hermelina moved to the US; Ressa and Mary Jane went to live with their paternal grandparents in Quezon City, where Ressa attended Catholic school and excelled academically.

In 1973, in a pivotal moment that forever changed Ressa’s life, her mother returned and “kidnapped” Ressa and Mary Jane from school, taking them to the US to live with Hermelina and her new Italian-American husband Peter Ressa in New Jersey. The Philippines they left behind was in turmoil, having just come under the martial law rule of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1972.

Adapting to life in the US was difficult for young Ressa, who spoke limited English and felt like an outsider. However, she embraced the transition as an opportunity to learn, a

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