Susan Ferrer Quimpo (February 6, 1961 – July 14, 2020)[1][2] was a Filipino activist, author, theater artist, and art therapist[3] best known for her advocacy work of educating the Filipino youth about the Philippines’ Martial Law era,[1][4] and for co-writing the book “Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years.”[5][6] Susan Quimpo was born the youngest[7] among the ten children of Ishmael and Esperanza Quimpo, and was a child when Martial Law was declared in 1972.
[8] Quimpo became a college student during the Martial law era, and like her older siblings, she became an activist, decrying the abuses of the Marcos dictatorship.
[5] After martial law, Quimpo took up a masters degree in Southeast Asian Studies in the US, living for a few years in Washington, DC and New York City.
Realizing that many need Filipino-Americans had a need to learn about their ancestral country, she and her husband George Chiu organized Tagalog On Site, a non-government organization whose main activity was to take Filipino American students to the Philippines for summer trips, in which they would learn about the language, culture and history of the Philippines.
[8][13] Quimpo was diagnosed with systemic scleroderma, a painful autoimmune disease,[14] in 2018, and died two years later, on July 14, 2020.