American Son: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Heartbreaking Descent
Review: Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son is a brief but heartbreaking story of a young boy's descent into a hellish life. Gabe is an LA teenager with a mother desperately trying to protect him from the quasi-violent life of Tomas, his older brother, as well as keeping him from the violent, hot, humid life in the Phillipines she left so long ago. Gabe's American father, another source of violence, left them years earlier, but his absence still scars all of them. Gabe is the "good" son while Tomas breeds violent dogs for paranoid Los Angelinos and sports scary tattoos, clothes, cars and haircuts. Gabe decides to escape it all, to run away, but his running away has more dire consequences for him. All the while his mother, whom he loves, but for whom he feels a certain amount of shame, tries to ignore other family members who insist that both boys should return to the Phillipines. American Son is a dark novel, filled with violence without being violent itself, never depressing, only upsetting. Gabe's struggle with who he is, coupled with life in moder LA makes for interesting reading.

Rating:
Summary: an essential read
Review: I agree with the New York Times reviewer who called this book gripping and heartbreaking. His reading emphasizes "American Son" as a complex look at racism, one that follows two biracial Filipino brothers living in LA a year after the Rodney King Riots. He also notes the complex characters. I would add that this novel is far more than a book about race or ethnicity. It is about mothers and sons, rivalry between brothers, family love, pride and shame, class and envy. It is most of all about shyness. I am surprised to see so many reader reviews by Filipinos. This book is not the sort of comforting Asian American book which follows the tradition of Amy Tan, ones that typically romanticize Asian culture and subscribe to a mythology of an exotic homecountry. Rather it seems to fall more in the tradition of American immigration novels with their themes of assimilation. It inhabits the tradition of such Jewish authors as Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, in whose novels you do not find much Yiddish speech or food or quaint stories about the homeland, but whose characters are nonetheless very Jewish, even as they have local concerns. You should not expect to find Filipino Cultural Night here. That is not the point. I have noticed a couple of other books released this year which also eschew the temptation to romanticize (orientalize?) the Asian homeland, "Fixer Chao" by Han Ong, and "Yellow" by Don Lee, also fine books. If Roley owes much to Roth and Bellow in terms of theme, his poetic and lyrical style owes more to Cormack McCarthy, Dennis Johnson, Russell Banks and Ernest Hemmingway. Like those authors he is able to use language to subtly enter the depths of his characters' feelings and pain, gradually accumulating an intense power. Yet he applies the stylistic poetry of these white American writers to get at the pain of racism. This book, in fact, achieves the most intense depiction of the pain racism can cause that I have ever read, and yet Roley does this in a manner which sees all of racism's complexities and is not preachy or heavy handed: he achieves compassion for racists, reveals the self-hatred that minorities can turn on themselves and others, and somehow manages to have deep sympathy for all his primary characters without losing sense of the moral universe they inhabit. Racial attitudes in this book manage to have their own identity, moving among different characters like viruses. Roley adds yet another dimension by incorporating the characters' internalized colonial attitudes which they bring from the Philippines to America, and which drives much of their behavior: so subtly rendered I fear many readers, particularly those unfamiliar with America's imperial history in Asia, will miss this aspect of this most original and complex of novels. Most highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this deeply moving and disturbing book.
Review: I loved this book and became very involved in the subtely complicated characters and the interplay of feeling. The book is a deeply disturbing look at racism. What was most original, to me, was how the prejudicial attitudes seemed to have their own life and jumped around among the characters. The book was also about the confusing process of racial identity biracial people often face, many of whom feel like outsiders to both white people and the minority side as well. This certainly has been true for hapas (half Asian, half white) who are often looked upon as not real Asians by their Asian side. You can even see evidence of this discrimination against hapas in a couple of the posted reviews where the (young sounding) Filipino AMERICAN readers fault the book for not resembling their Filipino American family life. Well, of course not, the book is about two HALF white boys, growing up in LOS ANGELES with an abusive WHITE father. The fmaily is clearly disfunctional and not meant to be "representative" of a typical or average full blooded Filipino family. To fault a book for not looking like a mirror is sort of a narcassitic way of reading, and to require a writer to write representative characters just because he or she is a minority is unfair and a recipie for creating a literature nobody can be proud of. If you approach this book for what it is trying to be, with an open mind, I think you will find a deeply moving and original novel about RACE and RACIAL IDENTITY. Also, the "omissions" one reader mentioned in regard to a "romantic" interest and conversations with the abusive father are clearly intentional. This is, thank God, neither a gang novel or a Hollywood movie. By relegating such aspects to the subtext, the author avoids cliques and achieves a Hemmingwayesque power.

Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Book about vulnerable outsiders
Review: I loved this book so much. I am not surprised that the NY Times chose it as a Notable Book of the year. It shows the pain of a dysfunctional family living in Los Angeles, a typical enough theme. But the prose is both gentle and violent, the story very strong, and the themes of biracial indentity as complexly rendered as the subtly complicated characters. The two boys at the heart of this piece are half Filipino, and feel estranged from both white people and their mother's Filipino relatives. Rowley gets at their sense of being outsiders as aptly as Richard Yates. The ever present, but rarely seen father is a nice touch, for like the boys we rarely see him, so that he is an elusive memory, but always feel his powerful presence. Thankfully, too, the author chose not to make this yet another a gang novel, but kept this world seen from outside, which is appropriate since the brothers are pretenders. Deeply felt and gripping.

Rating:
Summary: Just an Aspect of the Filipino American Life
Review: I only knew the Filipino American kids Brian wrote about in his book in the periphery while growing up in the suburbs of San Francisco. I am glad that I read American Son because the novel gave me a glimpse of the lives of my fellow Filipino Americans that I did not know very well.

American Son is written in a way that truly draws you in. I was in the main characters' world while reading the book.

I am now looking forward to a more positive aspect of the Filipino American experience, written version. There is plenty of it out there...

Rating:
Summary: Good book, quick read
Review: I read this for my "Immigrant Experience" class, and it was very good. The characters were believable and the writer thoroughly portrayed their emotions. I read this book in one sitting because it was also very entertaining, but a little on the "down" side.

Rating:
Summary: Very good work of recent popular fiction.
Review: I read this novel as one of nine books, all of which came out in 2001, assigned in a class on recent popular literature. I rank it as either number one or two in terms of artistic value, enjoyment, and thoughtfulness.

As "(hyphenated)-American" literature, this novel served as a welcome respite from typical "minority literature," the study of which cultural imperative requires in many instances where emotional appeal abuses the reader who deserves intellectual provocation.

Gabe describes with a rich and diverse view the complexities of life as an ethnic Asian living in California. His story tells itself, and he hesitates to cast judgments in black-and-white; he doesn't try to turn these complexities into something simpler than they really are. For this we owe the author credit for the fairness and depth with which he treats serious social problems and the way in which these problems.

Although I felt the novel lacked enough character development by my usual standard, I think that I did take away a deep impression of the types of problems the characters overall and Gabe, in particular, experience as a part of everyday life; the issues presented here may be well applied to not only Asian-Americans or minorities, but also to anyone who faces problems with self-definition and placement within a world in which he or she feels a stranger.

In addition to the novel's content, the very internal, indirect style of first person narration gives is distinct and appropriately applied to the author?s objective. The understated, quiet tone of the prose comes as a welcome relief from the noisy, plot-overloaded, and often downright obnoxious form of all too many popular works.

Roley treats the reader with respect in that he does not gratify with ... sentimentalism but relies on serious treatment of major social and individual issues with delicate precision.

In terms of recent (i.e. the last 5-10 years) popular novels this stands out as fresh and thought-provoking. Check it out.

Rating:
Summary: My Students' Response to this Book
Review: I used American Son as the end of year text in my 10th grade English class at a low-performing, multicultural high school in San Diego. The students read it in class and then discussed it in small groups, applying theme words like alienation, assimilation, family, loyalty. I can say little more than this: some of the books were stolen; students who never read begged to take the book home to finish it; many students said they had never read a book that felt more real. These students were stunned that such honesty existed inside a book. Filipino students came uncorked and reveled in the accuracies. Yes! came from faces and voices as if deep secrets had been told.The figurative language is brilliant. The characters are amazingly complex, particularly the mother who is as much villian as saint. Just like life.

Rating:
Summary: Serious, provokes thought; recommended to young adults
Review: Roley tells a distressing story of how two poor half-Filipino, half-white sons change -- subtley or otherwise -- during a California summer in 1993. Attack dogs, racial identity, family, cultural pressures, crime, silence, and lies are all among interconnected factors that influence the two young men's fates. The uniquely subdued style of the narrative adds to the psychologically agitating atmosphere of the novel. Several scenes in the story may incite anger in readers; other scenes, pity or resignedness. Though not a "happy" story by most measures, _American Son_ presents a real part of American life, while also attempting to explain certain often-misunderstood personalities. This novel may be especially appreciated by young adults.

Rating:
Summary: Lost in Place
Review: The story of this novel does not come with any clean resolution - rather, it portrays a vicious circle of hopelessness, violence, and unstable identities in multicultural Los Angeles. Roley's spare prose carries both the minute observations and the vulnerability of a teenager forced to grow up too quickly without a father and with an insecure, overworked mother losing her grip on her family.

We see Gabe, the narrator, cower before his brother Tomas' abusive behaviour and anger, eventually becoming attracted to his way of life. Their helpless mother can only watch in despair; however, her resolve strengthens only when she resists her brother's repeated requests to send the two back to Philippines to straighten them out. They probably would not have fared well there anyway, for Gabe and Tomas take considerable pains to deny their maternal Filipino heritage in an environment that only knows Black, Latino, Asian, or White - no hybrid identities here.

Roley's debut novel is a disturbing, yet compelling read, another emerging voice in Filipino-American letters to watch out for.