Customer Reviews

American Son: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Beautifully written. I originally didn't want to read this book because it looked like a gang novel, but my girlfriend told me it was good. After I got into it I couldn't put it down. It is a really sad, at times painfully so, book. I really got caught up in the characters and the mistakes they would make. I am a Pilipino and found a lot here that resembled my own life growing up, like being ashamed of my own culture and feeling like Filipinos are invisible. The tragedy about these characters is that they suffer from a lack of pride. The mother is especially sad and endearing. This isn't the sort of Asian Ameican novel I've seen before, full of rice and orientalism for the NPR crowd. It's real and honest.

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.

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.

Good read, and a quick one, but I think you should avoid reading it TOO quickly. The author's style has been compared to Cormac McCarthy's writing, but I agree more with an earlier reviewer here who wrote of this novel's "Hemingwayesque power."

Hemingway wrote with an "Iceberg Theory" in mind, meaning that something like making sure that 9/10 of the story was submerged out of sight. If the writer does this well, the reader can feel something like the grace and gravity of an iceberg because this untold part of the story is still evident somehow, still felt by the reader. It's often an emotional weight, and BA Roley conveys that heaviness especially well here. A character in this novel comments of another, "sometimes the quiet ones have the more mysterious anxieties inside that are difficult for the rest of us to understand." He's commenting on someone other than the central character, but the portrayal of the protagonist here (Gabe) has that same tragic mystery about him. There's a lot more going on with him than a quick reader might realize.

I was surprised by the ending, but I realized later that it's the perfect way to end the book. So many good people are lost to the brutality around them.

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.

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.

American Son is a well-written book, easy and enjoyable to read. The author (Roley) delivers a story that moves from the first chapter to the end without a dull moment. The topic (gangs) may be a bit disturbing, but the characters are well developed and the book is more about survival and identity than gangs.

My only complaint is that the author provides such vivid detail, at times it distracts from the story (which itself is solid). Secondly, towards the end the boys appear headed back to the Philippines, yet the story abruptly heads another direction that left me hanging.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much and would highly recommend it. Under the right circumstances, this could make an outstanding read (and discussion) for high school students.

I finished reading Brian Ascalon Roley's novel, American Son, a couple of weeks ago, and have been struggling with writing about it since. It has seemed to haunt me. While I wouldn't necessarily say this about being haunted in all situations, in this case, it's a good kind of haunting. It's the kind of haunting that reflects how deeply Roley's novel was able to affect me. Powerful stuff here.

I've read other texts by Filipino authors before, including but not limited to Jessica Hagedorn (Dogeaters) and Nice Rodriguez (Throw it to the River), but without the same effect. American Son was particularly touching to me because the one-and-a-half generation immigrant status of Gabe and Tomas is one I also share, as well as the California upbringing. That's the extent of my life's similarities with those of Gabe and Tomas', but I found Roley's depiction of the tensions and struggles faced by us one-and-a-half generation immigrants immensely poignant.

Even now, weeks removed from my reading of the text, I still find myself thinking back to Roley's vivid portrayals: of dinner with relatives where tensions are running high alongside efforts to keep face; of how being sent back to the Philippines was seen as a panacea for all the wrong/American ways immigrant kids adopt; of trying to fit in with classmates; of (mis-) adventures with sun-in; and of the hope (accompanied by sacrifice) of parents so that we children might have the chance at something better. These are just some of the things that spoke specifically to me.

On the whole, however, Roley's novel is remarkable because of his focus on biraciality. Biracial and multi-racial realities have long existed for many, but it seems that it is only very recently that they are coming into greater focus and attention. The exploits in American Son of Tomas and Gabe living out their mestizo (white & Filipino) realities, intentionally and unintentionally passing as white and/or Chicano, and of being Filipino, American, and Filipino-American paint a picture I haven't seen nearly enough of.

I will have to say, though, while this story is more Gabe's (from who's perspective the story is told), I was left wanting for more of Tomas' story. It's there, but elusively so. He's the son that brings money into the household by means that are best coupled by family members' active denial. He's the son that is in many ways a disappointment to his mother, yet simultaneously fiercely protective of her. It's his story, of an Asian American who finds himself outside of the black/white binary of race in the U.S. and responds by making himself into a Chicano that really piqued my interest. I look forward to more texts from all genres exploring the connections between Filipinos and Chicanos, and of Filipino-Chicano mixed-race realities.

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.

This novel is written in a narrative style in which for every sentence the narrator discloses, you suspect that he has ten more which he declines to tell you. In this way, American Son does indeed have that "Hemingway-like" quality in which so much is left unsaid that the reader forms opinions in their own minds to fill in the blanks. This technique of adding mystery is certainly intriguing, and makes for a haunting read.

The story is told in narration by Gabe, the younger of two half-Filipino, half-white (German-American) brothers. They live in Santa Monica, California, with their Filipino mother who works menial jobs to help support her two boys. Their German-American father left years ago after several incidents of domestic abuse which finally terminated when Tomas, who finally grew old enough and strong enough to physically overpower his father, kicked him out of the house.

The setting is from April 1993 through September 1993. Gabe is in high school, while his older brother, Tomas, is presumed to be approximately 19 or 20 years old.

Throughout the story, the complex relationship between Gabe, his brother Tomas, their relationship with their Filipino mother, and their whole family's relationship with American society is explored, but with Gabe as the narrator, one gets the feeling that he wants to say very much more than he does, but that he just can't express the feelings he has inside.

Each of the three parts of the story is prefaced by a letter from Gabe and Tomas' uncle in the Philippines, who constantly exhorts his sister to send her wayward boys back to the Philippines to learn respect and discipline - however, also in the course of those letters is the very Filipino-like trait of one-upsmanship, in which the uncle proclaims all the success and happiness he and his family are experiencing, a very unsubtle rubbing-it-in which any Filipino reader would be familiar with. Gabe and Tomas' mother is portrayed as a pitiable character - one who came to the USA seeking a better life for herself and her children, but completely naive to the ways of the real world, and thoroughly "colonialized" - a woman who allows herself to get stomped on and pushed around without so much as a squeak of complaint - but who later cries in shame and anger at herself for not speaking up. Gabe at times tries to shield her from this abuse, only to see his efforts unwelcome and unwanted by his mother, and at other times he is ashamed of his mother, who dark complexion and obvious foreign-ness is in stark contrast to the fashionable mothers of his classmates.

It is this colonialized attitude which leads to the climax of the story, an outpouring of misplaced righteous anger at being mistreated, and where the story abruptly ends.

For weeks after I finished this book, I kept thinking about the ending and the novel as a whole. Just an excellent book which I highly recommend.