Customer Reviews

Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories

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

 

 

Peter Bacho's Dark Blue Suit (1997) offers readers a book of short stories which reflect the struggles of a young Filipino-American boy whose father once labored in Alaskan canneries, "Dark Blue Suit". It is in this first short story, we see Buddy as a five-year old, watching his gruff but protective father, Vince, negotiate a complex world in which men fear, respect, and dislike Vince for an authority he carries with considerable strength. Buddy learns quickly how to read his father's "look" when he risks misbehaving but also recalls his father's gait before imitating him with pride.

Dark Blue Suit depicts the difficulty of being Filipino-American at a time in which US culture was ambivalent if not hostile to the presence of Filipinos. Bacho writes a poignant but sad tale in "August 1968" which chronicles Buddy's adolescent friendship with an African-American boy, Aaron, who eventually leaves for college only to return to the rising tensions which characterized the Civil Rights Movement. If Buddy's friendship collapses under the weight of cultural history, it is because Bacho argues that cultural appropriation of another culture has its limits and its consequences. "August 1968" offers an honest portrait of Buddy's affiliation with an African-American and the problems which occur when one assumes cultural privilege while performing his friend's race identity. Can one "act Black" and expect long-term affiliation? At what cost to one's own sense of self does appropriation take place? Given the pervasive influence of hip-hop culture among Filipino-American youth, Bacho's story offers a response to a question which persists even today.

The rest of the stories focus on Buddy's various relationships including friends and family. Buddy's history shapes him and the choices he makes. When he drives home to see a dying relative in "A Matter of Faith", Buddy relies not on his own faith which flickers against his ongoing doubts but on the faith of his uncle who believed deeply and lived out of his beliefs. When Buddy prays at the conclusion of the story, he does so not only out of respect for his uncle, but also as a means of engaging in a cultural memory which includes his uncle. His characters may struggle with religion and its attendant beliefs but he writes his characters with enough sophistication to provide them with a cultural history that does not deny Catholicism its rightful place in the lives of Filipino-Americans.

Dark Blue Suit is a powerful and beautiful work. Bacho's tight, precise style, reminiscent of Hemingway's masculine prose, never risks excessive description or wordy dialogue. He relies on what is said and the silences to carry the narrative through. As stories, Dark Blue Suit is not merely a set of impressionistic portraits, but a series of black and white photographs which gain force as one reads through to the end. One might recall the work of Sherwood Anderson or Sarah Orne Jewett as a means of comparison.

If you've ever wondered what the daily lives of the early Philipino immigrants to Seattle were like. Read this book. In vivid flowing prose Bacho captures the look and feel of Philipino life and culture in Seattle in the old days.

I liked the stories in the book alot. I could understand what several of the characters were going thru almost like a slice of my own life. I highly recommend it for filipino-americans becoming of age and who see a need to understand the boundard between american and filipino cultures.

Bacho's book captured this reader, who upon intial reading thought it was a non-fiction work. The short-stories all come together to form a well-rounded and captivating story of Philipino Americans, especially in the Northwest.

The style and content of this book was worthy enough to make our college's text book reading list for literature and sociology. I enjoyed the reflective, narrative style collection of stories about a forgotten, fading group of elderly, male immigrants from the Phillippine Islands and their second generation, American born children as told by one of the sons. This is an easy to read discourse that is neither preachy nor pretentious from a sociological point of view and is laced with a subtle sense of self-deprecating humor; the feelings and quiet passion that flow from the storyteller's narrative is one in which everyday people like you and I can relate to.

Overall, I'm glad I read this book. With a few exceptions--the narrator and his father--I genuinely liked most of the characters in the book, but I found this to be a bit of a problem--they were all *characters.* Similarly, as I read the book, I sensed heroic adulation sprinkled liberally throughout. Unfortunately, many of the heroes exhibited behavior that shouldn't be emulated. I especially wondered about the rather heroic depiction of Buddy's father. His signature behaviors--intimidating those around him, whoring around on his wife, and ignoring the resulting children--aren't what passes for heroism. Overall, I was surprised the narrator didn't include a single story about a stable, well-adjusted, decent, family-man. Remarkably, the non-fictional, but ancillary, Taky Kimura did the best job of filling this role.

Furthermore, the role of women in the book was a bit strange. With the exception of Buddy's ever-so-religious, ever-so-pure mother, they were cast, rather angrily, as stupid whores. Since I wouldn't normally notice such things, the author must've done this explicitly. I don't understand what the author's motivation for this might have been.