Customer Reviews

Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories

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People are used to tales of racism and alienation, but mostly in the context of African Americans, extended to other races. Bienvenido Santos' "Scent of Apples" is such a tale, but opens a whole bushelful of experiences and different sorts of "racism," in this collection of self-containing, sometimes interconnected short stories.

To better understand this book, it would be best to understand the circumstances of Santos' writing environment. Santos arrived in the United States in 1941: World War II was flying fast and the Civil Rights Movement was nearly two decades away. The Great Depression, which established and brought into focus a labor struggle between impoverished US citizens, and incoming immigrants working for lower pay, had just passed.

Many of Bulosan's adventures and characters come from the so-called "Bachelor Society" that had long been in place. With such a mass exodus from the Philippines for the money promised by America, the Filipino population in America was made up largely of men. They were called a "Bachelor Society" because of a lack of matrimonial prospects, the idea of marrying women of other races, particularly white, a taboo issue at the time. There were even clubs where these men would go and pay just to dance with white women.

This is exactly why this book is often used as a teaching tool in many Asian American literature classes. It introduces readers to an aspect of pre-Civil Rights racism that is fairly unknown, even to most Filipinos. The fact that Santos' writes extremely well, being able to mix the metaphors of apples, flags and walls into his tales, without making the writing too stylish for his readers.

The standouts from this collection of 16 include:
The title story "Scent of Apples," which shows a Kalamazoo, MI, Filipino farmer fawning over Santos who had just given a speech, awed by not only seeing another Filipino, but such a successful one.

"The Day the Dancers Came" which puts a different spin on "Apples"; instead, a Filipino longing for contact with his countrymen is extremely excited by the prospect of watching then meeting a dance troupe from the Philippines. He is severely disappointed when his affections are not returned, a beautiful turn on race-on-race struggles.

Also notable are "And Beyond, More Walls," and a three-story series that delves into the bachelor society, "Manila House," "A Peculiar Rustling" and "Nightclub."

The history is easy to swallow because of Santos' writing. It's understandable how many who have been introduced to the book in a class setting could be soured by it. It may be more advisable to learn more about the context surrounding the book before reading it on your own. It may even be more helpful, if you do have to read it for class, to simply have a strong interest in the topic. Otherwise, this read will be a brick in your hands.

Recommended for Filipinos interested in a part of their history, and for non-Filipinos interested in immigration and racism issues of the time, or in Filipino history.

I only had the chance to read three of the stories from this collection last semester, but I found them to be some of the most intriguing short stories I've seen. Santos is a very capable writer, and it seems one of the more subtle ones I've read in a long time. Particularly in "The Day the Dancers Came," Santos is able to make a universal statement from a very particular situation.

I haven't read this book but I have read a piece of it in my English class in the Philippines. I myself are one of the people who have experieced what Santos have written. I force no one to read or be bored by this book but being a Filipino gives me a true reason to appreciate my country's talents.

I had to read this book for a class last semester (spring 00) and thought it was really boring. The way Santos writes puts me to sleep (thank God for caffeine); he uses an english dialect that was hard for me to understand or like. Also, the book is suppose to be a collection of stories, yet I found that a few of the stories were connected to each other. That was particularly annoying to me because I like to randomly choose a short story from a collection rather than starting at the beginning and reading it through to the end. Overall, I didn't like the book at all, including the cover.