American Son: A Novel

I know exactly what the two brother, Tomas and Gabe feel, and had I been a boy, I would have run with the tough guys and gotten into the trouble that boys without fathers have. I grew up in the same streets, okay, south of Watts/Compton, not Santa Monica and the nicer areas on the west side, but Harbor area/Carson, and my family did not fit in with the surrounding culture. We were the foreign ones with the weird clothes and our mother was very much like Tomas and Gabe's mother.I completely understood the Fedco scene and later on the scene at the pharmacy when the salesgirl pointedly ignored their mother and acted like she was nonperson, the Asian mother who shies away from sales people and feels ignored and shunted aside, and people who look down on them with the broken English. My mother had a parking lot incident where a woman accused her of denting her car with a shopping cart, even though my mother was returning the cart to the holder and wasn't near her car. This woman hounded my mother and followed her home haranguing her to just pay up. They feel they can pick on the older Asian woman who speaks broken English and scare her into paying.This story was very real for me growing up in Los Angeles and the author's descriptions are true, from the spindly rat infested palm trees to the smudgy plastic stackables (from the smog), the hazy thick Marine layer, the thin strip of beach were the airplanes take off over, and the pavement filled with tar in the cracks rather than fixed. The cultural landscape is also real, at least for people over thirty. Maybe now, younger Filipinos have more pride and nationalism, but I have friends who have Filipino mothers, but are half white and they have green eyes and light skin. Friends who claim they're Italian or hang with Mexicans. And the word Flip, that's what they used to say before Pinoy, even when referring to themselves.I did get this story and enjoyed it. The brothers really did love their mother but showed it differently. Tomas with gifts and Gabe by being there. And at the end, they stood up for her the only way they knew how, and even though the story had no real ending, it is realistic for literary fiction and I appreciate that the author did not foist an unrealistic sappy happy ending when life is not that way.

on the whole the book was interesting and gives a good treatment of the invisibility of asians - particularly filipinos of the struggling classes. i would say that the author got the letters from the manila uncle completely wrong: people who live in forbes park, the area where the uncle purportedly owns a mansion are generally considered the oppressors in philippine society. when they fall down the class ladder it is generally to become (upper) middle class in western countries with access to good western education, hardly domestic workers or similar.i got the feeling that the author couldn't quite decide whether he wanted to write about the upper cacique class of filipinos or the typical (middle class/indigent) migrant worker: these classes being in philippine society separated by a wider cultural chasm than east vs. west and generally don't mix and coexist only on socially rigid and pre-defined roles... particularly if they are first generation immigrants as this family is...the scene where the mother timidly allows herself to be snubbed at a cosmetic counter would have been touching and vivid had it been about someone used to being repressed by ordinary shopgirls (which people with close family ties to people living in forbes park are not!) such people are not intimidated by pouty sales clerks! these are the type of people who take their sense of entitlement wherever they go. had the manila uncle been a driver or houseboy rather than the owner of a mansion, everything would have made sense, instead details such as these impart the feeling of the characters being pastische and artificial - at least to the extent that they are supposed to be representative of a type of new ill-adjusted americans.nevertheless the book had good momentum and was on the whole very readable and the ending which was very good redeems whatever shortcomings the book otherwise has. i would still recommend it.

I finished reading Fil-Am author Brian Ascalon Roley's compelling story of two multiracial brothers Gabe and Tomas coming-of-age in Los Angeles. Roley's writing style is spare, fast paced, and a page-turner. Written in 2001, it remains as fresh and relevant today by keeping the spotlight turned on the ambiguities of race faced by Filipino-Americans often mistaken for Latino by their Spanish surnames and their skin tone. This is where Roley's acerbic prose rises above the racial stereotypes trying to make sense of what it feels to be Filipino-American. The book's ending is a cliffhanger. Does this foreshadow a sequel?

I read this book for a sociology class as a mandated reading assignment, but devoured it once I began it. It reads quickly, with some points leaving you quite at the edge of your seat, making for an entertaining read (especially for homework!) and something I enjoyed. I'm not sure I would read it again, myself, but it was certainly enjoyable the first go around and I'd recommend anyone interested in Asian American studies, Asian American familial relationships, and Asian Americans in the 90's (all of these specifically in relation to Filipinos) check this title out.

Brian Roley is actually a professor at my university and we got to meet him. He was extremely friendly and helped us understand his book. It's a really amazing book, and if you read it and just take it in, you'll really like it too!

Realistic West LA setting and a compelling coming of age story about racial identity in modern America. I think high school age students would also enjoy reading this!

Interesting book

The descriptive language is pretty phenomenal.

This is a book that spares no one. Every character has issues. It tells of a Filipino women who left her homeland to come to the USA hoping for a better life for her children. Her American husband divorces her and she works two jobs to make ends meet.The elder son turns into nasty piece of work , violent and vindictive. He trains guard dogs and seems to have a good relationship with the dogs , it's just humans he is violent towards. He is a gang member without a gang.The younger son there is more hope for but he is pulled in all directions - big brother is horrible and controlling, other ineffective and struggling but he tries to help her, and other relatives who also put in their two penneth.The story is punctuated by the other's brother in the Philippines who writes to her offering to have the boys "back home where they would learn respect and be disciplined properly".Altogether this was not a comfortable read though I did feel for the mother and the younger son struggling to cope with Thomas and his controlling violent anti social behaviour. Mother especially struggles as his dog training and selling business helps pay the household bills.A very sad rad and a case of intelligent youth just wasting their lives through some sort of anger and resentment against society.

Ich habe dieses Buch einfach mal bestellt, weil ich auch mal etwas von einem philippinischen Autor lesen wollte und ich wurde nicht enttäuscht. Roley beschreibt hier in realistischer Weise das Leben von zwei amerikanisch-philippinischen Brüdern, die beide unterschiedliche Wege gehen. Zum Betrüben seiner Mutter verinnerlicht Thomas, der ältere Bruder, das mexikanische Gangstertum, bezeichnet sich als Gangster, dealt mit geklauten Steoreos, bildet Kampfhunde aus die er dann an Celebrities verkauft und ist am ganzen Körper tätowiert...natürlich mit typischen mexikanischen Gangtattoos wie der Virgin Mary.Sein jüngerer Bruder Gabe wird durch ihn in seine kriminellen Machenschaften mit hineingezogen. Die Mutter, eine kleine schüchterne Person, die sich mit Jobben über Wasser hält, setzt all ihre Hoffnungen auf einen sozialen Aufstieg in ihre beiden Söhne und wird so zunehmends enttäuscht und deprimiert. Beide Söhne schämen sich wegen ihrer asiatischen Mutter, die ständig diskrimiert wird und sich nicht zu wehren weiß.Die Mutter arbeitet Tag und Nacht, ist völlig erschöpft, immer noch arm und von ihrem Mann verlassen worden, der wie er selbst sagt, nur eine willige Hure im Bett haben wollte. Thomas selbst ist von dem Beispiel seiner Mutter abgeschreckt und will nur eines: Cash und zwar egal wie.Weder Thomas noch Gabe möchten als Filipino erkannt werden, so bezeichnet sich Gabe als weiß und Thomas als Mexikaner.Roley beschreibt den täglichen Kampf von Immigranten und deren Kinder, zeigt das Identifikationsproblem gemischtrassiger Menschen auf und zeigt eben NICHT die Verwirklichung des glorreichen amerikanischen Traums. Das Buch wirkt sehr sehr realistisch, so auch am Ende und ich kann es nur jedem empfehlen, der etwas über das philippinische Leben in den USA erfahren möchte. Natürlich gibt es sicherlich auch solche, die den steinigen Weg hinter sich haben und es zu etwas gebracht haben (Roley zeigt auch solche Charaktere), aber wer etwas von der Masse erfahren möchte, ist hier richtig am Platz!

Great purchase