American Son

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 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.

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.

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.