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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page essay offers a brief analysis of American Son, a novel by Brian Roley, which describes how two Filipino American brothers cope with their heritage within the context of 1990s American society. No other sources cited.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khroley.doc
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of the novel and his older brother Tomas. Raised in Los Angeles, with its affluence, celebrities and ostentatious displays of wealth, the boys are caught between the materialism of American
culture and the traditional Catholic-based Filipino values of their mothers native culture, as the family struggle to survive. How the brothers adapt to this dichotomy provides the basic substance of
the narrative. The family has had no contact with the boys American father since the night he got drunk and confessed that he married his Filipino wife because "he
wanted someone meek and obedient," not realizing that "she came with a nagging extended family" (Roley 24). The closest thing to a father-figure that the boys have growing up in
America is the indirect influence of their uncle, as their mother frequently calls her brother in the Philippines for advice (Roley 22). Deferential and unassuming, their mother works sixty hours
a week in a department stores shoe department, a well as a second job (Roley 160). The mortgage is paid by Tomas and the income from his business selling guard
dogs, which he claims are directly descended from Nazi dog-breeding experiments, to rich whites. The brothers react to their minority position in a predominantly white society in very different
ways. At the beginning of the novel, they follow a Cain and Abel dichotomy. Gabe is the good and obedient child, "the son who is quiet and no trouble," helping
his mothers with "chores around the house" (Roley 15). Tomas, on the other hand, has subsumed his Asian identity within an assumed more macho Mexican persona, as he has gang
signs tattooed on his muscles, hair that has been "shaved down to stubble" and eyes that are "bloodshot from pot" (Roley 15). While Gabe initially seems to accept his Asian
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