I loved this book and became very involved in the subtely complicated characters and the interplay of feeling. The book is a deeply disturbing look at racism. What was most original, to me, was how the prejudicial attitudes seemed to have their own life and jumped around among the characters. The book was also about the confusing process of racial identity biracial people often face, many of whom feel like outsiders to both white people and the minority side as well. This certainly has been true for hapas (half Asian, half white) who are often looked upon as not real Asians by their Asian side. You can even see evidence of this discrimination against hapas in a couple of the posted reviews where the (young sounding) Filipino AMERICAN readers fault the book for not resembling their Filipino American family life. Well, of course not, the book is about two HALF white boys, growing up in LOS ANGELES with an abusive WHITE father. The fmaily is clearly disfunctional and not meant to be "representative" of a typical or average full blooded Filipino family. To fault a book for not looking like a mirror is sort of a narcassitic way of reading, and to require a writer to write representative characters just because he or she is a minority is unfair and a recipie for creating a literature nobody can be proud of. If you approach this book for what it is trying to be, with an open mind, I think you will find a deeply moving and original novel about RACE and RACIAL IDENTITY. Also, the "omissions" one reader mentioned in regard to a "romantic" interest and conversations with the abusive father are clearly intentional. This is, thank God, neither a gang novel or a Hollywood movie. By relegating such aspects to the subtext, the author avoids cliques and achieves a Hemmingwayesque power.

I loved this book so much. I am not surprised that the NY Times chose it as a Notable Book of the year. It shows the pain of a dysfunctional family living in Los Angeles, a typical enough theme. But the prose is both gentle and violent, the story very strong, and the themes of biracial indentity as complexly rendered as the subtly complicated characters. The two boys at the heart of this piece are half Filipino, and feel estranged from both white people and their mother's Filipino relatives. Rowley gets at their sense of being outsiders as aptly as Richard Yates. The ever present, but rarely seen father is a nice touch, for like the boys we rarely see him, so that he is an elusive memory, but always feel his powerful presence. Thankfully, too, the author chose not to make this yet another a gang novel, but kept this world seen from outside, which is appropriate since the brothers are pretenders. Deeply felt and gripping.

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.