Bienvenido N. Santos

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Precarious Lives

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The stories [in "Scent of Apples"] have their settings in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Kalamazoo and many other cities of the Midwest—places where Filipino men, who have left families and communities behind, make precarious American lives. To protect themselves against brutality, they befriend one another and try not to forget Filipino manners, establishing a civility in skid row…. Mr. Santos's writing is very delicate, very fine, gently rendering "the hurt men," or "the boys," as they jauntily call one another….

The later stories are about pairs of friends who watch over one another. Western literature ought to have more such writing in praise of friendship, a strong tradition in Eastern literature. In "The Day the Dancers Came," the compadres are Tony, who is dying, and Fil, who tries to bring the dancers home…. [Fil thinks the Philippine dancers] will want to meet fellow Filipinos as much as he does, but to the dancers, he's just a strange old Pinoy….

[The] interweaving of the stories is a playful delight. Sometimes a minor character in one story takes a large role in another, like actors in repertory. (p. 28)

Mr. Santos seemed to have begun writing by using a narrator similar to himself, then created Ambo to experiment further with fictional distance. In the later stories, both narrators disappear, the main characters receiving all the attention, and the stories are written entirely in the third person. Mr. Santos no longer needs to voice his doubts about the stories but gets on with the job.

Another development that I enjoyed following was the changes in Mr. Santos's style, which echo a Filipino accent. His editor left uncorrected some of the odd usages of articles and prepositions that those of us for whom English is a second language are prone to…. Mr. Santos is a master at giving the reader a sense of people speaking in many languages and dialects. Even Mark Twain couldn't transcribe dialects so that they were readable. But Mr. Santos can. (p. 29)

Maxine Hong Kingston, "Precarious Lives," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1980 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 4, 1980, pp. 15, 28-9.

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The Philippines: An Exile's Dreams