A History of American Literature

776 The American Century: Literature since 1945

For Filipino Americans that fate is, if anything, more conflicted than for most.

Shaped by Spanish language, culture, and religion since the sixteenth century, the

inheritors as well of the English language and American popular culture, Filipinos

are arguably more Western in their orientation than other Asian immigrant groups.

They certainly enjoy a richly heterogeneous racial heritage. That is reflected in what

the hell for you left your heart in san francisco (1987) by Bienvenido Santos

(1911–1996). Even the title of this remarkable novel, in its verbal play, gestures

toward a mixed transnational heritage. And, as he describes his flight from the

Philippines and his life of “aimlessly wandering the United States,” its immigrant

protagonist insists on his complicated, composite identity. He is “an oriental with

broad hints of Malay-Indonesian, perhaps Chinese, strain, a kind of racial chopsuey,”

he explains. “Better yet, for historical and ethnic accuracy, an oriental omelette

flavored with Spanish wine.” The contribution of American mass culture, in

particular, to this rich ethnic mix is marked in two novels by Jessica Hagedorn

(1949–), Dogeaters (1991) and The Gangster of Love (1996). In Dogeaters (a pejorative

term for Filipinos), Hagedorn tells the stories of a range of Filipino characters,

among them a pimp, a freedom fighter, and a movie star. Told retrospectively by Rio

Gonzaga, a young woman who as a teenager emigrates with her mother to the

United States, these stories incorporate a variety of narrative forms, ranging from

the discourses of history to vernacular forms such as gossip. What is remarkable,

though, is the sense that the forms and imagery of the American media have

penetrated Filipino culture so deeply that even memories of the Philippines are

marked by it. The era of the Filipino dictator, President Marcos, for instance, is

recollected as if it were a series of Hollywood scripts, some romantic, some comic,

some pornographic or the stuff of nightmare. Similarly, the protagonist of

The Gangster of Love, Rocky Rivera, the member of a struggling rock band, admits

that she is trapped in her “media-saturated, wayward American skin.” Disappointed

by her initial encounter with America, when she arrives to find the Golden Gate

Bridge shrouded in fog – and, as it turns out, not really made of gold – Rocky

becomes a countercultural “gangster,” crisscrossing the continent in a wild,

geographic simulation of her own lack of a stable cultural base. The story she tells

is equally, appropriately disjunctive, mixing narrative with poetry, dramatic skits,

and jokes. By the end, her careering backwards and forwards across America has

brought her little beyond the dubious gift of being superficially Americanized.

And, like many other immigrant protagonists, she makes the journey back to her

old home in the belief, or perhaps just the hope, that there she may be able to

resurrect and retrieve her origins.

It was not until several decades after World War II that, for quite different reasons,

the United States experienced significant immigration from Vietnam and South

Asia. The exodus from Vietnam that followed the disastrous military engagement

there is the narrative occasion of Monkey Bridge (1997) by Lan Cao (1961–), which

tells the story of a mother and a daughter, and a people, not accustomed to “crossing

boundaries” who suddenly have to do so. From farm life on the Mekong Delta to

strategic hamlets to Saigon and then to Little Saigon in Virginia, the characters in

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