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Set in Seattle from the 1950s to the present, Dark Blue Suit depicts the lives of two groups: Filipino immigrant pioneers, the Manong generation who arrived on the Pacific Coast during the 1920s and 1930s, and their American-born children. Although narrated as fiction, the stories - their landmarks, activities, settings, and events - are grounded in historical fact.
The book opens with the annual spring dispatch, by the Seattle-based Filipino union, of thousands of Filipino workers to the Alaska salmon canneries. We meet characters who reappear throughout the stories: Vince, the tough but charming union foreman, his American-born son Buddy, and many others who age and change in ironic counterpoint to persistent themes of loyalty, fierce ethnic pride, and a willingness to struggle against hostile forces in society.
We encounter the inevitable aging and passing of the Manong generation, but we sense as well the arrival of its vision. Babies are born. The migrant fisheries worker gets a nine-to-five job, and his children go to college. The conclusion builds to a quiet power that is essentially elegiac; an era closes, but the voices of the older generation are shouldered by the younger, to keep the history, to retell the stories, and to pay homage.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Fiction, Filipinos, Social life and customs, Alien labor, Filipino Americans, Families, Migrant labor, Fiction, short stories (single author), Washington (state), fiction, Seattle (wash.), fiction, Foreign workers, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, generalPlaces
United States, Seattle (Wash.)Edition | Availability |
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1
Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories
2018, University of Washington Press
in English
0295997397 9780295997391
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2
Dark blue suit and other stories
1997, University of Washington Press
in English
0295976640 9780295976648
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- Created April 1, 2008
- 17 revisions
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July 12, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
November 25, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
October 13, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
August 16, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |