This book is part of the National
Poetry Series and was a 1999 NPS Winner. It won
Penguin’s Asian American Literature Award and
includes 30 poems (“Penguin.com,” n.d.). Gloria’s
poems deal with the lives of modern day Filipinos and their surroundings while
others are set in America discussing the Asian American experience upon
immigration. A theme of “moving forward” appears evident, but it is clear the
narrator does not feel a true sense of belonging. The author uses poetry to explain
how he is caught between two worlds – the one back home as a Filipino and the
one in America. Finding a sense of belonging in the world is another theme – we
can see this in “The Maid” (p. 19). A young girl enters a restaurant and while
all the patrons seem to have given into the mainstream ways accepting American
TV culture with their “gaudy cellular phones” this girl has held onto her past
and is looking into the narrator saying “I
know you, I know you” implying that the narrator must hold onto to his
roots, despite their surroundings. Upon arrival in America, Gloria writes about
more of these changes. “On Mission Road” is about an American taxicab driver
who simply drops off the family, waits for payment and leaves. There was no
thankfulness for the job or a debt of gratitude – there was only “service
rendered” (p. 32).
Light used in the poems was sometimes blinding
or flashing, serving as a symbolic warning, such as in “Subic Bay” (Gloria,
2000, p. 11). Darkness is another theme. The narrator doesn’t appreciate his
“deadbeat” brother who wanted to escape the draft and flee to Canada. In
Gloria’s poem “Ruin” he talks about his brother serving in Vietnam in darkness
(p. 12). In “Nocturne: Two Visions” we read more about his brother’s involvement
in the war. There are many dark historical references, including the mention of
“Hiroshima ash” in “White Blouses” (p. 6), “debtors’ prison” in “Winter Fires”
(p. 7) and Mount “Pinatubo Ash” in “Song of the
Pillar Woman (p. 18). Gloria mentions the “season of the monsoon” and the “Japanese Occupation” in “Milkfish”
(p. 35). Many poems are about his family and their lifestyles – the theme is
family mixed with survival. The transition to America was not easy for the
family. His father fixes cars for a living as described in the poem “Iron Man”
(p. 33).
Tragedy is another theme. “Mauricio’s Song” is
about a man who is leaving work and heading to meet his love but a bullet meets
his heart instead (p. 4). Another sad poem “Saint Joe” recalls a time when the
narrator tried to rescue a little girl from drowning, but she could not hold
onto the rope – the girl drowned in the river. The narrator had this flashback after seeing a pedicab driver hit by an oncoming Coca-Cola truck. “Joe” as he was called,
tried to help, but the world continued to move forward while an ambulance
approached in the distance (p. 10).
Eugene Gloria was born in Manila
and has written three books of poems (“Eugene
Gloria”, n.d.). He is qualified to write a book of
poems about Asian Americans, but many of them I had a difficult time connecting
with after one read. I had to do a little research on some of the terms from
the poems including jeepneys. Readers will
learn a lot from the dual experiences of Gloria. Recommended for young adult
readers and up in public libraries with diverse populations and those readers who
want to experience two very different worlds within one book. Gloria’s words should teach us to work harder on accepting and
learning about other cultures: "If there were two worlds we are made to
inhabit/ I would prefer the one I was forced to leave” (p. 18).
