American Son: A Novel

Author: Brian Ascalon Roley
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393340724
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
A powerful novel about ethnically fluid California, and the corrosive relationship between two Filipino brothers. Told with a hard-edged purity that brings to mind Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, American Son is the story of two Filipino brothers adrift in contemporary California. The older brother, Tomas, fashions himself into a Mexican gangster and breeds pricey attack dogs, which he trains in German and sells to Hollywood celebrities. The narrator is younger brother Gabe, who tries to avoid the tar pit of Tomas's waywardness, yet moves ever closer to embracing it. Their mother, who moved to America to escape the caste system of Manila and is now divorced from their American father, struggles to keep her sons in line while working two dead-end jobs. When Gabe runs away, he brings shame and unforeseen consequences to the family. Full of the ache of being caught in a violent and alienating world, American Son is a debut novel that captures the underbelly of the modern immigrant experience. A Los Angeles Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, and a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Finalist

An American Son

Author: Marco Rubio
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101592370
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Book Description
Few politicians have risen to national prominence as quickly as Marco Rubio. Here is the full story of his unlikely journey. Florida Senator Marco Rubio electrified the 2012 Republican National Convention by telling the story of his parents, who were struggling immigrants from Cuba. They embraced their new country and taught their children to appreciate its unique opportunities. Every sacrifice they made over the years, as they worked hard at blue-collar jobs in Miami and Las Vegas, was for their children. Young Marco grew up dreaming about football, not politics. In this fascinating memoir, he reveals how he ended up running for the West Miami City Commission, and then the Florida House of Representatives. In just six years he rose to Speaker of the Florida House. He then won his U.S. Senate campaign as an extreme long shot. Now Rubio speaks on the national stage about the better future that’s possible if we return to our founding principles. In that vision, as in his family’s story, Rubio proves that the American Dream is still alive for those who pursue it.

American Son

Author: Richard Blow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312988999
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
The last defining years of John F. Kennedy, Jr. At thirty-four, John F. Kennedy, Jr. was still a man in search of his destiny. In 1995, all that changed when Kennedy launched George, a bold and irreverent magazine about American politics. Over the next four years, Kennedy's passionate commitment to the magazine-- and to the ideals it stood for-- transformed him. One witness to this transformation was Richard Blow, an editor and writer who joined George several months before the release of its first issue. During their four years together, Blow observed his boss rise to enormous challenges-- starting a risky new business, managing the pressures that attend a high public profile, and beginning life as a married man. In American Son, with Blow as our guide, we see the many sides of Kennedy's personality: the rebel who fearlessly takes on politicians and pundits; the gentleman who sends gracious thank-you notes to his colleagues for their wedding gifts; the vulnerable son struggling under the weight of a mythic family legacy. Simply and sympathetically, Richard Blow offers an affecting portrait of a complicated man at last coming into his own-- sometimes gracefully, sometimes under siege, never without the burden of great expectations. #1 New York Times Bestseller; includes a new introduction

American Son

Author: Christopher Demos-Brown
Publisher: Concord Theatricals
ISBN: 0573708029
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 75

Book Description
An estranged bi-racial couple must confront their feelings about race and bias after their son is detained by the local police following a traffic stop incident. Their disparate histories and backgrounds inform their assumptions as they try to find out what happened to their son.

American Paper Son

Author: Wayne Hung Wong
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252030147
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
During the height of racist anti-Chinese U.S. immigration laws, illegal aliens were able to come into the States under false papers identifying them as the sons of those who had returned to China to marry and have children. American Paper Son is the story of one such Chinese immigrant who came to Wichita, Kansas, in 1935 as a thirteen-year-old "paper son" to help in his father's restaurant there. This vivid first-person account addresses significant themes in Asian American history through the lens of Wong's personal stories. Wong served in one of the all-Chinese units of the 14th Air Force in China during World War II and he discusses the impact of race and segregation on his experience. After the war he found a wife in Taishan, brought her to the US, and became involved in the government's infamous Confession program (an amnesty program for immigrants). Wong eventually became a successful real estate entrepreneur in Wichita. Rich with poignant insights into the realities of life as part of a very small Chinese American population in a Midwestern town, this memoir provides an important new view of the Asian American experience away from the West Coast. Benson Tong adds a scholarly introduction and useful annotations.

Nobody's Son

Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522705
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother, Urrea moved to San Diego at age three. In this memoir of his childhood, Urrea describes his experiences growing up in the barrio and his search for cultural identity.

American Founding Son

Author: Gerard N. Magliocca
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814761453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics. American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham’s life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders. Gerard N. Magliocca is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He is the author of three books on constitutional law, and his work on Andrew Jackson was the subject of an hour-long program on C-Span’s Book TV.

Reflections of an Anxious African American Dad

Author: Eric L. Heard
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1663216444
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 71

Book Description
The purpose of this book is an awkward discussion of Eric Heard’s life to his son. He talks about his life in a candid way that tries to explain his anxiety as an African American dad. It is an open and honest account of his life through the life of a child that has been through a lot in his life. It is a reflection on his life that has been shaped by his childhood experiences.

Native American Son

Author: Kate Buford
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375413243
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 479

Book Description
Chronicles defining moments in the career of the preeminent American athlete, from his contributions to college football and gold-medal wins at the 1912 Olympics to his role in shaping professional football and baseball, in a portrait that also discusses his private struggles and political views.

American Baby

Author: Gabrielle Glaser
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224692
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other. “[T]his book about the past might foreshadow a coming shift in the future… ‘I don’t think any legislators in those states who are anti-abortion are actually thinking, “Oh, great, these single women are gonna raise more children.” No, their hope is that those children will be placed for adoption. But is that the reality? I doubt it.’”[says Glaser]” -Mother Jones During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a maternity home, where social workers threatened her with jail until she signed away her parental rights. Her son vanished, his whereabouts and new identity known only to an adoption agency that would never share the slightest detail about his fate. The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children. The identities of many who were adopted or who surrendered a child in the postwar decades are still locked in sealed files. Gabrielle Glaser dramatically illustrates in Margaret and David’s tale--one they share with millions of Americans—a story of loss, love, and the search for identity.