FIL-AM

Season’s by the Bay
By Oscar Perñaranda
ISBN 1-887764-59-3
264 Pages
Soft Bound / $16.95
A masterpiece! It derives from a provenance unknown in PI letters and perhaps, in the world's literature itself. His control of three cultures and their languages gives the story[ies] a depth and space unexplored. Its focus being on the central character rather than on historical material, supplies the depth; the revolution and the Philippine American War the space. Memory, though, is the subject here, let the reader not be misled.

The central character's remembrance is an echo of that which the other characters might have had, had their history been less dislocated. This dislocation, in any case, is more typical of the society depicted than that of the characters. This is where the dimension of Oscar's art seem directed; at eliciting the reader's feeling than his own remembrance...His "[The] Courier" becomes thus, our awareness of history and its remnants, such as they are, scattered about the world, dazed and uncertain about the future, but essentially salvageable from whatever ill it might offer... In the tradition of Carlos Bulosan and N.V.M. gonzalez, this much anticipated collection of stories by the Bay Area writer and teacher Oscar Peñaranda makes a valuable contribution to the rich, complex, growing body of Philippine American literature.