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Book Cover for: Dark Blue Suit: And Other Stories, Peter Bacho

Dark Blue Suit: And Other Stories

Peter Bacho

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Washington Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 1st, 1997
  • Pages: 192
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.46in - 5.60in - 0.39in - 0.43lb
  • EAN: 9780295976372
  • Categories: Short Stories (single author)

About the Author

Bacho, Peter: - Peter Bacho teaches in the Liberal Studies Program at the Evergreen State College and is the author of several books, including Cebu (UWP, 1991; winner of American Book Award), Dark Blue Suit (UWP, 1996; winner of Washington State Book Award), Entrys (U Hawaii Press, 2005), and Leaving Yesler (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2010).