Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories / Edition 1

US: University of Washington Pre, 1997. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Set in Seattle from the 1950s to the present, Dark Blue Suit depicts the li ves of two groups: Filipino immigrant pioneers, the Manong generation who a rrived 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 Filipi no union, of thousands of Filipino workers to the Alaska salmon canneries. We meet characters who reappear throughout the stories: Vince, the tough bu t charming union foreman, his American-born son Buddy, and many others who age and change in ironic counterpoint to persistent themes of loyalty, fier ce ethnic pride, and a willingness to struggle against hostile forces in so ciety. 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.