Gabe’s Cultural Ambivalence in Roley’s American Son

Abstract

The characterization of the first-person narrator Gabrielito Sullivan (Gabe) in Roley’s American Son is ambivalent in terms of his cultural location. When he is attached to Mom, Aunt Jessica or uncle Betino’s letters and visits, he disapproves of his brother Tomas’ way of free of care gangster character influenced by Mexico-American decadent living. On the contrary, when he’s with Tomas or away from home, he feels the Asian virtues of living as traditional and boring. He gets often attracted to the myth of American son and American success, and possesses an instinctual dislike to their own dark Asian colour. Gabe, in the conflicts between these two drives, is never able to decide what side to take or how to maintain a third-space that could be safe and really successful in-between.

The characterization of the first-person narrator Gabrielito Sullivan (Gabe) in Roley’s American Son is ambivalent in terms of his cultural location. When he is attached to Mom, Aunt Jessica or uncle Betino’s letters and visits, he disapproves of his brother Tomas’ way of free of care gangster character influenced by Mexico-American decadent living. On the contrary, when he’s with Tomas or away from home, he feels the Asian virtues of living as traditional and boring. He gets often attracted to the myth of American son and American success, and possesses an instinctual dislike to their own dark Asian colour. Gabe, in the conflicts between these two drives, is never able to decide what side to take or how to maintain a third-space that could be safe and really successful in-between.