In the Philippines, the caste of “untouchables” is not the impoverished peasant but the elite leadership, on which society depends so much for patronage, but from which the masses more commonly have received indifference, cruelty, and betrayal of purpose. In the Bamboo Dancers... Gonzalez’s characters are discovered rather than explained. They present themselves without comment from the author. Such subtlety and disciplined self-restraint keep Gonzalez’s fiction far from the ordinary “literature of protest” ... Perhaps Gonzalez’s constant attentiveness to the manner of speech, and even to silence, owes much to his culture’s reliance, for unobtrusive communication, on courteous consideration of others... Gonzalez’s craft is perfectly expressive of these Asian aspects of Philippine folkways. Leonard Casper, Critical Survey of Long Fiction. size: 7 x 5 inches Paperback 358 pages Copyright 1959 |
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