The American Son

American Son A Love between a mother and her child can be so strong that sometimes it is hard for one to express how they feel. A mother¡¯s love for her child is unconditional and so is the child¡¯s love for their mother. However, everybody expresses their love in different ways and sometimes the way one person expresses their love can hurt the other person¡¯s feeling even though it is not intentionally meant to hurt the person. Jonathan Kirsch from the Los Angeles Times writes about the American son, ¡°At every moment, at every level, Tomas and Gabe and their mother injure one another in intimate ways, even when they try to rescue each other.¡± This quote holds true for the mother and her son Tomas in the novel, The American Son by Brian Ascalon
The novel takes place in the 1990¡¯s California. A mother comes with her two sons Tomas and Gabe from Manila and works two jobs to provide for them. Tomas the older son associates himself with Mexicans gangsters and breed¡¯s expensive attack guard dogs to help support the family who was abandoned by his father long ago. Tomas is always causing trouble and worrying his mother. The younger son Gabe is the good son but as he grows older he strays in the same pattern as his older brother Tomas.

Tomas the older son is the son who helps pay the mortgage by selling attack dogs to rich people and celebrities. He is the son who keeps his mother up late with worry and who causes her embarrassment by showing up at family parties with his muscles covered in gangster tattoos and his head shaved down to stubble and his eyes bloodshot from pot. He is half white, half Filipino but dresses like a Mexican gangster that his mother does not like. He is also the son who says that if any girlfriend criticized his mother or treated her wrong he would knock the bitch across the house (15). Tomas seems to do
So, when his mother has to pay eight hundred dollars to a lady for accidentally scratching her car Tomas tries to rescue his mother by yelling at the lady when she calls and by beating up the lady¡¯s son for insulting her. However his mother gets upset that he yells at the lady and she would definitely be upset if she found out that he beat up the lady¡¯s son. This is the only way that Toms knows how to express his love for his mother because he can¡¯t express his love for her through words but this in return hurts her. He also tries to rescue his mom when his mom gets into a fight with his uncle Benito. He tells his mom to stand up to him and when she doesn¡¯t Tomas ignores his Uncle when he comes to visit. Tomas does this once again to show his mother that he cares and that he doesn¡¯t want her to get hurt but his mother doesn¡¯t like how rude he is to his uncle, which again hurts his mother because uncle Benito criticizes her for raising them in America. Tomas again hurts his mother in an intimate way when trying to rescue her but this seems to be the only way that Tomas knows how to express his