'The Laughter of my Father': a survival kit

"It's good to be a man, Simeon," he said. "You can stand by a fire at night with another man whose likes and dislikes are similar to yours, while a little boy sits and drinks with you all night long.... But the boys nowadays are spineless and soft." (LF 70)

The same elements of vitality and early practice of survival techniques can be found in "A Day with My Father." When the narrator's brother Berto suddenly announces that he wants to get married, Uncle Sergio's fighting cock, which the narrator has been holding, "flew off my hand and ran around the house." Then, "I chased the cock around the house. I was afraid it would get away. Father grabbed my leg. I fell on the floor. He sat on my body and pondered over the subject anxiously" (76-77). This phallic prelude leads to an interchange between Berto and the father:

"Do you think twelve years is old enough to have children," Father asked.

"It was old enough for you, Father," my brother said.

"It was old enough for me all right," Father said. "But I was a strong man." (77)

After a violent battle involving the brother, during which "the cock was pecking at his [Berto's] legs and scratching his face" (78), the family sets out to find Berto a wife. At the first house they come to, the woman is rejected by Berto; the father then asks her which of his five sons she would prefer. When she selects Osong, the father nixes the arrangement, pointing out that this son is "vicious and lazy" (81). The narrator's brother Nicasio is interested but proves unsuitable, because he reads books and she eats tobacco and neither shares the other's interest.

At the next house the farmer's daughters are asked to choose husbands from the narrator's brothers. All five immediately pick the narrator, but the father says that he is too young. What finally deters the daughters, however, is the father's information that "He drinks wine like a horse" (83). Finally, the daughters draw straws; the youngest, who is fat, wins and picks the narrator's brother Polon. As the narrator's family leaves, the family reminds the father, "Don't forget to come back for the other girls!" (81).

This story complements the immediately preceding "My Father Had a Father" by treating courtship from the distaff perspective. The man who has one daughter can afford to let her be particular about whom she marries; the man with five daughters has the same problem that the fathers in Jane Austen's novels have. Again, there can be no mistaking the implication: daughters - economic liabilities - need to be married off (in this story the price is the deed to the farmer's rice land, which the farmer turns over to the narrator's father) if one is to subsist.

A close examination of the themes, tones, characters, and plot patterns of the LF stories reveals that the stories constitute a casebook on survival in a hostile environment. It is a testimonial to this idea - that sharp wit can defeat an enemy with superior firepower - that many readers have been fooled into thinking that LF is only an enchanting collection of short fiction. Each time that a reader misapprehends LF, thinking that it is merely a depiction of quaint tomfoolery, Bulosan has once again field-tested the book's unarticulated but articulate premise.