RE-SIGNED SUBJECTS: WOMEN, WORK, AND WORLD IN THE FICTION OF CARLOS BULOSAN AND HISAYE YAMAMOTO

Mr. Hosoume is invested in Marpo only as "the best hired man" (48), but we come to know Marpo best through the eyes of Yoneko, who is initially put off by the fieldhand, having read "somewhere that Filipinos trapped wild dogs" (47) for food. However, Yoneko grows interested in "Marpo the athlete, Marpo the musician (both instrumental and vocal), Marpo the artist, and Marpo the radio technician" (48), facets that Yoneko "uncover[s] ... fragment by fragment every day" (49). Yoneko's list renders the selective fragmentation of the subject under capitalism: "the objectification of [workers'] labour-power into something opposed to their total personality (a process already accomplished with the sale of that labour-power as a commodity) is now made into the permanent ineluctable reality of their daily life" (Lukács 90). Within the "factories in the field," to use Carey McWilliams' apt phrase, "Marpo the best hired man" must exist separately from Marpo the athlete, Marpo the musician, etc. And in this context, "Marpo's versatility" (49) carries the ironic resonance characteristic of Yamamoto's work: for Mr. Hosoume, the farmhand's versatility would reside in his ability to work crops "so diverse as to include blackberries, cabbages, rhubarb, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, and cantaloupes" (46). For Yoneko, on the other hand, Marpo's versatility lies in what are to her the wondrous skills developed in his leisure time, and through socializing with him, she rejects the epithet "dog-eater."

It is not only Marpo's hobbies that humanize him to Yoneko and her brother, Seigo; Marpo also genuinely cares for the Hosoumes. During the eponymous earthquake, he runs to the family in the fields and "gather[s] them all in his arms, as much to protect them as to support himself" (50). After Mr. Hosoume is rendered sexually and economically impotent by his near-electrocution during the earthquake, Marpo and Mrs. Hosoume work more intensely and intimately, and Marpo again protects her and the children when Mr. Hosoume physically abuses his wife.5

Mr. Hosoume, however, perceives Marpo's concern for the family as infringement on paternal territory, and the fieldhand must be dehumanized in order to prevent his usurping the roles of father, breadwinner, and, as it turns out, husband: Marpo and Mrs. Hosoume become sexually involved, resulting in Mrs. Hosoume's pregnancy and subsequent abortion. These last events are revealed through the silences of the narrative when husband, wife, and children take a mysterious weekday trip into the city. On the way, Mr. Hosoume's nervousness causes him to hit a "beautiful collie"; Yoneko looks for its body during the drive home, "but the dog was nowhere to be seen" (54). The only other clues to what has transpired are that Marpo, like the stricken dog, "was here one day and gone the next" (54), and that Mrs. Hosoume tells Yoneko, "Never kill a person ... because if you do, God will take from you someone you love" (56). The dog run over by Mr. Hosoume symbolizes the life that he forces out of his wife's body as well as the fieldhand whom he has summarily fired. Trespassing on Mr. Hosoume's property-his home, children, and wife-Marpo has "for [gotten] his place" (54) and thus must be reminded that he is "a mere Filipino, an eater of wild dogs" (55), to be dispatched as if he himself were a dog.6