The Weight of the Sun is a collection of short stories about the fictional Guerreros, a family of Filipino and Filipino-American immigrants. The thread that runs throughout is author, soldier, dancer, laborer, short-order cook, ski bum, graduate student, cubicle worker, homeless man, and world traveler Geronimo G. Tagatac, whose own life stories are refracted through the various members of the Guerrero family. Most haunting are those from the narrator’s childhood, about his father and his father’s people. These are earthy and elemental, tinged with mythos, the new lore of a people forever severed from their home. Infused with blood and soil, labor, wandering, strength and mysticism, they read like Filipino folklore transplanted to California’s central valley, where Tagatac grew up helping his father as a farm laborer. Stories like “The Center of the World” reveal a young boy severed from his mother, mistreated by his stepmother, raised in a world of lonely, itinerant men who are the real center of his world and the connection to something old and powerful that will sustain him throughout his life. Later stories reveal a young Vietnam veteran trying to make sense of his past and present after he returns to civilization and university life. Others depict an older man still struggling to find a home, vacillating between the mundanity of office work and the uncertainty of an itinerant lifestyle. Tagatac’s prose is sparse and effective in the tradition of a Hemingway, yet blessed with a gentleness and beatitude that miraculously persists in spite of suffering. The words all read like they are written to be spoken aloud. Heavy in content, light in form, radiant with everyday truth, Tagatac’s stories lay spread before us like their namesake, “a broad promise under the light, sweet weight of the sun”. ( )

I was looking for a break from the type of books I've been reading, maybe something shorter for one thing since I often don't make it to the end of a book even if it's a book I like. This book of short stories was perfect. I like short stories (but not all), and this is a book of interesting ones, well-told and in beautiful language. I was immediately drawn into these stories of migrant workers and Vietnam vets. According to the introduction the characters are members of a fictional family and the stories are set in the West for the most part and spanning most of the 20th century. There's a softness in the writing, I feel like I'm reading by the light of a sunset, or as if I'm sitting around a campfire being told stories of someone's life or family . Even the stories of war and death have an emotion that is quiet. The author is a Pacific Northwest resident and I would love to hear him read his stories. ( )