summary of the laughter of my father by carlos bulosan

#SUMMARY OF THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PROFESSIONAL#

When mother came home with some food, he went to the granary and sat there till evening. He spat at his hackles and rubbed them, looking far away with a big dream.

He just sat there caressing Burick and exercising his legs. It was during this impasse that Father sat every day in our backyard with his fighting cock. They went home with their heads down, thinking of the money they would have won. They had stopped going to the cockpit for fear of temptation if they went at all, they just sat in the gallery and shouted at the top of their lungs. The peasants and most of the rich men spent their money on food. He was preparing Burick for something big, but the great catastrophe came to our town. He took the soft-boiled eggs from the plate of my sister Marcela, who was sick with meningitis that year. Its father, Kanaway, had won a house for us some three years before, and Fathers had commanded me to give it the choicest rice. Father’s fighting cock, Burick, was practically the only healthy thing in our household. The grass did not grow and our carabao became thin. They washed their hands in one big wooden bowl of water and wiped their mouths with the leaves of the arbor trees that fell on the ground. If the waiter was new and he put the knives on the table, they looked at each other furtively and slipped them into their pockets.

They always cut their lips and tongues with the knives, so they never asked for them. They never used forks because the prongs stuck between their teeth. The loafers and other bystanders watched them eat boiled rice and fried fish with silver spoons. They sat in the fish house at the station and gave their orders aloud.

#SUMMARY OF THE LAUGHTER OF MY FATHER BY CARLOS BULOSAN PROFESSIONAL#

We were all suffering from lack of proper food.īut the professional gamblers had money. The men hung on the fence around the market and watched the meat dealers hungrily. The children walked in the streets looking for the fruit that fell to the ground from the acacia tree. Mother and my sisters went from house to house, asking for something to do, but every family was plagued with some kind of disaster. My brothers went away because they got tired working for nothing. When the locusts were gone, we planted string beans but a fire burned the whole plantation. Our rice field was destroyed by locusts that came from the neighboring towns. It was one of those lean years of our lives. Aim further to evaluate the story as a picture of Philippine life. In this story the author hilariously relates the dreams of his father about his favorite rooster. He was born in Binalonan, Pangasinan, Philippines, to Ilocano parents. A few even say that Philippine life was distorted deliberately for the sake of a humorous effect.Ĭarlos Bulosan (1913-1956), by the way, is a Filipino writer known for his non-fiction stories. To some Filipino readers, however, many of the stories are not faithful to Philippine life. Some of the stories have reprinted in American anthologies of humor. The Laughter of My Father has had a wide appeal, especially among American readers.

Here’s a story taken from Carlos Bulosan’s book, The Laughter of My Father, a collection of humorous short stories which appeared in the New Yorker and other American magazines.

Summary of the laughter of my father by carlos bulosan