Names Above Houses

by de La Paz, Oliver

• ISBN13: 9780809323821
• ISBN10: 0809323826
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

InNames above Houses, Oliver de la Pazuses both prose and verse poems to create the magical realm of Fidelito Recto--a boy who wants to fly--and his family of Filipino immigrants. Fidelito's mother, Maria Elena, tries to keep her son grounded while struggling with her own moorings. Meanwhile, Domingo, Fidelito's fisherman father, is always at sea, even when among them. From the archipelago of the Philippines to San Francisco, horizontal and vertical movements shape moments of displacement and belonging for this marginalized family. Fidelito approaches life with a sense of wonder, finding magic in the mundane and becoming increasingly uncertain whether he is in the sky or whether his feet are planted firmly on the ground.

Author Biography

Oliver de la Paz was born in Manila and raised in Ontario, Oregon. He has served as the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College and currently teaches at Arizona State University, where he received his M.F.A. in creative writing. His poems have appeared in the Literary Review, Quarterly West, Third Coast, and Asian Pacific American Review and in the anthology Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xiii
In the Year of the Rat	p. 3
The Romance of Bait	p. 11
At Sea Domingo Learned to Steady His Hand	p. 12
Insects in Maria Elena's Kitchen	p. 13
The Flood of Ants	p. 14
A Parable	p. 15
Before Takeoff, Fidelito Prays	p. 16
Fidelito Sails over Manila	p. 17
On His First Flight Over	p. 18
Fidelito Haunts Airports	p. 19
On the Downward Escalator	p. 20
Manong Jose, While Cleaning His Last Window Before Coffee, Sees Fidelito and Is Pleased Though Wary	p. 21
Fidelito Prays to the Wind, Asking for Advice, but Not Really Asking	p. 22
School Years	p. 25
When Fidelito Is the New Boy at School	p. 26
Why Maria Elena Calls the Boy's Name So Many Times in a Day	p. 27
Fidelito Takes Flight up a Ladder	p. 28
For Hours, Fidelito Hangs from the Topmost Branch Before Letting Go	p. 29
She Leaves the Water Running	p. 30
Fidelito Suddenly Becomes Afraid of Heights	p. 31
From the Ocean, Fidelito Pulls	p. 32
The Fisherman's Chronicle	p. 33
Grounding	p. 34
In Sleep He Practices Flying	p. 35
Three Madonnas	p. 36
The Fourth Madonna	p. 37
Carpenter Ants	p. 38
From a Country with One Million Maria	p. 39
A Cupboard Full of Halos	p. 40
Fidelito Dreams the Village	p. 41
Domingo, Too Old for Fishing	p. 42
The Romance of the Television	p. 43
When Fidelito Says He'll Fly Away	p. 44
Domingo's Advice for Fidelito	p. 45
Nine Secrets the Recto Family Can't Tell the Boy	p. 46
Origami Dove	p. 48
Manong Jose Remembers Fidelito's First Fall	p. 49
Fidelito Contemplates How Powerful He Has Become and Thinks of Ways to Alter Weather Patterns	p. 50
Mind-Swimming	p. 53
After the Boy Goes to Bed	p. 54
Domingo's Blood Clot	p. 55
The Romance of the Amputated Leg	p. 56
How Domingo Disappears	p. 57
In the Dream with Blue Snow	p. 58
The Death of Domingo Recto	p. 59
What Fidelito Knows of His Father	p. 60
Maria Elena Puts His Good Shoes Away	p. 62
What the Kitchen Was	p. 63
The Way the Blessed Mourn	p. 64
Earth and Sky	p. 65
Birds and Their Various Fevers	p. 66
A Plan to Control the Weather	p. 67
Under the Stained Glass Saints	p. 68
The Puzzle of Kites	p. 69
The Box of Stars	p. 70
What the Laundry Told Maria Elena	p. 71
Wren Jealousies	p. 72
An Anatomy of Birds	p. 73
The Miraculous Ascension of Fidelito Recto	p. 74
Manong Jose Discusses How the Boy and His Strangeness Grew into His Name	p. 75
When Fidelito Grows Up, Maria Elena Reads	p. 76
With the Grace of Basket Weavers	p. 77
Fidelito Speaks of One Evening at the Turn of a Century but Mentions No Particular Century	p. 78
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