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A review by mtizon
Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self by Alex Tizon
5.0
Full Disclosure: I requested an advanced copy of Big Little Man from NetGalley thinking I could write an unbiased review. Silly of me, really. Alex Tizon is, after all, my big brother. His history is linked with mine. His dad, the big dreamer, is my dad too. This is not a professional review but rather my own personal reaction to this book.
I already knew some of the stories shared within the pages of Big Little Man and yet reading them here transformed them into something more than just tales I'd grown up hearing. I remember the "fire" story but I never knew how it started or that dad was, in part, responsible for its cause. Of course, that may be because I only ever heard dad's version of things. It never occurred to me that having a fireplace was such a big deal to my immigrant family or that their pursuit of the ultimate American Dream, complete with white Christmases and Presto logs in the fireplace, nearly killed them all. I recall dad's obsession with his nose but I didn't know he was trying to make it taller so he could make himself more handsome, which for him meant more Anglo and less Filipino. I never completely understood what dad meant when he told me I had a good nose because it wasn't flat. Unlike Alex, I was oblivious to the implications of this.
"Your nose is so round! And so flat! Talagang Pilipino! So Filipino!"
"What's wrong with flat?"
"Nothing is wrong with flat. Pero sharper is better. People will treat you better. They'll think you come from a better family."
I am one of the sisters mentioned in this book who married a white guy. In my defense, I once had a crush on an Asian boy who took no notice of me whatsoever. In fact, no Asian boys seemed to notice me, at least not romantically. I figured I was the wrong kind of Asian girl. Not petite enough, a little too opinionated, a little too Americanized. That's the thing about being Asian in America. You try to live in both worlds at the same time and end up feeling like you don't belong in either.
Seeing things from my brother's point of view, learning how our father's history, and that of many known and unknown Asian men, shaped him from a young boy to the man he is today, opened my eyes to a perspective I had not previously considered. I know well the culture clash of being raised Asian inside the home and having to translate that culture in a workable way outside of it. I too had to navigate my brown self through a sea of white but as so often happens with siblings, our stories, our takeaways from our history and experiences, are vastly different.
Big Little Man asks the question: What does it mean to be an Asian man? What did it mean then? What does it mean now in a landscape where the ground below us is in a state of perpetual shift? More than that, it presents universal themes that speak of how we relate to our parents, our ancestors, and the world we live in. Alex's perspective is his own and at the same time it can relate to any man's search for himself, regardless of his color.
I had no idea the emotional impact Big Little Man would have on me. Or that I would cry myself to sleep thinking of our dad in his last days looking back on his life. In my mind, I see our nephew, Kai, searching for some unknown something in the "Asian" corner of a video store. He has been taught all about the great explorers and conquerers of our collective history in school. Magellan, Darwin, Columbus. Except that history didn't include Zheng He, the great Asian explorer who, I admit, I hadn't heard of either before reading this book. In Big Little Man, Alex wonders how it might have changed things for him if the history he'd been raised on had also included our Asian ancestors' stories. Big Little Man is honest, at times painfully so. It is courageous and bold and hopeful.
I already knew some of the stories shared within the pages of Big Little Man and yet reading them here transformed them into something more than just tales I'd grown up hearing. I remember the "fire" story but I never knew how it started or that dad was, in part, responsible for its cause. Of course, that may be because I only ever heard dad's version of things. It never occurred to me that having a fireplace was such a big deal to my immigrant family or that their pursuit of the ultimate American Dream, complete with white Christmases and Presto logs in the fireplace, nearly killed them all. I recall dad's obsession with his nose but I didn't know he was trying to make it taller so he could make himself more handsome, which for him meant more Anglo and less Filipino. I never completely understood what dad meant when he told me I had a good nose because it wasn't flat. Unlike Alex, I was oblivious to the implications of this.
"Your nose is so round! And so flat! Talagang Pilipino! So Filipino!"
"What's wrong with flat?"
"Nothing is wrong with flat. Pero sharper is better. People will treat you better. They'll think you come from a better family."
I am one of the sisters mentioned in this book who married a white guy. In my defense, I once had a crush on an Asian boy who took no notice of me whatsoever. In fact, no Asian boys seemed to notice me, at least not romantically. I figured I was the wrong kind of Asian girl. Not petite enough, a little too opinionated, a little too Americanized. That's the thing about being Asian in America. You try to live in both worlds at the same time and end up feeling like you don't belong in either.
Seeing things from my brother's point of view, learning how our father's history, and that of many known and unknown Asian men, shaped him from a young boy to the man he is today, opened my eyes to a perspective I had not previously considered. I know well the culture clash of being raised Asian inside the home and having to translate that culture in a workable way outside of it. I too had to navigate my brown self through a sea of white but as so often happens with siblings, our stories, our takeaways from our history and experiences, are vastly different.
Big Little Man asks the question: What does it mean to be an Asian man? What did it mean then? What does it mean now in a landscape where the ground below us is in a state of perpetual shift? More than that, it presents universal themes that speak of how we relate to our parents, our ancestors, and the world we live in. Alex's perspective is his own and at the same time it can relate to any man's search for himself, regardless of his color.
I had no idea the emotional impact Big Little Man would have on me. Or that I would cry myself to sleep thinking of our dad in his last days looking back on his life. In my mind, I see our nephew, Kai, searching for some unknown something in the "Asian" corner of a video store. He has been taught all about the great explorers and conquerers of our collective history in school. Magellan, Darwin, Columbus. Except that history didn't include Zheng He, the great Asian explorer who, I admit, I hadn't heard of either before reading this book. In Big Little Man, Alex wonders how it might have changed things for him if the history he'd been raised on had also included our Asian ancestors' stories. Big Little Man is honest, at times painfully so. It is courageous and bold and hopeful.