Book Summary and Reviews of What We Are by Peter Nathaniel Malae

Book Summary

What We Are follows twenty-eight-year-old Samoan-American Paul Tusifale as he strives to find his place in a culture that barely acknowledges his existence. Within a landscape of sprawling freeways and dotcom headquarters, where the plight of migrant workers is ever- present, Paul drifts on and off the radar in San Jose, California, fighting to define himself within a system that has no easy or predetermined place for him.

At first Paul tries to live outside society, an unemployed drifter who takes a personal interest in defiantly—even violently—defending those in need. But when life as an urban Robin Hood fails to provide the answers he seeks, Paul takes a chance on the straight-and-narrow: living in the power structure, getting a job, obeying the law, and seeking to reconnect with his family. Along the way, Paul moves through the lives of sinister old friends, suburban cranksters, and septuagenarian swingers, as he battles to find the wisdom and faith he desperately needs, whether through adhering to tradition or casting it aside.

A dynamic addition to America's diverse literature of the outsider, What We Are establishes Malae as an energetically gifted writer, whose muscular prose brings to life the pull of a departed father’s homeland, the anger of class divisions, the noise of the evening news, and, in the end, beautifully renders the pathos of the disengaged.