SOURCE: Bresnahan, Roger J. “The Midwestern Fiction of Bienvenido N. Santos.” Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Newsletter 13, no. 2 (summer 1983): 28-37.

In the following essay, Bresnahan discusses the Midwestern locales in Santos's work and investigates how landscape affects his fiction.

At first it might seem odd to examine the treatment of Midwestern places in the work of a Filipino author who has been only intermittently and temporarily in the Midwest. Yet there is a quality to Bienvenido Santos' writing which makes geographical place a felt presence without becoming the central focus of the narrative. It is a quality which is present not just in his Midwestern stories but in his New York locales, his Washington, D. C. locales, his West Coast locales, and his Philippine locales. Yet the setting is not altogether incidental in his fiction. A case might be made for a quasi-Midwestern mentality in the...