Review: On Rafe Bartholomew's 'Pacific Rims' (2010)

From The Wily Filipino:

But back to the book, which I love, and maybe not for the right reasons: Pacific Rims is very well researched, for starters. The history of basketball and the American educational system in the Philippines, long-standing rivalries between teams, local politics in Boracay, the elaborate import system (where a player from America gets to play for a Philippine team during a so-called “reinforced conference”, Robert Jaworski as a phenomenon, the meaning of diskarte and gulang, corporate sponsorship, the relationship between players and their loyal fans, the tragic tale of Billy Ray Bates – they’re all here. And I write this with barely disguised professional envy because the social-history aspect of Pacific Rims is all so breezily and skillfully done.

No, it’s not the sort of book that would satisfy a history or political science requirement; there just aren’t enough numbers in it. (And yes, the former academic in me would cite that as a bit of a problem: I wanted citations; I wanted statistics.) But it’s such an enjoyably written chronicle of lived experience, stuffed with observational detail, that it’s hard not to want students to read it in order to understand the Philippines a little more. It’s something academic writers could learn from, really. The humor (and Pacific Rims is frequently hilarious, so funny I would laugh out loud on the train) – well, that’s a little more difficult to learn.

Read more.

Come and see Rafe Bartholomew, who will be reading from Pacific Rims at Eastwind Books of Berkeley on Tuesday August 3rd at 6:30 pm.