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on becoming Filipino American:. carlos Bulosan & the sexualized racialization of Philippine independence. Amanda Solomon Amorao, PhD asolomon@mail.sdsu.edu.
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on becoming Filipino American: carlosBulosan & the sexualized racialization of Philippine independence Amanda Solomon Amorao, PhD asolomon@mail.sdsu.edu
“It is time to recognize the contributions of Filipinos to the history of our state and country by including them in the social sciences curriculum taught in California schools. AB 123 is a strong step toward this goal.”
carlosbulosan • Nov 24, 1913 – born in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines • July 22, 1930 – arrived in Seattle • 1935 – started involvement in workers movement and labor organizing • 1936 – hospitalized for tuberculosis • 1944 – Laughter of my Father • 1946 – America is in the Heart • 1950 – blacklisted for membership in CPUSA • 1956 – died of tuberculosis in Seattle • 1995 – E. San Juan, Jr publishes On Becoming Filipino
re-membering radical pasts • “The emphasis on the working-class past of hardship, struggle, and resistance is an attempt by instructors, many of whose commitment to Asian American Studies was forged in the Asian American student movement of the late 1960s, to challenge the stereotype of Asian Americans as an accommodating model minority striving for acceptance by White society. What is offered in its place is a collective identity of an oppressed by resistant minority that has more in common with other people of color than with White Americans” • Lisa Yanagisako, “Rethinking the Centrality of Racism in Asian American History” • How do issues of gender and sexuality complicate this re-membered working-class radical past of Filipino America? How can we work towards an expansive Filipino American politics that doesn’t just address issues of class and racial hierarchies but also patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality?
white love • Late 1920s – Anti-Filipino riots up and down west coast • Dec 1929 – Watsonville Riot • Taxi dance halls sites of racial mixing, class alliances, violation of gender norms • The Filipino and the fear of miscegenation. Ex. Roldanv Los Angeles (1933) • Independence seen as solution to problem of Filipino immigration threatening both white labor and white purity
Filipino immigrants are mostly men; 93 percent of the islanders admitted to California in 1920-29 were males. These men are jungle folk, and their primitive moral code accentuates the race problem even more than the economic difficulty… • Legal authorities in California declare that since the Philippines are a ceded territory, the people take on whatever civil and political status the United States chooses to give them. Immediate exclusion is tragically necessary to protect our American seed stock… Primitive island folk such as the Filipinos do not hesitate to have nine children, while parents of white stock find educating three a problem of finance… Thus, after an emergency stopgap in the nature of a quota against Filipinos, we may find we may have to decide between the rights of our future generations and the danger that lurks in grating the Filipinos the status of American citizenship • C.M. Goethe (1931)
as long as the grass shall grow • “Miss O’Reilly was a good teacher. We started giving her peas and flowers that we picked on the hillside when we were working. Once we thought of buying her a dress, but one of the older men said that was improper. So we put the money in a large envelope and gave it to her when she came one evening. She did not want to accept it, but we said that it was a token of our gratitude. She took it then and when she came again she showed us a gabardine suit that she had bought with it.”
final thoughts • The granting of Philippine Independence is a complex moment in which sovereignty is recognized, but Filipinos in the US are racialized and sexualized as threats to US society. • In re-memberingthe working-class politics of Bulosan’s generation, how can we be attentive to how class and racial hierarchies are inextricable from the workings of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality? • Ultimately, how can we struggle constantly toward an expansive sense of what it means to be Filipino American?
thank you • Questions & comments? asolomon@mail.sdsu.edu • Classes offered next semester: • ASIAN 300: Asia’s Global Future • ASIAN 459: Modern Asian Culture • Typhoon Haiyan relief • TONIGHT! 6 to 8pm @ Ritual Kitchen (4095 30th Street) • Please help raise funds for NAFCON (National Alliance for Filipino Concerns) and their disaster relief efforts:http://nafconusa.org/
