Announcements Midterms back at end of class Presentation W 2/13 April, Daniel, Stephani, Isaac Hong, & Sith No class M 2/18 Final paper prompts on M 3/4

Filipino/American Literature Moving on from complexities and contradictions of Commonwealth Philippine nationalism to the complex and contradictory position of Filipino immigrants in US Race, Gender, Sexuality & the Invisible Empire

Commonwealth Ambiguities 1898-1934: Philippines = unincorporated territory 1934-1946: Philippine Commonwealth = preparation for independence 1940 Commonwealth Literary Awards Literature and culture used to imagine Philippine nation. Ex. Philippines – (Spain + America) = Molave Pitfalls of nationalism: Patriarchal divide between masculine public and feminine private Nationalism enables neocolonialism

Jose Garcia Villa Most accomplished Filipino writer in English of the period 1929 – immigrated to US Filipino writer? American writer? Filipino American? Colonialist or critic?  Do his writings challenge US benevolent assimilation? Philippine nationalism? First, who was Villa? Epitome of pensionado  “Untitled Story” Mention that Villa circulated amongst notable modernist poets like ee cummings and WH Auden

Divine Play with God McKinley’s “Address to a Methodist Delegation” America = white masculine father = closest to God Philippines = emasculated dark child = most like an animal Divine Poem 76 Divine Poem 77

Trans-national Laborers Large influx of immigrants – almost 150,000 nationally (including HI) by 1920; 30,470 in CA alone “pensionados” Laborers in Hawaiian plantations – 110,00 “Alaskeros” – about 3,500 Domestic help/Service labor – about 10,000 Mainland stoop and migrant farm labor – about 30,000 Trans-national Laborers

The Manong Generation 1902-1934 = “manong” generation “manong” – Ilocano term of respect for elder male relatives 94% male, agricultural peasant class and under the age of 30 Factors of immigration: Increased land dispossession due to transition from Spanish to American governance Agricultural depression due to drought – particularly in Ilocos Ilocano tradition of inter-regional cultivation Contract-labor system and sojourner mentality Spanish Catholic gender norms American educational system Irony of American educational system  teaches Filipinos to identify with US, an identification that highly contrasts actual experience of immigration The Manong Generation

Embodied Contradictions “The arrival of Filipino immigrants in the imperial metropole rendered visible the colonialism that Americans had tried to make invisible through the myths of historical accident and benevolence. Filipino migration lay bare contradictions between the insular policy of benevolent assimilation and the immigration policy of Asiatic exclusion which had fully matured by the 1920s, and domestic racism generally” (97) Filipino immigrant  materializes contradictions of US-Phil relations and racism underlying benevolent assimiliation Embodied Contradictions

Life & Death of a Filipino in America Precedents of anti-Asian exclusion: Naturalization Law of 1790 Page Act of 1875 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Gentlemen’s Agreement 1907 CA Alien Land Law of 1913 Anti-miscegenation Laws of 1920 “If nativists believed Chinese and Japanese were unassimilable because they were radically different from Euro-Americans, both racially and culturally, they were discomfited precisely by the extent of Filipinos’ Americanization.” (109) Life & Death of a Filipino in America

Solution = independence (1934) Taxi dance halls  sites of racial mixing, class alliances, violation of gender norms “You can realize, with the declared preference of the Filipino for white women and the willingness on the part of some white females to yield to that preference, the situation which arises… California in this matter is seeking to protect the nation, as well as itself, against the peaceful penetration of another colored race” (V.S. McClatchy) Bulosan’s Miss O’Reilly “Thus anti-Filipino hostility was a site where ideas about gender, sexuality, class, colonialism intersected in violent ways and, moreover, informed the construction of the racial identity of both European and Filipino immigrants” (115) Solution = independence (1934)

Bulosan’s America In “Story of the Letter,” what does the letter come to signify to the narrator and his family? Why does he only reveal what the letter said at the end of the story? Why does he both laugh and cry while reading it? (65) In Consorcio’s story, what does it mean to “be American”? If it is not defined by citizenship papers, then what defines being American in the story? (72)