Filipino American

Pre-modern Asia was home to a vast selection of cultures, most of which were more closely associated with ethnic and religious groups rather than a given nation. The influx of imperialism brought cultural differences to the forefront of Asia’s attention, as in the face of alien cultures with far fewer similarities, Asian cultural groups with shared geography that had formerly seemed more different than alike began to obtain a growing consciousness of their similarities in response to the…

two sons; this story shows that Ika is deeply rooted in American society and she has become helpless and cannot control her son’s behavior that is becoming increasingly violent day by day. This research analyzes a particular theme in Brian Ascalon Roley’s novel American Son and the selected theme for this essay colonialism. In relation to it, this essay considers how Ika is straddling two different cultures being a transnational Filipina American and her preference to choose one world out of…

Josiah Strong, a clergyman, wrote this document which is part of his book, Our Country and was written in 1885. In the beginning, Strong speaks of American pilgrims migrating to the westward lands, and he says there are no more new lands to be discovered and subsistence and a plethora of populace are soon to be felt again in their new land just as it was in Europe. Strongs states “Then will the World enter upon a stage of its history... the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon…

was the case with the Japanese (Marger 2008a: 249). The household income of certain Asian Americans, like Indians, surpasses a majority of other minority ethnic groups (Marger 2008a: 257). Asian Americans are also more likely to hold college degrees compared to whites and 20% hold advanced degrees (Marger 2008a: 261). As mentioned before, Asians tend to have high-occupational ranking. For example, Filipinos are the majority within the field of nursing (Marger 2008a: 252; Le Espiritu 1999: 631).…

Part One-Jim Crow The Jim Crow system was a post-Reconstruction series of legislation that established legally authorized racial segregation of the African American population of the south. The Jim Crow system ended in the 1950s with the beginning of the civil rights movement. As Hewitt and Lawson wrote, “these new statutes denied African Americans equal access to public facilities and ensured that blacks lived apart from whites.” With the 1896 Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson the…

evident with American imperialism and its public health campaigns when it came to controlling the “others” both abroad in the Philippines and at home, in the melting pot that were the tenements of New York City. At the turn of the century the United States embarked on its journey of becoming an imperial power by fighting against the Spanish in the “splendid little war” of 1898. During this time the Philippines were being attacked in more ways than one, for instance, the Spanish and Americans…

I’m Filipino and I’m Asian. I’m part of the 5% residing in the US. Most of my family and friends are either immigrants or first-generation Asian Americans. When I first migrated to the US, I lived in Southern California where communities are predominantly Asian. Hollywood, the home of the entertainment industry, is located in Southern California. But where are the Asian Americans in television? We don’t often see them as a lead of a TV show, nor as a part of the main cast. Not only are they…

One of the common representational strategies that is used in My America… or Honk if you love Buddha is how some of the Asian Americans compare themselves to first-generation Asians. In the documentary, a Mr. Choi appears, and he is described as someone who works for a fortune cookie company, teaches martial arts, and does other tasks that are often associated with the “good oriental” image that Xing describes in “Cinematic Asian Representation.” Meanwhile, Victor Wong, who was born in San…

The necessity of the racial category “Asian American” stems from western orientalism. All Asian races are conglomerated though they do not necessarily feel any unity within themselves or have a shared lineage. Even those who have completely assimilated and who no longer identify as Korean, Filipino, Japanese, etc. cannot claim to be “American” because they are not white and are hence relegated the identity of “Asian American”. While those who live in America but do feel a sense of…

Lynda Barry’s “One Hundred Demons” is another great book about self-identity. We as the readers get to see the identity struggle that Barry went through as child that relates to the process of Filipina American representation (De Jesus, 2). De Jesus argues that Barry does not need to spell out her concern with racial identity because of her red hair and white skinned, freckled self, Barry looks very different from the other members of her family and her extended family throughout. One Hundred…