REMEMBERING CARLOS BULOSAN (tags)
A re-assessment of Carlos Bulosan's life and works in the context of his birth anniversary this November and Filipino-American Month.
RE-VISITING CARLOS BULOSAN (tags)
Reviewing Carlos Bulosan's life and work in commemoration of his birth anniversary November 1911.
Confronting U.S. Empire: Reviewing Filipino American Insurgent Intellectual Production (tags)
This new intervention by internationally renowned Filipino scholar E. SAN JUAN, Jr. signals a renewed self-reflection by the Filipino American community and the entire diaspora of nearly 10 million Overseas Contract Workers.
FILIPINOS IN THE UNITED STATES: WHITHER? WHENCE? (tags)
The publication of four essays by Filipino activist-scholar E. SAN JUAN, Jr. on the situation of Filipinos in "the belly of the beast" marks a historic stage in the criticial self-examination of this community at a time when the USA Patriot Act and Bush's "war of terror" have stigmatized this group as somehow connected with the Abu Sayyaf terrorism in the Philippines. It is time for Filipinos in the U.S. to stand up and fight continuing racial stigmatization and inferiorization of the Filipino national identity. Makibaka, huwag matakot!
Review of E. SAN JUAN's ON THE PRESENCE OF FILIPINOS IN THE UNITED STATES (tags)
Filipinos in the U.S. today comprise the largest community of Asians in the U.S. But knowledge about Filipinos is scarce; instead, trivialities, cliches, and stereotypes are disseminated by Filipino historical associations. This review calls attention to one serious effort to approach Filipinos from a historical-materialist point of view.
In the light of the profound economic and political crisis in the Philippines today, what could be the significance of celebrating the one-hundred year anniversary of the coming of Filipino contract labor to Hawaii? Are Filipinos the new compradors for the militarist U.S. Empire? Or are they harbingers of a new generation of combatants from the oppressed communities? At the turn of the century, the revolutionary organizer Rosa Luxemburg elegized the dismal plight of the subjugated natives. Today, US Special Forces are back to reconquer the neocolony, with the natives no longer smiling, now up in arms, united with people of color in Venezuela, Palestine, Hawaii, Nepal, Mexico, and other battlefronts of our beleaguered planet. Whither the Filipino diaspora?
E. San Juan's recent book, ONLY BY STRUGGLE (Quezon City: Giraffe Books), represents one of the most important progressive voices in the movement for national democracy and liberation in the Philippines. This review highlights some noteworthy themes of the work.
Filipinos—Forgotten Heroes of the UFW (tags)
Filipino labor leaders played pivotal roles in organizing labor unions and fighting for farm workers’ rights
THE FILIPINO PEASANT IMAGINATION VERSUS AMERICAN LEFTISM (tags)
The following remarks are intended to supplement the author's paper "Blueprint for a Bulosan Project" posted in the online journal OUR OWN VOICE. This essay critiques the position of "leftists" in the elite U.S. academies who claim a "manifest destiny" to civilize colonized subalterns and peasant radicals like the Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan who (they claim) have failed to take "America" out of a transnationalizing U.S. Studies. Are we seeing a replay of the "Thomasites" who produced generations of neocolonized "little brown brothers" now serving U.S. imperialist aggression in Iraq, Aghanistan, Palestine, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and in the Philippines, its former direct colony? "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea...."
Self-educated at the Los Angeles Public Library in the Thirties, Carlos Bulosan, the militant Filipino writer and labor activist, died on September 11, 1956. His death anniversary last month provided the occasion for the Filipino community to celebrate his contribution to the revolutionary struggle of peoples everywhere for justice, dignity, and self-determination. Bulosan was part of the community of progressive Los Angeles-based intellectuals (Carey McWilliams, Sanora Babb, Louis Adamic, Ring Lardner Jr. and others) victimized by McCarthyism and fascist reaction. His example of resistance continues to inspire people of color everywhere.