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This chapter begins by presenting a broader historical context of Filipino immigration to the United States; to California; and to the research site, San Diego. It then delineates the socioeconomic status of the Filipino CILS sample and the academic achievements and ambitions of young Filipinos. Next, the chapter analyzes what it means to grow up as children of Filipino immigrants in San Diego by focusing on shifts in ethnic identity and perceptions of discrimination, the quality of family relationships, and emotional well-being. It notes that race and gender mark most aspects of young Filipino lives and constitute crucial axes along which children of Filipino immigrants must be understood.

Set in the Great Depression, this chapter explores the plight of Filipino migrant farm laborers, who white growers in the Santa Clara Valley initially welcomed as another bachelor population capable of serving the area𠀧s labor needs. Filipino men soon came under fire for their association with white women, but their participation in the farm labor movement during the 1930s was even more problematic for white residents and resulted in the racialization of Filipinos as disruptive radicals threatening the livelihoods of struggling farmers already hit hard by the Depression. The increasingly polarized public discourse on the farm labor problem in the 1930s overshadowed any residual concern about Japanese farm families, some of whom also employed Filipino workers and at times became embroiled in conflict with them.

This chapter critiques the idea of Hawaiʻi as a “multicultural paradise” and the production of Local by examining the popular practice of ethnic humor. It argues that Hawaiʻi ethnic humor is a space for the production of “Local knowledge(s)” and ideologies where identities are constructed and social order and racial hierarchy are enacted. It draws attention to the production of Local as a nonimmigrant identity, especially the ways in which Local comedians appropriate the voice of immigrant Filipinos through the use of Mock Filipino (or speaking English with a “Filipino accent”). Although understood as “innocent” and “harmless” joking in which “we can laugh at ourselves,” Hawaiʻi ethnic humor in general, and Mock Filipino in particular, simultaneously produce racially demeaning or “racially interested” discourses that uphold the positive self-image of Locals, especially their membership in Hawaiʻi's “racial paradise,” while lowering that of immigrant Filipinos.

This chapter discusses the context and history of Filipino migration to Hawaiʻi. Filipinos in Hawaiʻi are the product of waves of immigration initially borne out of American colonization and the social and historical contexts that surrounded them. In addition, Filipinos are a unique blend of many diverse cultures and influences, and this discussion emphasizes the significance of regional differences and regional pride among Filipinos. After presenting the more salient features of Filipino identity, this chapter goes on to discuss the Filipino ethnocultural identity in Hawaiʻi, proposing that the Filipinos of Hawaiʻi currently represent a diverse group, with a unique ethnocultural identity that maintains significant threads of continuity with traditional Filipino ethnocultural identity and that also reflects molding by the various social and historical forces that Filipino immigrants faced in the past 104 years, including the upward social mobility that likely drove much of the immigration.

This chapter studies how immigration between the Philippines and the United States has altered men's and women's sexual lives. Focusing on Filipino immigrants, the chapter argues that, owing to the Philippines' neocolonial relationship with the United States, Filipinos “[have] been prepared by the thoroughly Americanized culture of the homeland” because they have encountered U.S. customs while still in the Philippines. However, Filipino immigrant parents have both constructed idealized notions of female chastity and relaxed rigid expectations for their children's behaviors. Furthermore, the perceived inflexible expectation of Filipina chastity is not only about reinforcing masculinist and patriarchal power but also about strengthening national and ethnic self-respect in light of the pervasive sexualization of Filipinas and other Asian women in the United States.

This concluding chapter revisits the idea of identity territorializations and their use in immigrant struggles for community empowerment. It asks what happens when “home”-making processes and practices occur in someone else's “homeland.” Specifically, it examines how Filipino identity territorializations directly and indirectly engage indigeneity and local struggles for indigenous rights. Are Filipinos in Hawaiʻi one of the Asian settlers participating in the double colonialism of Hawaiʻi? How does engaging indigeneity shift our understandings of people, place, identity, and empowerment? What are the relationships between indigenous rights and immigrant rights? The chapter participates in broader conversations about settler colonialism but is also involved in more general discussions about the relationship between people, place, identity, and politics.

This chapter examines the story of Filipinas in south Mississippi. The Filipino community in south Mississippi is largely a Filipina community, comprised mainly of first-generation Filipina immigrant women married to white American men. Scattered throughout rural Mississippi, these women managed to forge ties across distance, dialects, and provincial differences to create a community that would initially provide a social network, and eventually establish critical systems of support.

This chapter examines two novels by Filipino American writers: Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son and Han Ong’s Fixer Chao. These novels document the lives of Filipino immigrants facing prejudice, racism, and alienation. They also reveal a number of common negative effects of globalization on young Filipino Americans: the overvalorization of and desire for wealth, First World products, and material goods; overdetermined and unattainable ideals based on Hollywood models of masculinity and beauty; and emotional and psychic transnationalism. The 1.5-generation children who grow up in these situations often resort to violence, fraud, and trickery in order to validate their sense of self, to gain acceptance into the dominant culture, and to obtain what they perceive to be the rewards of those who pursue the American dream.

This chapter presents interviews with Filipino American DJs based in San Francisco, namely Rygar, Rey-Jun, Statistix, Celskiii, Tease, One Tyme, and Soup-a-Crunk, and describes the nature of their engagement with DJing. Filipino youth involvement within DJing makes sense in relation to the cultural landscape of the Bay Area and the influx of Filipino immigrants working as professionals and highly skilled workers, such as nurses. The interview centers on a set of themes—what drew them to the culture, how they came up with their DJ names, relationship between Filipino culture and DJ culture, and how does DJing figure in their career plans. It also asks about how their family viewed their involvement in hip-hop as a way to accentuate the gendered dimensions of DJ culture, and looks into their take on the notion of hip-hop being an exclusive African American expressive form.