Building Filipino Hawai'i
Roderick N Labrador (Author)
9780252038808
Hardback, published 15 January 2015
192 pages, 20 black and white photographs
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.426 kg
"Building Filipino Hawai'i is a much-needed work on contemporary Filipino lives in the islands, in the fifty years since the resumption of significant emigration from the Philippines. Consistently argued and astutely theoretically framed. . . . Building Filipino Hawai'i promises to be the principal text on not only Filipinos, but also the contemporary experiences of ethnic and immigrant minorities in Hawai'i in the political context of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement."--Pacific Historical Review
"An outstanding addition to a growing field of studies focused on Filipina/o American community building and identity formation."--Western Historical Quarterly
"Labrador provides many necessary interventions to studies of Filipinos in the United States and helps further the reconceptualization of what it means to be Filipino throughout the Philippine diaspora and the ongoing production of global transnationalism."--The Journal of American History
Drawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic and archival research, Roderick Labrador delves into the ways Filipinos in Hawai'i have balanced their pursuit of upward mobility and mainstream acceptance with a desire to keep their Filipino identity.
In particular, Labrador speaks to the processes of identity making and the politics of representation among immigrant communities striving to resist marginalization in a globalized, transnational era. Critiquing the popular image of Hawai'i as a postracial paradise, he reveals how Filipino immigrants talk about their relationships to the place(s) they left and the place(s) where they've settled, and how these discourses shape their identities. He also shows how the struggle for community empowerment, identity territorialization, and the process of placing and boundary making continue to affect how minority groups construct the stories they tell about themselves, to themselves and others.
Cover
Title
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. "
Why do you want to go Hawai'i?"
Chapter 1. Overlapping Architectures
Chapter 2. "
What's so p/funny?"
Chapter 3. "
Anything but . . ."
Chapter 4. "
The Center is not just for Filipinos, but for all of Hawai'i nei"
Conclusion. Unsettling Hawai'i
Notes
Bibliography
Index
