The Manongs' Story, or why we are here
Do I love you because you're beautiful
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
Am I making believe I see in you
A girl too lovely to be really true?
Do I want you because you're wonderful
Or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream
Or are you really as beautiful as you seem?
(By Rodgers & Hammerstein)
(Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFkXbt3SjW8&feature)
A Filipino-American prince sang this love song to a little Filipino-African-American princess last night.
Yes, it was Filipino-American heartthrob Paolo Montalban (who starred
in the Disney live action version of Cinderella) singing, but it wasn't to Brandy. Instead, it was to a pretty little girl whose Filipino roots date back to 1929 when her great grandfather stepped off the SS President Jackson onto the port of Seattle, Washington after a long voyage from his home in Aklan.
This sweet little scene happened at a symposium on the works of esteemed Filipino-American author Carlos Bulosan (America is in the Heart).
Led by the little girl's aunt, history professor and Little Manila Foundation co-founder Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, PhD, the event at Downtown Stockton's Cesar Chavez Library, is one of several building up to "The Romance of Magno Rubio," an award-winning Off-Broadway play based on the short story by Bulosan showing this weekend (Oct. 4 & 5, 2008) at Stockton's Fox Theater.
"Magno Rubio" is the story of a lovesick Pinoy farm worker saving up his hard-earned dollars to send to a white woman in Arkansas, hoping that she would come to California to marry him.
After a few short talks by Mabalon and members of the Stockton Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) on Bulosan and his works and how these so painfully, yet accurately described the early Filipino-American experience, four of the five cast members of "Magno Rubio" answered questions from the audience.
A diverse, but mostly Filipino-American audience filled the large function room as Mabalon showed slides of old Little Manila as well as of Bulosan and his Stockton kumpadres, at least one of whom inspired characters in his books and stories.
Amazingly, there were people in the room who actually knew Bulosan from Little Manila days, one of them, the daughter of his close friend Claro who appears in several of his writings.
Montalban, who plays "Claro" in "Magno Rubio," told the lady he hoped his performance would do justice to her father, a prominent community leader of his time who, along with Bulosan and many others, fought and worked for equal rights and US citizenship for Filipinos.
Along with Mabalon, a panel of second-generation Filipina "aunties," all descendants of the pioneering "Manongs" of Stockton, shared their experiences, affirming Bulosan's depictions of Filipino life in America during those difficult, violent days of rampant, legalized racism and exclusion.
The very existence of the historic Little Manila district is due to an unwritten law of the early 1900s that no person of color could go north of Stockton's Main Street into exclusively white territory. In response, Filipinos established businesses and homes south of Main Street in what became the largest Filipino community in the US until the 50s.
Over a hundred thousand mostly teenage Filipino men freely entered America as "US Nationals" from 1898 to 1946, all seeking the American dream their US teachers had described in such glowing terms. They planned to find jobs, make money (or maybe pick it up off the streets, if the Thomasites were to be believed), go to school and return to the Philippines wealthy men able to lift their families out of poverty.
This exodus of young Pinoys began during the Philippine-American War, shortly after our forebears won the revolution against Spain. Unbeknownst to Aguinaldo and his government however, the US had paid Spain $20 million for the Philippines, Puerto Rico (and eventually Guam and the Northern Marianas) under the conditions of the Treaty of Paris signed on December 10, 1898.
Despite being severely underfunded and outgunned, our forebears fought valiantly to preserve their newly acquired freedom. But the toll was high, with conservative estimates of Filipino deaths both in the battlefield and from disease and starvation in American concentration camps, at a devastating two million.
Despite official declarations from Washington that the war was over by 1902, pockets of determined resistance against US forces continued until 1916. By then, however, America had made progress in its program of "benevolent assimilation" and had consolidated its stranglehold on the very strategically located Philippine archipelago, becoming a world power in the process.
Why are we here? Because they were there. For half a century, and to a great extent, to this day.
Like all colonized peoples, most Filipinos have an extremely rosy view of its former colonizer, helped along by Hollywood's early portrayals of idyllic American life. So convinced are we that America is our second home, the paradise we long for, that even the brutal, realistic depictions of US life and culture in more contemporary movies bounce harmlessly off our psyches.
A second-generation Filipina-American friend was reading Bulosan's America is in the Heart the other day and was aghast at the examples of racism and violence the Manongs suffered on page after page of the book. She turned to her mother and asked in disbelief: "Did all of them really go through this?"
"Yes," her mother replied simply.
Bulosan, like those gritty movies of slavery, ghettoes and racism both subtle and violent against people of color, told stories his fellow Filipinos in the Philippines often don't get or refuse to believe.
But for those of us who live in the US, especially those who were born and raised brown in white-dominated America, the truth is unavoidable.
America was built by the hard work and sacrifice of immigrants from every nation on the planet, from a multitude of cultures and ethnicities. The history taught in US schools or shown in those old movies, at best, merely scratched the surface, and at worst, covered up the immense contributions of Filipinos, Africans, Chinese, Mexicans, Japanese and other immigrant groups to the building of the nation, not the least of which is the back-breaking work of the Manongs, the farm workers of the San Joaquin Delta and elsewhere, harvesting asparagus, grapes, lettuce, corn, etc. in harsh weather for very little pay. Far from their homes, their loved ones, their land, they bravely survived by supporting each other, standing up for their rights, and obtaining freedoms the rest of us enjoy today.
Thankfully, these long-hidden stories are gradually being told, giving this generation of Americans a better understanding of the nature of their country.
"The Romance of Magno Rubio," Carlos Bulosan's short story, now a play, is one of these stories. It is a Filipino story, it is an American story.
Maybe someday, any Filipino in America, if asked by some clueless white-entitled person, "Why are you here?" will stick his or her chin up and proudly say, we were here long before there was a United States. We helped build this country. We are here because you were there, because you took our land and used it to build an empire. We helped establish cities and towns in California and even Louisiana when these were still part of the Spanish empire. We spilled our blood for this nation in World War II.
Filipinas/Filipinos are an important part of US history and life. We are here because we belong here.
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
Am I making believe I see in you
A girl too lovely to be really true?
Do I want you because you're wonderful
Or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream
Or are you really as beautiful as you seem?
(By Rodgers & Hammerstein)
(Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFkXbt3SjW8&feature)
A Filipino-American prince sang this love song to a little Filipino-African-American princess last night.
Yes, it was Filipino-American heartthrob Paolo Montalban (who starred
in the Disney live action version of Cinderella) singing, but it wasn't to Brandy. Instead, it was to a pretty little girl whose Filipino roots date back to 1929 when her great grandfather stepped off the SS President Jackson onto the port of Seattle, Washington after a long voyage from his home in Aklan.This sweet little scene happened at a symposium on the works of esteemed Filipino-American author Carlos Bulosan (America is in the Heart).
Led by the little girl's aunt, history professor and Little Manila Foundation co-founder Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, PhD, the event at Downtown Stockton's Cesar Chavez Library, is one of several building up to "The Romance of Magno Rubio," an award-winning Off-Broadway play based on the short story by Bulosan showing this weekend (Oct. 4 & 5, 2008) at Stockton's Fox Theater.
"Magno Rubio" is the story of a lovesick Pinoy farm worker saving up his hard-earned dollars to send to a white woman in Arkansas, hoping that she would come to California to marry him.
After a few short talks by Mabalon and members of the Stockton Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) on Bulosan and his works and how these so painfully, yet accurately described the early Filipino-American experience, four of the five cast members of "Magno Rubio" answered questions from the audience.
A diverse, but mostly Filipino-American audience filled the large function room as Mabalon showed slides of old Little Manila as well as of Bulosan and his Stockton kumpadres, at least one of whom inspired characters in his books and stories.
Amazingly, there were people in the room who actually knew Bulosan from Little Manila days, one of them, the daughter of his close friend Claro who appears in several of his writings.
Montalban, who plays "Claro" in "Magno Rubio," told the lady he hoped his performance would do justice to her father, a prominent community leader of his time who, along with Bulosan and many others, fought and worked for equal rights and US citizenship for Filipinos.
Along with Mabalon, a panel of second-generation Filipina "aunties," all descendants of the pioneering "Manongs" of Stockton, shared their experiences, affirming Bulosan's depictions of Filipino life in America during those difficult, violent days of rampant, legalized racism and exclusion.
The very existence of the historic Little Manila district is due to an unwritten law of the early 1900s that no person of color could go north of Stockton's Main Street into exclusively white territory. In response, Filipinos established businesses and homes south of Main Street in what became the largest Filipino community in the US until the 50s.
Over a hundred thousand mostly teenage Filipino men freely entered America as "US Nationals" from 1898 to 1946, all seeking the American dream their US teachers had described in such glowing terms. They planned to find jobs, make money (or maybe pick it up off the streets, if the Thomasites were to be believed), go to school and return to the Philippines wealthy men able to lift their families out of poverty.
This exodus of young Pinoys began during the Philippine-American War, shortly after our forebears won the revolution against Spain. Unbeknownst to Aguinaldo and his government however, the US had paid Spain $20 million for the Philippines, Puerto Rico (and eventually Guam and the Northern Marianas) under the conditions of the Treaty of Paris signed on December 10, 1898.
Despite being severely underfunded and outgunned, our forebears fought valiantly to preserve their newly acquired freedom. But the toll was high, with conservative estimates of Filipino deaths both in the battlefield and from disease and starvation in American concentration camps, at a devastating two million.
Despite official declarations from Washington that the war was over by 1902, pockets of determined resistance against US forces continued until 1916. By then, however, America had made progress in its program of "benevolent assimilation" and had consolidated its stranglehold on the very strategically located Philippine archipelago, becoming a world power in the process.
Why are we here? Because they were there. For half a century, and to a great extent, to this day.
Like all colonized peoples, most Filipinos have an extremely rosy view of its former colonizer, helped along by Hollywood's early portrayals of idyllic American life. So convinced are we that America is our second home, the paradise we long for, that even the brutal, realistic depictions of US life and culture in more contemporary movies bounce harmlessly off our psyches.
A second-generation Filipina-American friend was reading Bulosan's America is in the Heart the other day and was aghast at the examples of racism and violence the Manongs suffered on page after page of the book. She turned to her mother and asked in disbelief: "Did all of them really go through this?"
"Yes," her mother replied simply.
Bulosan, like those gritty movies of slavery, ghettoes and racism both subtle and violent against people of color, told stories his fellow Filipinos in the Philippines often don't get or refuse to believe.
But for those of us who live in the US, especially those who were born and raised brown in white-dominated America, the truth is unavoidable.
America was built by the hard work and sacrifice of immigrants from every nation on the planet, from a multitude of cultures and ethnicities. The history taught in US schools or shown in those old movies, at best, merely scratched the surface, and at worst, covered up the immense contributions of Filipinos, Africans, Chinese, Mexicans, Japanese and other immigrant groups to the building of the nation, not the least of which is the back-breaking work of the Manongs, the farm workers of the San Joaquin Delta and elsewhere, harvesting asparagus, grapes, lettuce, corn, etc. in harsh weather for very little pay. Far from their homes, their loved ones, their land, they bravely survived by supporting each other, standing up for their rights, and obtaining freedoms the rest of us enjoy today.
Thankfully, these long-hidden stories are gradually being told, giving this generation of Americans a better understanding of the nature of their country.
"The Romance of Magno Rubio," Carlos Bulosan's short story, now a play, is one of these stories. It is a Filipino story, it is an American story.
Maybe someday, any Filipino in America, if asked by some clueless white-entitled person, "Why are you here?" will stick his or her chin up and proudly say, we were here long before there was a United States. We helped build this country. We are here because you were there, because you took our land and used it to build an empire. We helped establish cities and towns in California and even Louisiana when these were still part of the Spanish empire. We spilled our blood for this nation in World War II.
Filipinas/Filipinos are an important part of US history and life. We are here because we belong here.
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