I Diaspora Media: a Rhizomatic Study of Identity, Resistance and Citizenship a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Scri

Home , Balitang America, Basque diaspora, Be Careful with My Heart, Dinuguan, Hope Channel Philippines, I Heart Movies

Diaspora Media: A Rhizomatic Study of Identity, Resistance and Citizenship

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Luis S. Pascasio

April 2021

This dissertation titled

Diaspora Media: A Rhizomatic Study of Identity, Resistance and Citizenship

LUIS S. PASCASIO

has been approved for

the School of Media Arts and Studies

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Wolfgang Suetzl

Assistant Professor of Media Arts & Studies

Scott Titsworth

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

Abstract

PASCASIO, LUIS S. , PhD, April 2021, Mass Communication

Diaspora Media: A Rhizomatic Study of Identity, Resistance and Citizenship

Director of Dissertation: Wolfgang Suetzl

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the communication and media practices of

Filipino Americans in Chicago. It investigates how their everyday encounters with diaspora media produce patterns of consumption and interpretation that locates identity, resistance and citizenship as discourses performed with and in media. Through interviews, participant observation and storytelling, the study argues that Filipino

Americans’ active engagement with karaoke, the Filipino Channel, a transnational media platform and community newspapers activates becoming more Filipino in the diaspora, long distance activism and a performance of diasporic citizenship informed by cosmopolitanism. These media performances are not mere happenstances but are conscious acts informed by a logic of diasporic performativity that locates active engagement with media as an expression of human agency.

iii

Dedication

To my loving parents, Anselmo and Natividad, for all the sacrifice, wisdom and stories

that nourished me as a child and as a student of life

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Wolfgang Suetzl and Dr.

Jenny Nelson for guiding me along the difficult task of organizing my thoughts and for providing support in the process of developing, writing and re-writing this dissertation.

The same gratitude is extended to them for the many conversations from where new discoveries and inspirations arose.

A warm thanks is also given to Dr. Devika Chawla. Dr. Andrew Ross and Dr.

Yea-Wen Chen for their depth of knowledge and invaluable presence in the committee.

To my cohorts, Steffi Shook, Brandon Sweitzer, Souzeina Mushtaq. Hailey Mills and

Beth Mishler, thanks for the shared passions about learning, for the laughs and the anxieties that kept us alive and going. Special thanks to Paula Carpenter and Judy Wilson for always being available to help.

To all my artist-activist friends in San Francisco, Pintig Cultural Group, the

Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts and Alliance of Filipinos for

Immigrant Rights and Empowerment, my deepest thanks for the spontaneous gossips and jokes during karaoke nights. It is through their warm presence animated by laughter, memories and familiar gestures that made America a home away from home. Lastly, to all my participants in this research project, I express by appreciation and sincere gratitude for their time, energy and generous disposition in sharing their stories and life experiences.

Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments...... v Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 Becoming an Ethnographer: A Personal Journey ...... 2 Filipino American Diaspora: History and Context ...... 7 Communication Media in the Colonial Years ...... 8 Diaspora Media in Chicago ...... 12 Community Newspapers ...... 13 International Cable TV ...... 13 Smartphones ...... 14 Research Questions ...... 15 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 16 Early Diaspora Studies: The Jewish Model ...... 16 Modern Diaspora: The Assimilation Model ...... 18 Filipino American Diaspora: The Postcolonial Diaspora Model ...... 21 A Sociological Approach: Waves of Migration ...... 22 A Critical Approach: Reclaiming History and Identity ...... 25 A Postcolonial Approach: Critiquing Legacies of Colonial Past...... 28 Diaspora Media: The Double Consciousness Model ...... 33 Media as Environment ...... 35 Mediatization ...... 36 Community Newspapers ...... 37 Karaoke ...... 39 Transnational Media ...... 41 Diaspora as Everyday Life ...... 44 Summary ...... 45 Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 47 Research as a Way of Life ...... 47 vi

Diaspora as a Meaning-making Process ...... 48 A Rhizomatic Approach to Ethnography ...... 48 Participant Observation ...... 52 Interviewing ...... 75 Storytelling as Data Gathering ...... 80 Documentation and Transcription: Writing, Re-listening and Translating ...... 82 Structuring the Findings: A Polyphonic Strategy ...... 85 Representing the Stories: Thematic Analysis ...... 86 Chapter 4: Karaoke and the Poetics of Diaspora Life ...... 89 The Evolution of Karaoke ...... 90 Karaoke as a Spatializing Practice ...... 91 Lola: An Intergenerational Bonding ...... 94 Claire: A Signifier of Identity ...... 95 Albert and Ysabel’s Grill: The Cultural Politics of Group Singing...... 106 Ronnie: Performing Cultural Hybridity ...... 112 Mark: A Living Community Art Form ...... 117 Vanessa: Re-embracing the Vernacular ...... 120 Janice: Karaoke is like Returning Home ...... 122 Conclusion ...... 123 Chapter 5: The Filipino Channel, A Home Away from Home ...... 125 The Filipino Channel: A Transnational Media Company...... 127 Manolo: Transporting Local TV into the Hostland ...... 133 Tita Salud: Watching Teleseryes while Babysitting ...... 134 Agnes: Acquiring New Cultural Knowledge through Soap Opera ...... 137 David: The Complexity of Homesickness ...... 140 Mary Jane and Her Sister: It’s Not the Images but the Sound ...... 142 Larry: Size of the Screen Matters ...... 146 Renato and Jose: Re-embracing the Affective Footprints of Resistance ...... 147 Myrna: Monitoring the Homeland through TV Patrol ...... 155 Mara: Re-interpreting Activism through Long Distance ...... 157 TFC: A Transnational Media Ecology ...... 159 Mediatized Behavior: Dependency or Agency? ...... 163 vii

Conclusion ...... 166 Chapter 6: Community Newspapers and Its Many Essences ...... 169 The Essence of Community Newspapers ...... 171 Erlinda: Reclaiming the Self through a Beauty Pageant ...... 176 Victoria: Visibility through Ethnic Fashion ...... 181 Manolo: Keeping History Alive...... 186 Mark: Translating Policy to Everyday Life ...... 192 Teresa: Re-inscribing the Undocumented Body ...... 196 Angeli: Embracing Cultural Duality ...... 200 Conclusion ...... 203 Chapter 7: Diaspora Media and The Ambiguity of the Eventual Return ...... 204 The Eventual Return: A Constant Renegotiation...... 204 Vanessa: Recognizing the Glass Ceiling ...... 205 Erlinda: Getting Old in the Homeland ...... 207 David: Bridging Economic Gaps ...... 208 Mara: The Economics of Giving Back ...... 209 Janice: The Homeland is in the Heart ...... 209 Conclusion ...... 210 Chapter 8: Conclusion...... 212 A New Identity: Becoming More Filipino in the Diaspora ...... 213 Mediated Resistance: Long Distance Activism ...... 215 Diasporic Citizenship: A Performance of Cosmopolitanism ...... 216 In Reflection...... 221 References ...... 224 Appendix A: Interview Questions ...... 244 Appendix B: List of Sites and Events Visited ...... 246

viii

Chapter 1: Introduction

After a June 2014 Chicago screening of Documented, a documentary about the struggles of Jose Antonio Vargas, the undocumented activist, an audience member asks a question, “We followed the rules to get our green card so why should we give them a pass?” Observing the reactions and hearing the comments from this Chicago audience, I sensed a demarcation between those who supported Vargas’ political message and those who vehemently opposed it. Those in opposition were all Filipinos. Other comments included, “We waited for 20 years,” “They broke the law,” “What about compassion?” came from two sides of the hall. Those who supported the film’s message were a mix of

American-born Filipinos, Hispanics and other Asian Americans. They spoke about compassion for the families of the undocumented, the impact that separation has on the family, especially young children, and mainstream media’s demonization of immigrants as job stealers.

After the forum, I found myself caught in the middle of the two opposing views.

As an immigrant who waited sixteen years to get my green card and citizenship naturalization, I empathize with those Filipinos who opposed Vargas’ message of giving the undocumented a shorter path to legalization. But as a social justice advocate who believes that there are citizenship issues other than legalistic, I also empathize with those who find Vargas’ activism compelling.

The screening of Documented created a space for dialogue by bringing people together in a public arena to share their perspectives on what diaspora feels like. By that I mean being caught in between multiple spaces, ideas even emotions stirred by a common stimulus that relate to their personal lives. It stimulated audience members who are

1 caregivers, retired professionals, student activists, community organizers, artists and policy advocates to negotiate the meaning of citizenship in different ways: legalistic, emotional, historical, nostalgic and symbolic. Diasporic people brought to the surface different interpretations of citizenship and identity.

In one scene from the film, Jose Antonio Vargas asks members of the U.S.

Congress during a Senate hearing on immigration reform, “How do you define

American?” – a question echoed in defineamerican.com, an interactive website that

Vargas helped create. Listening to the debates during the forum, I was confronted with a question myself: “How do you define being Filipino-American?” Before I migrated to the

U.S., identity and citizenship meant very little to me. I considered identity and citizenship as legal categories defined strictly by my nationality (Filipino) and my place of birth

(Philippines), like boxes to be checked in a job application form. My ideas about identity and citizenship would eventually change after I settled in America, and even more after

20 years of living in Chicago and, especially, after the screening of Jose Antonio Vargas’

Documented.

Becoming an Ethnographer: A Personal Journey

I was 29 years old when I came to the United States as a tourist in 1994, eager to see what America was all about. My vision of America was based on what I had seen in

Hollywood movies and television combined with what I was taught in school about democracy and Abraham Lincoln. My parents, native Filipinos who survived the

Japanese occupation in WWII, fervently believed that America was the savior of humanity. Barely 15, my father worked as a courier for American soldiers stationed in a town where my grandparents lived. According to stories my mother told, when General

Douglas MacArthur landed on the Leyte shores in the Southern Philippines in October

1944, my father knew it was liberation day for Filipinos. A few weeks after MacArthur’s landing, my father (age 16) and my mother (age 15) eloped and eventually had seven children. As the sixth child, I heard these stories over and over again whenever relatives would visit. It is engraved in my memory, a crucial reference to my own family’s link to

America. Among my four sisters and two brothers, I was the only one who migrated to the U.S.

Working as a social worker for two not-for-profit agencies was a great introduction to race and gender diversity, something I had very limited exposure to in the

Philippines. In 1995, I was hired as a peer educator at the Asian AIDS Project (now API

Wellness Center) in San Francisco through a three-year work visa were I created educational theater and video projects about HIV awareness. The job introduced me to people that I never would have otherwise encountered. It is within this context that I gained a new appreciation of my difference from other Filipinos. I did not realize how strong regionalism was among Filipinos until I landed in San Francisco.

Realizing that my work visa would probably not be extended because of organizational changes in the agency, I started looking for another job. An old Filipino friend in Chicago told me about a position at Asian Human Services (AHS), a much larger agency that works with various ethnic communities. I applied for the job, went through some interviews and consulted an immigration lawyer to facilitate my new work visa. Considering my work experience in San Francisco, I was hired by AHS six months before my contract with Asian AIDS Project expired. It was through AHS that I met 3

Filipino nurses, physical therapists and other health professionals who eventually became friends and Karaoke buddies. I noticed, however, that they distanced themselves from

American-born Filipinos who often mocked their English accents. They also complained they could not speak Tagalog whenever these Amboys (American born) were around.

Outside of work, I became involved with the Pintig Cultural Group (now CIRCA

Pintig), a community-based theater company that staged performances about the Filipino

American immigrant experience. I volunteered as a stage director and later on helped to facilitate drama workshops. I found a new set of friends in a venue where being

Philippine or American-born was not a big issue: actors, directors, visual artists, musicians, historians and creative writers. The company adapted famous Filipino

American literary works such as Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart (1946) and three of Bienvenido Santos’ short stories from his famous anthology, Scent of Apples

(1979).

I served as CIRCA Pintig’s Artistic Director from 2002-2014, collaborating with other organizations on projects related to immigration, Filipino arts, culture and identity issues among FilAm youth. I facilitated theater workshops at student conferences such as

FACT (Filipino Americans Coming Together) and MAFA (Midwest Association of

Filipino Americans).

In March 2014, I collaborated with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and

Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and the Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and

Empowerment (AFIRE) in a performance project called No Papers, No Fear. It tells the stories of three undocumented youth and their families. ICIRR’s Executive Director, 4

Lawrence Benito and AFIRE’s Executive Director, Michael Aguhar, incorporated the performance as part of a broader educational campaign to promote the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA), an Executive Order signed by President Obama in 2012 to provide a path to legalization for undocumented youth. The audience was comprised of immigrant advocates, social activists and university students from various ethnic groups.

Benito and Aguhar continue to represent a young breed of socially conscious FilAms.

Because I was writing press releases, I developed relationships with the editors and publishers of several Chicago community newspapers. Veronica Leighton (Publisher-

Editor, Via Times), Mariano Santos (Editor, Pinoy Newsmagazine), Yoly Tubalinal

(Publisher, Fil-Am Megascene) and Alpha Nicolasin (Writer, Filipino American

Community Builder) are important media personalities and gatekeepers of community news. Our brief conversations at gala premieres of CIRCA Pintig facilitated even closer connections. They also come from immigrant backgrounds. Their publications link the

Chicago community to the homeland through direct reprints of articles from Philippine newspapers.

Estrella Alamar and Willi Buhay are local historians who established the Filipino-

American Historical Society (FAHSC)-Chicago Chapter. FAHSC houses the largest collection of books and historical documents about the FilAm diaspora experience in

Chicago Alamar is a former CIRCA Pintig Advisory Board member and Buhay is a visual artist and active in the Rizal Heritage Center. They worry that young people’s interest in FiAm history is declining. Nevertheless, they share their resources at events like the annual FilAm History Month celebration. 5

Chicago has been my home for the past twenty years and CIRCA Pintig my surrogate family. I celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday parties and baby showers in friends’ homes. These occasions usually evolve into drunken storytelling sessions about our former lives in the Philippines and our migration to America. We make fun of each other’s English accents or we always confuse the use of he and she (because there are no gendered pronouns in Tagalog). The same jokes are told at all these gatherings creating empathy and rituals that define our own sense of a home away from home, and what is means to be Filipino American. It was also in these gatherings that I became curious about what informs one’s construction of being Filipino American and how certain communication practices help in such construction. As an ethnographer, I consider these spaces as critical junctions for locating identity and citizenship, not so much as concepts, but as part of the lived experiences of FilAms in Chicago.

When I took my citizenship oath in October 2014 in Columbus, Ohio, I found myself in the company of almost a hundred newly-minted American citizens from all over the world. An overwhelming feeling of joy reverberated in the courtroom. Families took turns taking photos of their newly naturalized American sons, daughters, fathers and mothers. I could only share their joy vicariously as my entire family remains in the

Philippines. Not having my family with me to share this moment was a strange feeling because, after living in Chicago for twenty years, it was the first time I felt a sense of loss. But knowing that my long American journey culminated in becoming a naturalized

American citizen also gave me great comfort. When I returned to Athens, I broke the good news to my sister in the Philippines via Skype. My parents are long gone. They 6

would have been proud. It was at that moment that citizenship assumed a different meaning for me, more emotional than practical – one that makes me renegotiate my idea of home.

Filipino American Diaspora: History and Context

The migration of Filipinos into North America began as early as 1796 (Espina,

1988; Mehl, 2014). They were crewmen who jumped ship from the Spanish Galleon

Trade plying the Manila-Acapulco-Spain route to escape the brutality of their Spanish masters. They found refuge as fishermen in the bayous of Louisiana, working alongside

Italian and Irish immigrants (Cordova, 1983; Houle, 2007). After 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, the Philippines was colonized a second time by the United States in 1898

(Jacobson, 1999). The U.S. saw the Philippines as a source for labor. In 1901, Filipino men were recruited as farm workers in Hawaii’s plantation fields (Cordova, 1983;

Guevarra, 2010; Guyotte and Posadas, 2007; Houle, 2007). From this would evolve different waves of migration to the mainland. Those who migrated to Chicago in the

1920s came as students (“pensionados”) sponsored by the U.S. government, but despite having college degrees, they were forced to work as hotel workers, postal clerks and cooks (Guyotte and Posadas, 2007; Alamar and Buhay, 2001; Posadas, 1999).

In the 1930s and 40s, another group of Filipinos arrived to work in the plantation fields of California and the fish canneries of Alaska. From this group of migrants would emerge Carlos Bulosan, a farm worker turned labor activist-poet, who wrote the novel,

America is in the Heart (San Juan, Jr., 1995; Smith, 2014). In 1965, with increased demand for medical professionals, the U.S. recruited Filipino doctors, nurses and other 7

hospital workers, along with their families, who settled in the Midwest and the East

Coast. It was also around this time that the U.S. changed its immigration policy, allowing citizenship by naturalization and family petitions for the continuous migration of

Filipinos into the US (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein, 1998; Posadas, 1999)

Communication Media in the Colonial Years

The colonizing tools employed by Spain and the United States shaped the complexity of the FilAm diaspora experience. When the colonizers arrived in 1521, they encountered an archipelago of 7,100 islands, each with its own customs and traditions

(Carter, 2013; Francia, 2010; Posadas, 1999). Forcing the islands/tribes to become one nation was met with violent resistance. Through Catholicism, Spain was able to colonize the hearts and minds of many of the natives. This meant wiping out indigenous cultural traditions that were deemed barbaric: a babaylan (shaman, male or female) performing public rituals to cure the wounded, or destroying sacred burial caves in favor of cemeteries as the Christian way of honoring the dead (Francia, 2010). In indigenous mythology, the first man and woman emerged out of bamboo, both fully formed, suggesting gender equality. Replacing this with the Adam and Eve creation myth came in

1593 with the printing of Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Espanola y Tagalog (Christian

Catechism in Spanish and Tagalog), the first printed book in the islands (Francia, 2010).

Churches were erected in every municipality, installing the Spanish Friar as the authority figure of Catholicism and Doctrina Christiana as the word of God.

Print media became the primary means of disseminating ideas that challenged

Spain’s power. In 1889, Jose Rizal, Graciano Lopez Jaena and Marcelo H. del Pilar 8

published La Solidariad (The Solidarity) in Barcelona, a journal that demanded administrative reforms. Rizal, a medical doctor, published two important novels, Noli Me

Tangere (Touch Me Not) in 1887 and El Filibusterismo (The Filibuster) in 1891. The novels dramatized the oppression of the Filipinos under Spain. It inspired other Filipino nationalists, including Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto, two revolutionaries who founded the Philippine revolutionary movement against Spain.

However, as Filipinos celebrated their independence on June 12, 1898, Spain secretly signed the Treaty of Paris, ceding the Philippines to the United States for 20 million dollars (Houle, 2007) engendering another 50 years of colonial rule. The U.S. introduced public education, using English as the lingua franca of the “benevolent assimilation” doctrine1 (De Castro, 1994; Hawley, 2002; Steinbrock-Pratt, 2012;

Tiongson, Gutierrez and Gutierrez, 2006). The pacification program met with strong resistance from Filipino revolutionaries, but not from the Filipino middle class. The existing class conflict was a perfect ideological state apparatus for the U.S. to criminalize any display of nationalism.

The revolutionaries continued to communicate through underground newspapers such as El Heraldo de la Revolucion (The Revolution Herald) and La Independencia (The

Independence). Emilio Aguinaldo, the first President of the Philippine Republic, published El Heraldo. He would later escape to Hong Kong after rejecting American

1 This doctrine, adopted by U.S. President William McKinley on December 1898, aimed to “educate, uplift and Christianize” the Filipinos. 9

colonization. La Independencia was an independent newspaper published by General

Antonio Luna, a holdover of the revolutionary movement (Francia, 2010). To counteract these indigenous forms of resistance, the U.S. introduced cinema in 1899.

Cinema came to the Philippines to depict American war power. Battle of Manila

Bay (1898), produced by J. Stuart Blacton and Albert E. Smith, portrayed the U.S. naval victory against the Spanish armada during the Spanish-American War (Deocampo, 2002,

2007; Martin, 1983). The conquest of the Philippines became the subject of other films including Troop Ships for the Philippines, Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan and Filipinos Retreat from the Trenches produced by Thomas Edison in 1899 (Palis,

2008). These films portrayed America’s imperialist ideology at the same time that cinema was publicized as “just” a form of entertainment.

In 1912, Edward Meyer Gross, an admirer of Jose Rizal, wrote and directed La

Vida de Jose Rizal (The Life of Jose Rizal), the first feature-length film in the Philippines.

Together with Harry Brown, an American theater owner, Gross also produced Rizal’s popular novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterimo (Pilar, 1983; Yeatter, 2007). In the

1930s, Jose Nepomuceno, a Filipino entrepreneur, produced and directed his own version of Noli Me Tangere in Tagalog. These films further enamored Filipinos to the cinema.

Radio was introduced in 1922 as a business enterprise for department stores to sell radio sets and became the main exporter of American culture through music, comedy shows and news (Aniceto, 2007; Lumbera, 2002). It brought Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and

Al Jolson to Filipino households. Filipino announcers broadcasting in English and musicians singing American songs became effective media of American culture. In a 10

nationally syndicated radio broadcast, Manuel L. Quezon greeted 14 million Filipinos as the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth government in 1935. Like cinema, radio was an integral part of the war propaganda program. When Japan invaded the

Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur and President Quezon created a Philippine version of Voice of America called Voice of Freedom to monitor war activities during the occupation.

After the ten-year commonwealth period and the defeat of the Japanese in 1944, the Philippines became an independent republic on July 4, 1946. Cinema, radio and print gained new momentum, especially with more products coming from Hollywood and with the rebuilding of the Philippines from the ravages of war. Back to Bataan, produced by

RKO Radio Pictures in 1945, is a war movie about the Japanese-American war. It employed Filipino actors and production crew. However, Filipinos actors were mere extras to John Wayne’s character (patterned after MacArthur) and to Anthony Quinn’s, who was made to look darker to portray Andres Bonifacio, the beloved leader of the

Philippine revolutionary movement. The film was an instant hit. It symbolized the neocolonial relationship2 between the U.S. and the Philippines (Hawley, 2002).

The arrival of television coincided with the 1953 Philippine Presidential Election.

The first television license was granted to the brother of President Quirino thereby

2 Other WW II films: Atrocities of Fort Santiago (1946), Outrages of the Orient (1948), An American Guerilla in the Philippines (1950), He Promised to Return (1951), Blood of Bataan (1953), No Place to Hide (1955), Blood of Bataan (1960). Bryan L. Yeatter, Cinema of the Philippines: A History and Filmography, 1897-2005 (New Jersey, 2007) 11

ensuring that television would function as a mouthpiece for the political elite in the 1960s and 70s (Aniceto, 2007). Cinema, radio and television provided Filipinos with a national connection to the U.S. neocolonial agenda. When President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, all media were placed under government control, except for Radio

Veritas (Truth Radio), a small radio station owned by the Philippine Catholic Church.

Radio Veritas was instrumental in organizing the People’s Revolt of 1986 (Templo,

2011).

When military troops bombed the Radio Veritas transmitter on the second day of the four-day revolt, the staff ran to a small private radio station, DZRJ, in the middle of the night and continued broadcasting, telling people where to go for mass mobilization.

DZRJ was renamed Radyo Bandido (Bandit Radio) and was guarded by nuns with rosaries. Through a network of single-band radios owned by the Catholic Church, people in the provinces became aware of the revolution (Gonzaga, 2009; Liu, J. H and Gastardo-

Conaco, C., 2011;Templo, 2011). Today, except for PTV4 (Peoples’ Television 4), a government-controlled station, all media are privately-owned with strong connections to the Philippine oligarchy.

Diaspora Media in Chicago

The screening of Documented was only one of several public media forums where FilAms in Chicago discuss contested political issues. Other media also contribute to how they articulate their aspirations and struggles in a diasporic community. For example, a nurse at Rush Hospital pushes her children to watch TFC (The Filipino

Channel) after school so they can learn Tagalog. Although she would prefer to teach the 12

children herself, her work schedule does not allow it. An old friend always swings by a

Filipino grocery store after work to grab two or three community newspapers in order to keep up with the latest political gossip back home. A 65-year old Filipina activist learns how to create a Facebook page and to maneuver Twitter so she can help organize a political rally for the undocumented. A caregiver installs an App so she can send money back home via her Smartphone instead of going to a remittance center. These examples point to the variety of lived media practices facilitated by diaspora media. In these practices, identities are intersectional, never fixed solely on gender, age or ethnicity.

Other diaspora media forms include:

Community Newspapers

Among the many diaspora media forms in Chicago, community newspapers are the oldest. These include Via Times Newsmagazine, Philippine Weekly, Pinoy

Newsmagazine, Filipino American Community Builder and The Fil-Am Megascene. They offer the cheapest form of advertising for local businesses and individuals. They are also living repositories of FilAms’ collective memory and lived experiences documented through photos and personal opinion columns. Community newspapers facilitate a kind of cultural maintenance where connecting with homeland traditions and appropriating the values of the dominant host culture are negotiated on a daily basis (Alonzo and

Oiarzabal, 2010; Cunningham and Sinclair, 2001).

International Cable TV

International Filipino cable television is popular in Chicago as well as in states like California, Texas, New York and New Jersey. Two Philippine-based media 13

companies, ABS-CBN3 and GMA-74 control the Filipino international cable television

(Ong, 2009). They provide 24/7 programming that includes news, soap operas, game shows, documentaries, advertising and stories of Filipino migrants all over the world.

These cable channels help expose American-born children to Filipino culture. Popular programs include soap operas Teleserye (in Tagalog and produced in the Philippines) and

Balitang Amerika (American News) (a daily news program in English produced in

California) featuring news from the Philippines and news about Filipinos in America.

Smartphones

In a recent conversation, a friend who works as a caregiver in Chicago happily describes how easy it is for her to remit money to the Philippines. Years ago, she would go to a particular Filipino grocery store after work, travel by train for thirty minutes.

Now, she uses Xoom.com on her mobile phone, an online remittance service provider that makes sending money easier, faster and cheaper. Smartphones are also crucial for organizing political rallies. The Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and

Empowerment (AFIRE) use texting in order to mobilize the community for rallies and town hall meetings. Smartphones provide opportunities for diasporic communities to communicate and interact.

3 Alto Broadcasting System-Chronicle Broadcasting Network 4 Greater Manila Area 7 14

Research Questions

To understand the complexity of Filipino American’s diaspora experience, a close reading of how they communicate can offer new insights on how issues of identity, resistance and citizenship are negotiated. Within this framework, the study asks the following questions: How do local/diaspora media function as discursive spaces where identity, resistance and citizenship can be interrogated? What patterns of consumption and interpretation emerge in Filipino Americans’ daily encounters with media?

To address these questions, I will discuss literature sources that speak of diaspora media’s inter-disciplinarity as a research focus.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

To contextualize the Filipino American diaspora in Chicago within the larger framework of Diaspora Studies, one must understand the etymology of diaspora and how its conceptualization changed over the years. This chapter discusses the different conceptual models that define and redefine diaspora as influenced by changing human dispersal patterns and motivations and how diaspora populations interact with communication and information technologies in their everyday lives. From the Jewish

Model to the Assimilation Model to the Postcolonial Model to the Double Consciousness

Model, I locate these models as theoretical frameworks that articulate a discourse on diaspora and diaspora media.

Early Diaspora Studies: The Jewish Model

The dominant themes associated with early Diaspora Studies include victimization, displacement, slavery and collective trauma suffered by those forced out of their home origins through physical violence (Afshana and Din, 2018; Alonzo and

Oiarzabal, 2010; Clifford, 1994; Keown, Murphy and Procter, 2009; Tololyan, 1996;

Vertovec, 1997). The traumatic expulsion of the Jews from the Holy Land, the political persecution of Armenians and the violent uprooting of African slaves were narrative backdrops that informed early studies on diaspora. It locates these human experiences as social formations where forced dispersal from the homelands and resettlement to new host countries served as an explanatory grid in defining diaspora. From this perspective, diaspora came to be defined in a negative way with the Jewish experience providing the sociological backdrop. 16

Almost exclusively, the tragic exiles of Jews to many parts of the world and the imagined pursuit of an eventual return to the holy land provided the defining language that constructed the Jewish model of diaspora (Clifford, 1994; Tololyan, 1996; Vertovec,

1997). Contained in this model are conditions that describe particular human struggles and aspirations that became associated with diaspora. These included the need to maintain a collective identity inspired by ethnicity tied to common history and geographic origin; building connections with co-ethnics to achieve a sense of imagined community while living in scattered places of resettlement; and forging specific social relationships inspired by religion or native cultural traditions. These conditions enabled the social and cultural cohesion of dispersed Jews strengthening a common goal attached to the eventual return to the homeland. However, it is because of these forms of social and cultural cohesion that intensified resistance against embracing the values and social practices of their host countries. Such resistance placed the homeland-hostland dichotomy in great display problematizing assimilation as a discourse now attached to a new concept of diaspora. Does assimilation mean erasing the memory of the homeland?

How would accommodating the values and practices imposed by the hostland impact the emotional, cultural and political conditions attached to the collective trauma?

It is from these questions that scholars started revisiting the Jewish model.

Expanding the discourse on diaspora beyond the dispersal and eventual return framework became an impetus for diaspora scholars who locate the changing patterns of human migration in the global sphere as a crucial of field of research (Clifford, 1994; Safran,

1991; Tololyan, 1996). This new field of research opened a new discourse on diaspora 17

that highlights assimilation as a dominant theme shaping a new model that captures a revised interpretation of diaspora as a complex and evolving human experience. This new discourse on diaspora underscores an emergent diaspora behavior torn between tribalism and assimilation.

Modern Diaspora: The Assimilation Model

Given the varying patterns of human dispersal across the globe, with all its economic, cultural and political implications, diaspora scholars in the 1960s expanded the concept beyond the ‘victimization’ model exemplified by the Jewish diaspora. As

Toloyan (1997) argues, meanings evolve according to changing social conditions. The changing social condition in this case is the focus on nation-states as an important institution or a site of discourse in interpreting the altered lives of diaspora populations.

The development of nation-states arose in the age of modernization and decolonization, two conditions that necessitated a revisiting of diaspora as discourse and the construction of a new language that differs from the Jewish model (Clifford, 1994; Safran, 1991).

Addressing the demands of modernization and decolonization, new migratory motivations and patterns emerge that included: the influx of migrants coming from poor nations and former colonies looking for jobs outside their homelands, expatriates resettling in key urban centers for professional reasons, sojourners seeking specialized educational opportunities, inter-marriages between people coming from different geographic and cultural backgrounds, and political refugees escaping repressive regimes.

In these new migration scenarios, dispersal and resettlement are both voluntary and involuntary (Alonzo and Oiarzabal, 2010; Brinkerhoff, 2009; Tololyan, 1996; Vertovec, 18

1997). The negative view attached to diaspora changed with diaspora populations no longer seen as victims but as willing participants in their own dispersal or displacement.

With increased global traffic of capital, labor and material goods, nation-states were forced to revisit their immigration policies and citizenship rules. Uncontrolled flow of migrants seeking better opportunities abroad forced nations to adopt rigid assimilationist policies to maintain cultural harmony and to assuage nativist claims of ethnic purity. But as Clifford (1994) and Tololyan (1997) argue, such strict assimilationist policies created more problems than it hoped to solve. Abandoning these rigid assimilationist policies meant finding new strategies to promoting cultural diversity coined though such terms as multiculturalism, pan-ethnicity, model minority or multi- locality (Tuan, 1998; Vertovec, 1997). According to Vertovec, these terms were necessary to create a semblance of social harmony, a more positive view of diaspora.

However, underneath this multiculturalist umbrella lies growing tendencies of tribalism made even more pronounced by intergenerational tension among host culture-born children and their immigrant parents still loyal to their homelands.

However, a bigger dilemma that hounds the articulation of assimilation within the discourse on diaspora is how it is defined and who is doing the interpretation (Tuan,

1998). Defining assimilation as willful integration into the mainstream culture of the host country in pursuit of creating a multicultural society is problematic in its assumptions.

Not only does it suggest the superficiality of the term ‘multiculturalism’ as an advertising campaign by institutions of power such as the State but it also locates diaspora populations as monolithic whose life struggles and issues are the same. In more 19

problematic ways, this view of assimilation forecloses the social and economic inequities that confront diaspora communities and individuals in their everyday lives. It fails to recognize native hostilities related to race, gender, class or religion as discourses that need to be addressed because such hostilities are structurally embedded in host countries history and policy making (De La Garza and Ono, 2015).

For Asian Americans, the Assimilation model opens an interrogation of the term

‘model minority’ attached to its name. Portraying Asian Americans as ‘model minority’ has a seductive ring to it. It promotes a positive perception of Asian Americans as hardworking, law-abiding, educated and therefore can easily assimilate to the dominant culture. The myth however institutionalizes an assimilation paradigm that downplays the social inequities and racist treatment that Asian Americans suffer as idealized minorities

(Tuan, 1998). The model minority myth installs Asian Americans as one monolithic community with no individuality or cultural specificity subject to the gaze of the dominant white culture and to the acrimony of other minority groups such as African

Americans and Latino Americans. The myth also gives a false impression that Asian

Americans are passive. It reinforces the Orientalist view of Asians as exoticized, cultural

‘other’ against which whiteness asserts its superiority (Said, 1979). Acceptance of this myth further contributes to the invisibility and powerlessness of Filipino Americans as an idealized ‘other’ whose history, ethnic attributes and lived struggles are subsumed under the Asian American banner subservient to the approval of the dominant whites.

Assuming that assimilation itself is a linear process is also full of complications.

That full integration to the dominant culture of the host country is inevitable after a going 20

through period of adjustment is at best simplistic and lacking in nuance. As some diaspora scholars argue, this is not always the case because each ethnic community has histories, memories and struggles specific to their context that influence their own assimilation process. Even intergenerational families within diasporic communities differ in internalizing assimilation as an expression of cultural identity. This further underlines the centrality of the assimilation-tribalism discourse as the defining element of the

Assimilation model of diaspora. It reinforces cultural sameness and difference, assimilationist and tribalist tendencies as performances of plurality and hybridity (Hall,

1994). It locates diaspora as a contested space to negotiate the collective memory of the homeland as a source of strength while embracing the hostland as a new cultural subject in creating new identities and a re-imagined sense of self (Symer-Yu, 2013). In this model, a discourse on diaspora is not about diaspora as unity but diaspora as the constant negotiation of pluralities and double consciousness.

Filipino American Diaspora: The Postcolonial Diaspora Model

After centuries of disempowerment under Spain’s feudal economic system and monarchial rule, the seductive power of America’s modernizing ideology resonated differently with Filipinos. Some continued the fight for independence. Others embraced the imperialist agenda of the new colonial master and became the new bureaucrats under

American occupation. Some chose to explore the power of their labor outside of their homeland and embarked on a journey to America to work as farm workers in the plantation fields of Hawaii (Cordova, 1983; Guevarra, 2010; Guyotte and Posadas, 2007;

Houle, 2007). It was early 1900s and from here would evolve the long history of Filipino 21

migration to the United States. Historicizing the different waves of Filipino migration to the US is a pivotal moment in articulating Filipinos’ contribution to the economic and cultural life of the U.S. It also establishes the volatile relationship between the colonizer and the formerly colonized and how such relationship opened new discourses on cultural hybridity, national subjectivity and neocolonialism.

A close reading of discourses that interrogate the Filipino Americans experience through lens of postcolonial discourse identifies a diaspora experience that builds from how diaspora has been discursively articulated by other diaspora models. The model proposes an examination of how diaspora experience of Filipino Americans redefines diaspora in the postcolonial context. At its core, the term Filipino American is a hybrid construction of a diasporic identity, a hyphenated term that aims to embrace two cultural identities into one. But achieving a sense of a unified identity can have its problems especially if it comes from different interpretations of history, migration policy and cultural identity. Research studies on Filipino American diaspora can be described in three approaches: the sociological approach which narrates different waves of migration, the critical approach which interrogates a reclaiming of history and identity, and the postcolonial approach which provides critiques of the legacies of colonialism.

A Sociological Approach: Waves of Migration

Early Filipino American research centered on historicizing the different waves of

Filipino migration often dictated by changes in U.S. immigration policy (Cordova, 1983;

Guyotte and Posadas, 2007). Such migration trends and patterns provide a framework in which to understand the intergenerational and interracial dynamics between mixed-race 22

FilAm families, as well as between American-born and Philippine-born Filipinos. Most of these research studies are canonized within the broader discipline of Asian American

Studies or Ethnic Studies, a great concentration of which are offered in most universities in the West Coast.

The first big wave of Filipino migrants was recruited in 1900 to replace Japanese farm workers who staged a labor strike against sugar farm owners in Hawaii. Hawaii became the ideal destination for Filipino migrants not only because of the work demand but also because of the weather condition. As an occupied colony, Filipinos who travel to the US during this time are known as ‘US nationals’ (Guyotte and Posadas, 2007).

However this status did not grant any pathway to citizenship and defined ‘US national’ in purely utilitarian terms so the U.S. as emerging world power can reap the benefits of cheap labor provided by its new colony (Guevarra, 2010). The seasonal character of plantation work forced Filipinos to seek job opportunities outside of Hawaii (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein, 1998). By the 1920s, a huge number of Filipino farm workers moved to the West coast expanding their labor skills as apple pickers, fish cannery workers and agricultural laborers. By the early 1930s, Filipino migrants began settling down in

Hawaii, California and Seattle forming enclaves and communities based on their regional backgrounds.

Filipinos who migrated to Chicago were called ‘pensionados’ coming from the more educated class in the Philippines (Guyotte and Posadas, 2007). While farm workers were tilling the plantation fields of Hawaii and California, educated Filipinos were attending US universities in the Midwest learning the ideals of democracy, benevolent 23

assimilation and American literature and art. They were expected to return to their native homeland to share their newfound knowledge to their countrymen. But not all of them did. Those who stayed behind after earning degrees in law, education or literature are unable to find work and ended up working as postal workers, hotel busboys, dishwashers, gardeners and cooks.

When the Philippines became a commonwealth in1934 through the Tydings-

McDuffie Act, Filipinos in the US lost their ‘national’ status forcing them to return to the

Philippines or bear the brunt of being illegal. Some opted to marry Caucasian women so they can stay and hopefully become US citizens. In the eyes of these Filipino men, marrying white women increases the chances of getting assimilated to the American mainstream culture. There was a decrease in Filipino migration between 1935-1950 except for those recruited by the US military in anticipation of World War II (Liu, Ong and Rosenstein, 1998). It was not until the passing of the Immigration Act of 1965 that another huge wave of Filipino migration flowed into the US. The Act was also motivated by a demand for another type of labor quite different from the early 1900s. With shortage of professional workers in the medical field, a huge influx of medical doctors, nurses and other health care professional were recruited. But this time such recruits were allowed to bring their spouses and children (under 21 years of age). The Act also allowed family petitions expanding citizenship through naturalization (Houle, 2007; Liu, Ong and

Rosenstein, 1998).

After WW II, Filipino soldiers who fought with the US became naturalized citizens because of their war service. Some were given the opportunity to live in the US 24

and while some decided to stay in the Philippines with the promise of veteran pension.

Those men who chose to migrate to the U.S brought with them their Filipina war brides and were resettled in different areas near the US where military bases. The Immigration

Act of 1965 forged family reunification and occupational migration as tenets of legal migration and citizenship. These two pathways to the U.S. increased the size of

American-born and immigrant background Filipinos influencing a shift in identity politics discourse. The emergence of this new identity formation, as argued by some scholars, reveals a fragmented vision of community brought about by regionalist tendencies and a dichotomized view of the homeland and the hostland (Lau, 2007).

However, asserting that Filipino Americans are a monolithic community is also problematic in that it fails to recognize a deeper understanding Filipinos’ colonial history and the topographical character of the Philippines as an archipelago.

A Critical Approach: Reclaiming History and Identity

When a half-Filipino, half-White high school student in a predominantly white neighborhood in North San Diego brought rice and dried fish to school for lunch, she found herself being tagged as FOB (fresh off the boat), a derogatory term particularly attached to Asian Americans. For Filipinos recruited by the U.S, military in 1903, markers of cultural difference and trauma are on display against a dominant white culture that sees Filipino Americans as other (Espiritu, 1995). The ‘othering’ process is part of everyday diaspora life as one recognizes that being dark-skinned is a liability. But as

Espiritu documents in her interviews with FilAms who are mostly employed in a U.S. military bases in San Diego, even these perceived markers of cultural inferiority can be 25

transformed into feelings of pride. So when the high school student (same girl who brought rice and fish to school) joined a Filipino beauty pageant, she discovered not only the rich culture of her Filipino mother, but also her mother’s struggle as an immigrant in

1960s America. Whereas she had previously identified only as white, the discovery of this new piece of history about her mother made her embrace being Filipino-American as a new identity. But as Espiritu (1995) argues, because identifying as white for mixed- race children meant more privileges and better opportunities in life, identity construction as a topic in Filipino American scholarship elicits emotional discourses that place the perceived dichotomy between the hostland and the homeland in problematic posture.

Cultural identity and the double-consciousness are themes that both Ignacio

(2005) and Mabalon (2013) explore from an intergenerational perspective. They unravel a reclaiming of a diasporic experience that underscores FilAms’ sense of cultural agency.

Agency in this regard is exemplified through a reclaiming of cultural spaces that traces the contribution of Filipino migrants to America’s economic and cultural life. Drawing from oral histories, family photo albums and ethnic newspapers, Mabalon (2013) examines how a place called Little Manila in Stockton, California became a site of social resistance against intense racism. From1920 to 1960, Little Manila was home to the largest Filipino population outside of the Philippines and the manifest articulation of having a ‘home away from home’.

However, it was demolished in the 1990s to give way to urban development denying FilAms a place in America’s diverse cultural landscape. A diner once owned by

Mabalon’s family is replaced by McDonalds. A taxi dance hall (private clubs) that young 26

Filipino migrant workers in the 1940s frequented after picking apples is now a gas station

(Myrow, 2013). The value of a physical space like Little Manila is not only symbolic. It is where the past and present meet. It is where lost memories are given new interpretation to bridge historical and cultural gaps between and among intergenerational families

(Mabalon, 2013). The act of reclaiming can be seen not only as a form of historical excavation, but an act of resisting the erasure of the Filipino American experience and history within the collective imprint of America’s diasporic consciousness. The reclaiming also suggests the beginning of empowering a community informed by the rich texture of FilAms’ cultural experience as laborers, shop owners, social activists and taxi hall dancers.

With the influx of new interactive technologies, the geographic divides that separate the homeland from the hostland is blurred giving way to virtual conversations that expand the discourse on cultural identity, albeit in more candid and spontaneous ways. For the younger generation hooked into their laptops, the essence of being Filipino

American opens new granular details on intergenerational family issues that problematize the ambiguity of finding a coherent meaning of the term Filipino American (Ignacio,

2005). Questions like “What is an authentic Filipino identity?” or “Why do we always have to bring balikbayan boxes when we visit?” presents a broad source of cultural tension between the symbolic and the material. Locating these conversations in her study of newsgroups, chat rooms and website postings, Ignacio (2005) brings the discourse on

Filipino American identity as articulated in cyberspace into a new domain challenging the

meaning of diaspora in contrast to sociological arguments put forth by early diaspora studies scholars.

A Postcolonial Approach: Critiquing Legacies of Colonial Past

The rich texture of the Filipino American experience and the reclaiming of its existence are given a new critical perspective by scholars who locate diaspora through the lens of postcolonial discourse. In this lens, a close reading of cultural artifacts and media forms locate them as sites of resistance against the mythologizing impact of mainstream media (Goh, 2008). They give voice to themes and stories that subvert ethnic invisibility and the cultural othering of decolonized peoples (Bhabha, 1994; Shohat, 1992). Giving voice to such themes and stories needs to take an interventionist role through images and symbols that challenge hegemonic ideologies (Shome and Hegde, 2002). For example, in

Gillo Pontercorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1967), traditional depictions of women as passive actors in male-dominated struggles against fascism were shattered. Portraying them as active agents in the war against the French, the film allowed Algerian women to possess their own bodies -- a strategic intervention against the patriarchal system imposed by colonialism (Eid and Ghazel, 2008; Orlando, 2000). The colonized body is a critical site of resistance because it is where the individual and society meet. It is where the legacies of colonialism can be interrogated (Chawla and Rodriguez, 2011a). I locate such interrogation within a body of scholarly work that engages the FilAm diaspora experience through the lens of postcolonial studies.

Carlos Bulosan’s novel, America is in the Heart (1946), demonstrates how literature and poetry can function as critical sites of identity construction reclaiming an 28

authentic diasporic experience (San Juan, 1995). Bulosan’s novels depict resistance against racism and white brutality in 1930s’ America. Filipinos and Mexicans dominated the labor force in the California plantation fields and in the fish canneries in Seattle and

Alaska. Despite their contribution to American prosperity, they were denied citizenship and treated like dogs. Bulosan became a labor leader alongside Cesar Chavez (Smith,

2014). It was not until the 1960s that radicalized Filipino American scholars in California embraced Bulosan’s work.

In The Cry and the Dedication (1995), Bulosan focuses on the peasant struggle in the Philippines in the 1940s and 1950s. The novel interrogates the cumulative impact of colonization by portraying an armed rebellion reminiscent of the Philippine revolution against Spain. Bulosan brings history to a contemporary audience to give voice to the desires of Filipinos in the homeland and abroad (San Juan, Jr., 1995). In The Laughter of

My Father (1946), a collection of short stories about peasant life in the Philippines,

Bulosan portrays rural women resisting masculine domination using social satire. While focused on class inequality in Philippine society, he brings out the humor and pathos of peasant men and women dealing with the impositions of colonization (Alquizola and

Hirabayashi, 2011; Grow, 1995). Bulosan’s novels engage a postcolonial rhetoric in interrogating passivity as a remnant of a collective colonial trauma (San Juan, Jr., 1995).

The passive portrayal of the oppressed colonized body is amplified in the popular

Broadway musical Miss Saigon, the story of bar girl who falls in love with a white

American soldier. Miss Saigon embodies a familiar trope in how Asian Americans are portrayed in popular media -- as prostitutes, thugs and conniving villains (De Castro, 29

1994; Shimakawa, 2002). The submissive Oriental girl pining for a savior who is male and white is reminiscent of Puccini’s classic opera Madama Butterfly. It lies at the center of Miss Saigon’s problematic narrative and like Cio-Cio-san in Puccini’s opera, Kim, the

Vietnamese bar girl kills herself as a form of human sacrifice. Lea Salonga, the Filipina actress who portrayed Kim won a Tony Award for her performance, a symbol of success that suggests agency but leaves a problematic discourse in the cultural othering of Asian

Americans through popular media. Kim’s character is fictional but Lea Salonga’s success is not. The conflation of fiction and reality in this contradictory cultural experience operates in what Appadurai (1994) calls “mediascapes.” It highlights postcolonial arguments about cultural hybridity, where media representation of identities invites opposing positionalities.

Another cultural artifact that incites a close reading of its symbolic power is the popular Filipina traditional dress, the terno (Pablo-Burns, 2011). The terno is a visual motif familiar to most Filipinos, an iconic emblem in Filipino women fashion that in

Pablo-Burns’ study elicits different meanings rooted in Filipinos’ long experience with colonialism and postcoloniality. Also known as the “butterfly dress”, the terno was made popular by former First Lady Imelda Marcos whose husband, former President Ferdinand

Marcos, was ousted by a people power movement in 1986 that ended a 20-year dictatorship. As a cultural symbol, the terno codified the essence of the ideal Filipina woman who is graceful, pious, subservient and privileged. In colonial times, it regulated

Filipina bodies along gender and class lines pitting privileged women against poor and working class women who wear the baro’t saya, a watered-down version of the same 30

dress made of cheaper fabric. Locating the terno as an object of parody, Barrionics and

M.O.B, an artist group in San Francisco disrupts its privileged position. By juxtaposing it with the daster (ordinary wear for lower-class women), the tsinelas (house slippers), straw mats, military fatigues and technological gadgets, the performance releases the

Filipina body from the gaze of a colonial past. Pablo-Burns (2011) interrogates how the terno can be located as a site of resistance against the objectification of Filipina bodies and the essentializing gaze of history and neocolonialism.

The music of the Hip Hop Group, Black Eyed Peas offers another site of discourse in the way diaspora is interrogated in the postcolonial present (Devitt (2008).

The social activism embedded in MC, Apl.de.ap’s “The APL Song” critiques the impact of neocolonialism by juxtaposing the ghettoes of America with the backward barrios of the Philippines. The song was adapted from a popular Filipino folk song, Balita (News) written in the 1970s by Asin (Salt), a popular folk group. Apl.de.ap disrupts mainstream storytelling by critiquing romantic notions of the homeland. He dramatizes the inequities of global capitalism articulating an anti-imperialist theme based on his diaspora experience.

(Verse One) Every place got a ghetto this is my version. Check it out . . . Listen closely yo, I gotta story to tell A version of my ghetto where life felt for real Some would call it hell but to me it was heaven God gave me the grace, amazin’ ways of living How would you feel if you had to catch a meal? Build a hut to live and to each and chill in Having to pump the water outta the ground

The way we put it down utilizing what is around 31

Like land for farming, river for fishing Everyone helpin’ each other whenever they can We makin’ it happen, from nothin’ to something That’s how we be survivin’ back in my homeland

Performed in shifting Tagalog and English, Apl.de.ap speaks a diasporic language that resonates with Filipinos in different places. This blending of languages collapses the normalized power hierarchies between the colonial and the vernacular operating in the postcolonial present (Devitt, 2008).

Disrupting normalized power hierarchies is a theme that resonates in

Documented, a documentary film written by Jose Antonio Vargas. The film subverts essentialized notion of migrant identities as job stealers and freeloaders of social welfare propagated by media hawks (De La Garza and Ono, 2015; Diaz, 2011). Vargas uses his own experience as a backdrop in creating a dramatic discourse on identity and citizenship. In one scene, he asks members of the U. S. Congress to define what it means to be American. He interrogates not only the idea of citizenship but also his relationship to a former colonizer of his homeland. But as someone who speaks not only for Filipinos but also for 11 million undocumented immigrants, his film offers a discourse on resistance and postcolonial citizenship that is politically and emotionally-charged

(Sorgalia, 2014). It brings the subjective side of being a citizen, of social belonging and un-belonging and of being an active participant in a democracy (Dahlgren, 2005). It also underlines that citizenship is an expression of identity that is evolving in relation to context and institutions. In a review of the film, Tsai (2014) asserts that by giving voice

to 11 million undocumented immigrants, Documented sends a clear message to the world that the “personal is political.”

Diaspora Media: The Double Consciousness Model

The Internet opened new doors in examining the complex relationship between diaspora and media as intertwining discourses. As diaspora communities’ dependence on communication and information technologies increased so is their literacy about the many affordances that such technologies offer. The blurring of temporal, spatial and psychological distance that once separated diaspora communities from their families in the homeland inspired new insights about being de-territorialized (Alonso and Oiarzabal,

2010: Brinkenhorf; 2010; Vertovec, 1997). The blurring redefines the meaning of home now operating in the imaginative worlds that Appadurai (1994) describes as

‘mediascapes’ where the double consciousness of being here and there is made possible through and in media (Deuze, 2012; Jansson, 2013). It embeds having a ‘home away from home’ as an everyday disposition for people in the diaspora.

For example, Indian laborers in Fiji are able to carve out their own cultural space by watching Bollywood movies through their mobile phones, reinforcing an imagined

Indian nation in an adopted country who sees them as invisible. Dissident Tibetans form a “Government-In-Exile” as expression of indigenous identity and resistance while living in different parts of Western Europe (Kiram, 2003). Arab migrants spread out in Europe are able to practice rituals like the Ramadan through transnational ArabTV Channel in harmony with families in the homeland. These mediated practices produce globally networked and digitally imagined communities strengthening a revitalized sense of ethnic 33

and national identities that diaspora scholars argue simultaneously compromise diasporic peoples’ integration and assimilation to their host countries (Afshana and Din, 2018;

Brinkerhoff, 2009: Kim, 2016; Nijhawan and Arora, 2013; Oairzabal, 2010). One might say that the double consciousness model of diaspora opens a new set of complexities building up from the insights and discourses articulated in the Jewish model and the

Assimilation model. One argument that stands out is that in this model, the host country is no longer considered a temporary dwelling but a permanent one.

This shift in the assimilation debate also underscores the ambiguity of an eventual return to a mythologized homeland. Within this changing perspectives and behavior, being stuck in the diaspora has become a form of transnational lifestyle. It is a lifestyle that operates on a logical framework that focuses on the adaptive ability of diasporic people (Kim, 2016; Smyer-Yu, 2013). This adaptive quality introduces a new sense of selfhood that allows diaspora communities and individuals to translate longing for the homeland according to new desires and interests discovered in the host country. Smyer

Yu (2013) takes a phenomenological view in describing this diasporic selfhood whose logic emanates from acknowledging the capacity of the diasporic individual to adapt to changing socio-political and cultural conditions. In his study of displaced Tibetans in the

U.S., he argues that cultural traditions such as visiting temples in a different social setting can inspire a new politics of the self. Becoming more Tibetan in the diaspora than

Tibetans could have been in the homeland suggests a double consciousness, that Smyer

Yu argues attests to the adaptive capacities of migrants in spaces of in-between-ness.

This adaptive quality opens a discourse on diasporic performativity especially when it unravels in close engagement with communicative and interactive technologies.

As Kim (2016) argues, sustained engagement with different media forms for Asian women enabled them to adapt a ‘getting stuck in the diaspora’ lifestyle. Through the interactive and networked affordances of technology, these ‘diasporic daughters’ as Kim calls them, reimagine the homeland inspiring a double consciousness that reinforces a national subjectivity not felt in the homeland,

Media as Environment

Media scholars argue that diaspora media is not a new technology platform but an emerging environment in which diasporic communities not only conduct their own everyday communication needs and preferences, but also manage their social, emotional and psychological needs (Afshana and Din, 2018; Alonzo and Oiarzabal, 2010;

Brinkenhorf, 2009; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Ong, 2009). Access to transnational television, engagement with mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter and Skype have become integrated in diasporic people’s day-to-day activities. And because of the “always on” capabilities of media, diaspora communities are able to cultivate a sense of connected presence with families and friends in the homeland, collapsing space-time constraints imposed by geographic boundaries (Madianou and Miller, 2012; Papacharissi, 2015).

Some scholars call this sense of connectedness as virtual co-presence where a shared notion of local-ness in internalized as one spends daily conversations via Skype or

Messenger. It re-imagines media not as part of environment, but the environment itself

(Meyrowitz, 1985; Moores, 2005). The constant convergence of old and new media 35

through intricate patterns of content production, consumption and interpretation constitute a cultural ecology that locates diaspora populations as active users in a heavily mediated or mediatized environment (Deuze, 2012; Couldry and Hepp, 2013: Jansson,

2013).

Mediatization

In these intricate patterns of content creation, consumption and interpretation, certain emotional needs and intellectual curiosities are brought into the surface that address everyday diasporic concerns such as chronic homesickness and the need to maintain connection to the homeland. Through this lens, the study of the role of diaspora media necessitates a non-media centric approach that some media scholars refer to as

‘mediatization’ (Couldry and Hepp, 2013; Jansson, 2013). It is an approach that moves away from a ‘technological determinist’ perspective in the study of media impact. It underscores the domestication of media technologies into the everyday life of media users changing the scale of human interaction within and outside of media (McLuhan,

1964).

When media users re-appropriate specific features of media technologies to feel more connected to the homeland such as listening to the sound of TV local soap operas instead of actually watching them, technology is transformed beyond its materiality. The form or the ‘eidos’ of the transnational cable channel or the television screen is reimagined to fulfill a specific emotional or psychological need. Shifting the focus away from a media centric perspective to ‘mediatization’ underscores media as environment framework – a critical lens where analysis is focused on activities of everyday life 36

affecting socio-cultural transformations in which media plays a vital role (Deuze, 2012:

Williams, 1974). These transformations articulate an epistemological foundation to expand the meaning of diaspora beyond dispersal-return and assimilation-tribalism dichotomies. From karaoke singing to watching soap operas international cable or posting events in community newspapers or taking care of family needs through social media chat rooms – these practices reveal how the seamless integration of diaspora and media inspires the formation of a cultural environment called ‘diaspora media’ where diaspora communities and individuals perform acts of agency, media literacy and adaptability.

Community Newspapers

For Vietnamese diasporas in Australia, the converging of ethnic newspapers and hybrid videos and music create a cultural landscape that highlights intergenerational differences between older Vietnamese raised during the Vietnam war and their

Australian-born children raised in MTV and YouTube (Cunningham and Sinclair, 2001).

As a space of identity construction, diaspora media in this scenario opens an ideological discourse that pits promoting ethnic purity against embracing cultural hybridity. Using community newspapers as a platform to teach Vietnamese history and language not only becomes a source of intercultural tension. It also alienates younger generation from appreciating their traditional heritage that they appreciate more if integrated in contemporary music practices introduced by Vietnamese artists from Vietnam. In the

Vietnamese diaspora scenario, ethnic newspapers then become more polarizing than dialogic creating a media environment that underlines a cultural divide between older and younger Vietnamese. 37

For Puerto Rican diasporans in New York, the role of the newspaper Pueblos

Hispanos created a space to educate migrants and their intergenerational families about

Puerto Rico’s history of resistance and culture (Perez-Rosario, 2003). Through its culture editor Julia de Burgos, Puerto Ricans were reminded of a history they were disconnected from, a history often minimized if not omitted in most American schools and universities.

As a strategy, it was important for de Burgos to publish a newspaper with strong community theme so Puerto migrants can read about history, poetry and literature written by local writers or learn about where to go for art exhibits performed by local Puerto

Rican artists. Through de Burgos’ editorial vision, culture and history became accessible to migrants, both documented and undocumented, whose meager incomes inhibit them from having access to such media sources. Through Pueblos Hispanos, de Burgos is able to bridge historical gaps and connect migrants to cultural traditions that made them closer to a concept of home.

In the case of Epoch Times, an ethnic newspaper published by Chinese immigrants in London, community newspapers become vehicles to critique a repressive government back home (Huang and Jiang, 2009). As a newspaper that voices out the victimization of religious Chinese both in the homeland and in the diaspora, Epoch Times manages to diversify its content by featuring a mix of political propaganda, community advertising and local entertainment. In terms of the presence of community newspapers in the diaspora, Chinese publishers have the biggest share in the world with 100 in the

U.S., 30 in Canada, 20 in Australia and many others spread out in several parts in Europe.

This also suggest the extent to which Chinese diaspora communities have spread out across the globe.

Karaoke

Coined from the Japanese words kara (empty) and okesutora (orchestra), karaoke has evolved into a popular form of global entertainment that transcends physical and cultural boundaries (Matsui, 2001). Karaoke can refer to an act of singing with a pre- recorded soundtrack, or a piece of technology or a social act where various forms human expression and interaction can happen. The reasons for having karaoke are limitless. For

Filipino Americans, special occasions like birthday parties, Christmas eve, Thanksgiving,

Super Bowl, July 4th celebrations, baptismal or post-graduation events are valid reasons to have karaoke parties. Outside of these events, Filipino Americans do not need any reason to have karaoke singing. It can occur as spontaneously as the wanting just to hang out can.

Originally intended as an extension of the jukebox, and marketed as an outlet for amateur public singing, karaoke technology was developed in Kobe, Japan, in 1972

(Kelly, 2016). The machine was developed with 48 accompaniment tracks on cassette tape, a microphone mixer with an echo effect, and a lyrics sheet. In the late 1990s, Asian restaurants in California, New York and New Jersey incorporated karaoke singing as a way to connect customers to cultural traditions or to escape the banality of daily life. In most of these places, karaoke singing offered a space to let off steam after a busy workday schedule or to enjoy a sense of community. The ability to sing can scare people away but after several bottles of alcohol, all hell can break loose. 39

For a group of Filipino migrants in London, constant engagement with karaoke strengthens a sense of belonging and community (Ong, 2009). Because they are seen as service workers and not as highly trained professionals, Filipino migrants feel excluded in the larger British society. This sense of un-belonging ignites the need to reconnect with their kababayan (countrymen) forcing them to create spaces of interaction through group watching of local news on TFC or attending community parties with karaoke singing in the hopes of recreating the imagined homeland in a culture that sees them as the ‘other’.

A mother who works as a caregiver becomes very emotional when she sees immigrant raids on British news – an unsettling reminder of being an unwanted outsider despite the fact she has legal papers to prove her presence. But through karaoke parties and watching local news on TFC, she manages to connect to her roots even in fleeting moments. The fluidity with which these Filipinos weave in and out of the British society is facilitated by their daily encounters with diaspora media giving them a sense of inner pride and a renewed feeling of national identity and belonging

Brown’s (2015) book, Karaoke Idols: Popular Music and the Performance of

Identity provides a detailed and engaged analysis of karaoke as a performance of individuality and community. Spending two years observing and interviewing people about how karaoke is performed and embraced in a local Colorado bar allowed Brown to internalize what karaoke performance meant as an expression of the self in relation to community. Tapping into the universality of music as a human expression, Brown argues that karaoke performance transcends internalized fears about singing and singing in public spaces. And when the performance is aimed at celebrating individuality in 40

recognition of a community, karaoke is transformed as a ‘manifestation of power’, an embodied social practice that forges a sense of collective power through cultural production. A spatializing practice that is not only energized through karaoke’s celebratory mood, but also through gestures, visual motifs and social relationships that foster a performance of belonging, of collective identities (Lefebvre, 1991b). These are similar arguments that Ong (2009) also asserts in his study of Filipino migrants in

London.

Transnational Media

The confluence of transnational cable, the Internet and social media have made diaspora communities and individuals more susceptible to the innovations offered by communication and information technologies making the fluid movement from online to offline behaviors an everyday practice. Making daily family updates on Facetime or sending money through Xoom, an online remittance website or watching soap operas on mobile phones locates a cultural environment where switching from online to offline becomes automatic and seamless resonating with what McLuhan (1964) suggests that when technology gets domesticated into peoples’ lives, technology disappears.

The domestication of media technology into peoples’ lives is most relevant among Filipino domestic workers in London (Madianou and Miller, 2012). Tracing the evolution of these migrants’ communication patterns required a longitudinal study that for Madianou and Miller took five years to undertake. From writing letters to voice recording using cassette tapes, to emails, Facebook chat rooms and Skype, they observed not only the changing patterns of technology consumption but also the growth of media 41

dependence as well as human agency. For example, one mother switched to just sending email instead of texting because she wants to keep a one-way communication exchange with her family. Another mother bought a laptop so she can monitor her daughter’s whereabouts through FaceTime while at work. A young mother, who works as a nurse, bought a lighter laptop so she can play hide and seek with her three-year old son she left behind in the Philippines one week after giving birth.

From this study emerged the theoretical articulation of ‘polymedia’, an integrated environment of affordances through patterns of consumption and domestication

(Madianou and Miller, 2012). It asserts that as relationships between migrants and their families become more complex and richer, so too are their relationships with media.

Polymedia recognizes that the mutual shaping of technology and social relationships, especially for transnational families, requires a plethora of media choices (availability), a set of skills to use various media platforms (literacy), and affordability of technology cost dictated by the industry (infrastructure).

Availability, literacy and infrastructure are attributes that made Roy, a Filipino porter in Italy sustained long separation from the homeland (Bonini, 2011). The media environment in which he conducted his diasporic journey for almost thirty years involved writing letters, phone cards, VHS tapes, texting, emails, local newspaper websites and

Skype. These technologies made him closer to his family and friends, a more engaged sense of proximity than he would have been to them in the homeland. It allowed him a transnational lifestyle where being home is made real through his daily encounters with media. 42

In Ong’s (2009) study of Filipino migrants in London, The Filipino Channel or

TFC is crucial in reclaiming identity in a host culture where migrant labor signifies second-class citizens. In this diasporic experience, language plays an important role in forging a sense of community and belonging. Access to becoming Filipino is realized through group watching of local news programs, game shows and soap operas on TFC where Tagalog is the dominant communication language. But despite this language restriction, migrants coming from specific regions in the Philippines who are non-

Tagalog speakers participate in such gatherings untangling their regional affiliations as an expression of solidarity and community. A new subjectivity of Filipino-ness is identified transforming regional biases into opportunities of camaraderie and cultural dialogue.

New patterns of connectivity created by social media and the Internet have expanded choices for diasporic people redefining the meaning of nationalism and loyalty to their homelands. It invites engaging with diaspora media forms as a strategy of place making where a different sense of national subjectivity gives birth to diasporic nationalism or digital nationalism (Kim, 2016). For a group of East Asian women, being stuck in the diaspora or living in liminal spaces create a new set of experiences that the idea of returning to a mythical homeland no longer holds ground. Despite being culturally alienated in their adopted host countries, these women found a re-imagined sense of identity more nationalistic than they had ever been in their homelands. In Kim’s (2016) study, Chinese students narrate that being digitally connected to Chinese programs via

YouTube recreates a new sense of home in a host country that they find “too British.”

Feeling stuck in the diaspora is a reality that these Asian women negotiate through 43

strategic use of transnational media making them more digitally literate and culturally empowered while living in liminal spaces.

Diaspora as Everyday Life

In analyzing how local/diaspora media function as discursive spaces in FilAms’ everyday lives, the study positions its approach to everyday life through the lens of cultural theory (De Certeau, 1984; Highmore, 2002; Lefebvre, 1984). Locating everyday life as more than just a series of repetitive actions and practices that bears no intellectual or critical purchase opens a new understanding of the impact of capitalist modernity in the everyday lives of diasporic people. That everyday practices deemed mundane can provide opportunities of critiquing power inequities imposed by modernity and postcolonial capitalism is a perspective upon which researchers can locate everyday life as a site of critical discourse. In this perspective, everyday life is political life so creating spaces of interaction through karaoke sessions or watching movies in the weekend can be seen not only as forms of escaping the demands of a nine-to-five, five days a week work load. They can also be seen as spaces of interaction where experiencing fun and unguarded conversations can disrupt the energy flow of feeling oppressed, that for cultural theorists like de Certeau and Lefebvre, is in itself a political act. This is an important theoretical consideration for it provides a critical framework in analyzing how everyday media practices adopted by FilAms reproduce new definitions of diaspora, cultural identity and a ‘home away from home’. The intensity with which Filipinos in the diaspora conduct karaoke sessions or watching TFC as a daily ritual not only breaks everyday life’s quotidian character. It also re-appropriates such rituals not necessarily for 44

nostalgia but as opportunities of resistance or poetic performances that reinvigorates creativity and human agency.

Summary

This chapter articulates the evolution of diaspora as a concept, as a social formation and as site of discourse that interrogates the complexity and specificity of diaspora as a human experience. Specific human conditions motivate why people chose to embark on diasporic journeys as articulated by the different diaspora models that speak to the theoretical and epistemological influences from which diaspora research and scholarship evolved. The Jewish Model highlights themes of forced dispersal, victimization, slavery, collective trauma and the eventual return to the homeland. The

Assimilation model emphasizes the difficult task of assimilating to the social, cultural and political conditions of the host country while embracing the collective memory of the imagined homeland and the cultural traditions that shaped migrant identities. This model underlines the assimilation versus tribalism discourse.

The assimilation versus tribalism debate resonates discursively with the diaspora experience of Filipino Americans taken within the context of post-coloniality. This model speaks to three approaches in interrogating and at the same time, understanding the complexity of Filipino diaspora journey. The sociological approach charts the different waves of Filipino migration, the critical approach argues a reclaiming of history and identity as crucial in the assimilation process and the postcolonial approach interrogates the remnants of colonialism as integral to defining what Filipino American means in the contemporary context. 45

For transnational diasporas, the ‘double consciousness’ model articulates the impact of communication and information technologies in redefining individual and collective identities. This paradigm locates double consciousness as a phenomenon that occurs in the everyday life of diasporic people. It highlights the blending of\ the material and the symbolic, the homeland and the hostland, the self and the community as operating in a mediatized and non-media centric cultural environment. It from this philosophical view that diaspora and media came to be explored by various scholars as intertwining discourses giving credence to diaspora media as a theoretical framework and as a research focus. It is within this spectrum of diaspora models that this research study anchors its analysis and interpretation in how diaspora media forms serve as discursive spaces in interrogating identity, resistance and citizenship within the experience of

Filipino Americans in Chicago.

Chapter 3: Methodology

In the previous Chapter, I gathered several theories and concepts that serve as foundational guides in informing our conceptions of diaspora and the role of different diaspora media forms in the everyday life of FilAms. For this study, I focus on three media forms that include Karaoke, The Filipino Channel, a transnational media company and Community Newspapers. I explore diaspora media studies, mediatization, phenomenology and everyday life through the lens of cultural theory as theoretical frameworks in informing my analysis and interpretation. In this Chapter, I discuss a rhizomatic approach to ethnography as research methodology. I also discuss the methods

I used for data gathering, namely, participant observation, interviewing and storytelling.

Research as a Way of Life

The genesis of this research project began before I had even found myself ruminating about the topic for my dissertation. My first encounter with the concept of

“diaspora” was on the back cover of America is in the Heart, an autobiographical novel by the Filipino migrant-writer, Carlos Bulosan. The novel’s depiction of human exploitation and racial prejudice was so gripping that the word “diaspora” totally escaped my attention until I came to the U.S. as a migrant myself. I revisited the word or in some existential way, the word revisited me. The ontological condition that grounds my identity as a person of the diaspora has shifted in many ways from when I landed on the shores of San Francisco Bay on July 7,1994 to the moment I took my citizenship oath twenty years later. Within this time frame, I lived my life as a work-in-progress, searching for what it means to circulate through the double-consciousness of an imagined 47

homeland and the materiality of the hostland (Clifford, 1994; Hall, 1994; Vertovec,

2003).

Diaspora as a Meaning-making Process

Sifting through the various ways I attempted to create a “home away from home”,

I realized that they have always been technologically mediated to some degree by engaging in karaoke sessions with friends, attending Independence Day celebrations and other cultural festivals, reading community newspapers, renting Filipino films on dvd or frequenting Filipino restaurants and stores that showed Filipino television shows on cable. They served as strategies to mitigate homesickness. They facilitated my own

“emplacement” process (Smyer Yu, 2013) as I pieced together a new identity in the U.S.

Creating an inventory of these mediated activities opened new possibilities for a researcher about what it takes to be “trans-national” or “de-territorialized” while navigating a mediascape that embeds being ‘here’ and ‘there’ as a way of life

(Appadurai, 1994). It was here that I began to consider how these mediated activities function as epistemological foundations in defining the meaning of diaspora. It was when

I began inhabiting the ethnographic fieldwork for this project that I started internalizing the meaning of diaspora as it is lived and performed in everyday life.

A Rhizomatic Approach to Ethnography

Ethnography locates fieldwork as a space where the social and material worlds are experienced (Patton, 2015; Smith, 2002; Van Maanen, 1988). A rhizomatic approach to ethnography borrows its theoretical and methodological grounding from Deleuze and

Guattari’s (1987) philosophical framework that moves away from a positivist view of 48

reality where human behavior can be explained in predictable and quantifiable ways with predetermined theoretical assumptions. A rhizomatic approach locates research as a thought experiment and fieldwork as a labyrinth where human behavior can be examined through multiple entry points (Bowen, 2013; Douglas-Jones and Sariola, 2009). There is no center or hierarchical structure where a linear way of gathering and interpreting data can be conducted (Clarke and Parsons, 2013). Every encounter with research participants is a cultural experience on its own within an intricate map of stories that coalesce and diverge depending on specific historical and geopolitical contexts (Caughey, 2006;

Grossberg, 2013). The inter-subjective relationship between researcher and participant informs the interpretation of findings not in predictable terms but in offering new ways of knowing about the phenomenon.

In this approach, a researcher acknowledges that not everything about the culture of participants’ everyday habitus is immediately understandable. And even if they are, such understandings are considered temporary interpretations, open to revision as stories are reconstructed in everyday life (Van Maanen, 1979). Within this approach, I locate storytelling, participating in community events and interacting with people in their natural habitats as methods to knowing surface connections between disparate stories. It is from these connections that new ideas about identity, resistance and citizenship emerge not as repurposed theories but as new discourses that live and breathe as they are performed in everyday life.

The multiple encounters I had with my participants locate a fieldwork in which the eagerness to share stories reveal a social bond driven not only by our commonalities 49

as Filipinos but also by our different predilection to various diaspora media forms. The material and social world in which I locate my fieldwork defines diaspora as an experience shaped within Chicago as a host environment. The labyrinthine structure of this fieldwork or cultural map is not fixed in one physical space nor confined to a single- themed activity. I opened myself to different spaces and activities where FilAms congregate or interact. Some of these interactions are more structured or organized based on purpose and relevance. They have histories of their own and they operate in specific cultural and political dynamics that bring FilAms together in various spaces and times.

Some interactions are random occurrences precipitated by everyday needs and desires such as grocery shopping, waiting on a bus or train stop, eating in a local restaurant or spontaneous get-togethers after a wake or during a Christmas gathering.

Ethnography offers an approach in which shared values between researcher and participant can provide a deeper understanding of a culture (Clair, 2003; Villenas, 2010;

Wertz, Charmaz, et.al, 2011)). As a person of the diaspora myself, I share a lot of history, memories and cultural practices with my research participants. Their stories of migration, their struggle to eke out a new life in America and the many ways they adopt diaspora media in their everyday lives, are narratives that resonated with me on many levels. As a consequence, the resonance revealed a thought process that unraveled certain biases about the culture I was examining – an inter-subjective reflexivity that scholars argue is inevitable in ethnography (Brewer, 2000; Carspecken, 1996; Davies, 1998; Glesne, 2011;

Patton, 2015). There were events that I found alienating because of my lack of exposure to them and there were activities that reinforced my indifference toward its purpose and 50

meaning. Confronting the biases is a process that I annotated on my field notes and in constructing the interpretive framework of my findings. It paved the way for an internal assessment of my own sense of judgment as an interpreter of stories and lived cultural practices, and an actual member of a culture I was exploring to understand.

Being an ethnographer and a participant at the same time was a transformative experience. Observing how some intergenerational FilAms enjoy participating in a fashion show or express pride through tribal dancing in a public park was a different experience compared to glancing at these photographed moments in community newspapers or Facebook. There was a paradigm shift in the way I altered my predetermined assumptions about specific behaviors and social practices because I experienced them both as an insider and an outsider. Why a fashion show attracts more people than a human rights forum can be explained in thematic terms. But without experiencing the body gestures, visual motifs and social relationships that constitute such activities, one cannot have a clear understanding of what animates the production of these spaces of human interaction (Lefebvre, 1991b).

To the extent that my own reflexivity serves as an expression of empathy or critique of the culture I intend to study is for the readers of this study to decide (Davies,

1998; Denzin, 1997; Longhofer, Floersch and Hoy, 2013). What this chapter articulates is a methodological approach to the study of a complex cultural phenomenon where the inter-subjective relationship between researcher and participant shapes the research project’s theoretical and interpretive framework. Employing participant observation and interview as methods of data gathering expanded my perspective of storytelling as a two- 51

way process that shifts between researcher and participant. Epistemologically, they served as crucial methods in re-introducing myself to the culture I embrace as my own and yet alienated in multiple ways.

Participant Observation

Participant observation involves a range of techniques that includes face-to-face interaction with members of a well-defined community and participating in activities and events where they congregate (Patton, 2015; Van Maanen, 1979). In traditional anthropology, spending long periods of time in the locale where research participants conduct their everyday lives provides a significant source of interpretive data. However,

Van Maanen argues that even in long durations of time, the meanings of events and activities can never be fully determined. This means that even shorter research projects can reveal valuable outcomes especially when ethnographers are familiar with the language and culture of the group of people under study. Spontaneous conversations while riding a bus or eating in restaurants or attending events in public parks can offer new ideas about human behavior. Although they can never be replicated or verified, they may open new themes, questions and interpretations for an ethnographer (Davies, 1998;

Glesne, 2011; Russell Bernard, 1988). Observing the context in which words, phrases and objects are invoked makes participant observation a vital method in understanding complex phenomenon.

Participant observation also necessitates being aware of material objects with which research participants interact and relate. Paying close attention to how such objects are arranged and used in a space in a sustained timeframe provide crucial information 52

about the logic that informs their utility. For some people, certain objects are not only extension of their bodies, but also extension of their minds and identities (Saldana and

Omasta, 2018; Thomas, 1993). The scale in which their materiality reshape or alter peoples’ social relationships or perceptions of each other offer critical insights in understanding complex human behavior. For example, when friends abandon the microphone and engage in group singing during karaoke, the singer-audience dichotomy is blurred and new forms of social bonding occurs. When intergenerational families gather around to watch a TFC program, the television screen assumes a unifying role that bridges perceived linguistic boundaries. Being cognizant of surface connections between objects and people underscores the importance of participant observation as a data- gathering strategy.

From December 2016 to June 2018, I conducted participant observation by attending numerous events and activities held in public parks, conference halls, shopping center, restaurants, bars, private hotels, someone’s basement and community center halls.

These events included Independence Day celebration, a conference on Filipino American

History Month, a Citizenship Application workshop, an Arts and Crafts Festival, a

Singing competition in a shopping center, a cultural festival with a fashion show, a

Human Rights Forum, and an Awards Night for Successful Filipino Americans. The size of attendees in these events varied based on theme, venue and purpose. The annual

Independence Day celebration attracted the biggest crowd. Arts and Culture festivals that allow attendees to dress up in Filipino-themed formal attire come in second in terms of attendance. These events tended to be more intergenerational but with more attendance 53

from older generation. Events with strong socio-political themes like immigration or human rights attracted less crowd but with greater participation from younger FilAms and non-Filipinos.

Some of the events I attended were scheduled in advance while some came to my attention through the invitation of friends in the community or through announcements I read on social media. Some events that I had not planned on attending like Awards night or formal gatherings where I have to wear formal attire were last minute decisions I made as a favor to friends needing company. Those unplanned events broadened my purview of the culture I was attempting to study.

Participating in these events and activities expanded my familiarity not only of the activities themselves but also of the people who inhabit them. I did not realize how wearing the barong (embroidered man blouse) or terno makes FilAms connect to each other with such grace and camaraderie. Wearing the barong gave me an instant membership to a group of people I used to view from afar albeit with mixed feelings.

Being part of that crowd and embracing the ethos that informs the sense of pride that one feels in such events made participant observation a reflective moment. The events and activities I participated in included the following:

Piyesta Pinoy (Philippine Festival), In June 2018, I attended the Piyesta Pinoy

Event that served as the annual community celebration of Philippine Independence Day.

Now on its 6th year, the event is held in Bolingbrook, a suburb of Chicago, on a Saturday in early June. It is organized by Philippine American Cultural Foundation, an all- volunteer, 501c 3 not-for-profit group. In prior years, the Independence Day celebration 54

is commemorated in three or four separate events held in different venues and organized by different community groups. The events were held in Chicago. Typically, these events would include a fashion show, a cultural night of resistance featuring spoken word poetry and martial arts and a small gathering of older Filipino WW II veterans reading passages from Philippine history books at the Rizal Center. I have been in attendance in some of these events during my early years in Chicago but my interest soon waned.

Piyesta was much bigger than I expected. There were numerous tents and booths that featured Filipino indigenous arts and crafts, publications on Philippine history, folktales and colorful coffee table books on fashion and architecture, food stalls, clothing stalls featuring the barong and ethnic-inspired t-shirts, an Alibata (Filipino indigenous alphabet) tattoo artist, a martial arts tent where people can learn the basics of Arnis or

Eskrima (Filipino sport and martial arts using bamboo sticks) and a karaoke shop where anyone can sing. These tents and booths were all sprawled in a public park giving the event a very festive atmosphere. There is a live performance on an amphitheater-like area that featured traditional dances performed mostly by young FilAms, a rondalla (local mandolin) group and a church choir. The main feature of the stage performance is Inigo

Pascual, an up and coming Filipino teen pop star courtesy of ABS-CBN television network and TFC. The event is scheduled from 9am to 4pm. I came in around noon and stayed until about 3pm.

The festive mood of the event is evident in the jovial ways most people relate to each other. There is a good mixture of the young and the old, American-born and immigrant background made explicit by accents and proliferation of regional dialects. I 55

do not understand Cebuano and Waray (southern dialects) or Ilocano (northern dialect) but my familiarity of its sound allowed my eavesdropping to decipher dialect differences.

The presence of local language dominated the sound atmosphere as I walked around the sprawling expanse of the Bolingbrook public park. Canned and live Tagalog songs coming out of the large speakers in the performance stage area complimented the sound collage.

Participating in this event allowed me to conduct short on the spot interviews that lasted from 10-15 minutes. The short conversations centered on why they attend such events and how long have they been attending. Typical responses revolve around just having fun, getting a sense of community and having access to a wide variety of food and

Filipino crafts. For this event, I was able to talk to five respondents. In two short interviews I conducted that lasted 15 minutes, I identified myself as a researcher and respondents came from different parts of Chicago. The other three short interviews that lasted about 10 minutes were conducted with a tattoo artist and two young food vendors selling egg rolls and turon (banana fritters)

There were small pockets of people seated on the elevated ground in front of the amphitheater watching the performances while enjoying their food. There are children playing Filipino games like palasebo (Filipino version of Mexican piñata) and playing around a mocked up Jeepney, an iconic symbol of Filipino public transport vehicle. I approached a crowded food tent serving the Lechon (roast pig) but the line was long so I opted for the buffet section. There was so much visual and sound spectacle occurring in simultaneous fashion that conversations were limited to casual talk. With the two hosts 56

on stage dominating the sound waves with their comedic banter, it was hard to hear anything else.

Witnessing all these activities is delightful and overwhelming at the same time.

The whole experience was riveting that my senses were tapped to its maximum capacity.

From the time I arrived up to the time I left the event, people were still tricking in and out within the wide array of tents and stalls spread out in uneven fashion. I had wanted to conduct more interviews but doing so would take away the joy of participating in the various activities. According to one of the organizers, attendance to the event has increased tremendously since it started five years ago, from visitors to vendors to artists.

Piyesta is one of the few cultural events where regional identities converge in a spirit of fun. Food, music, dialects, tattoo, dance and other cultural motifs served as entry points in appreciating Filipino culture, even just for one day. In this once a year event, loyalty to the homeland is experienced rather than idealized.

Citizenship Workshop. On June 17, 2017, I attended a Citizenship workshop organized by the Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (AFIRE).

The workshop is a project that provides assistance to immigrants in need legal advice and financial support in processing their citizenship application. The workshop is held once every two months (subject to funding) and is open to all ethnic groups. I signed up to volunteer as a Citizenship Facilitator. I received a brief orientation from a staff member and having gone through the application process myself, I was confident enough to handle the task. The workshop was held at the Mexican Consulate on the southwest side of Chicago. The big hall was set up with rows of individual tables and chairs. There were 57

two sections: the Information Section where a citizenship facilitator interacts with an applicant on a one-on-one basis. When the applicant is finished getting their basic documents approved, they proceed to the Legal Section where they get legal advice from pro-bono lawyers. There were six citizenship facilitators on our side and about 8-10 lawyers in the Legal section most of whom I noticed are Asian Americans. Later I found out that the lawyers came from a volunteer group called Asian American Advancing

Justice (AAAJ). The workshop is free of charge.

From 9:30 am to 12:30pm, I interacted with three citizenship applicants. To protect their identities, I identify these applicants as Applicant A, B and C. Applicant A is a Filipino woman in her late 50s accompanied by her white husband who is in his 70s.

Applicant B is an 80-year old woman accompanied by her 34-year daughter and

Applicant C is a 54-year old woman whose husband returned to the Philippines for good.

Applicant A came prepared with all the necessary documents. The first thing she asked upon taking her seat is “Are you Filipino?” to which I said “Yes”. She was amused and told her husband she feels relieved because she can speak in Tagalog. While going over her documents, her husband started telling stories about how they wanted to attend the workshop a month ago because they do not want to stress over this process a week before they leave for the Philippines. The woman keeps joking about her husband nagging her to file the application a year ago but she kept on postponing it. The couple obviously came prepared so inquiries where short that included how soon would they know if the application is approved or how long would the citizenship interview take. I told them that the immigration lawyers would be to answer those questions more precisely. I 58

returned the checked documents and told them to proceed to the Legal section. The women thanked me profusely. The consultation lasted about 20 minutes.

The interaction with Applicant B took a lot longer. The 80-year old woman exhibited some difficulty in speaking so her daughter did most of the talking. The story of this Mother-Daughter pair is more emotional and challenging. The story is that this application is the third time for the 80-year old woman. The daughter is only visiting from the Philippines on a tourist visa and came with her mother because her other siblings are all busy working. The citizenship application of her mother was denied twice.

Her mother failed the first citizenship interview when she was in her 60s because most of her answers to the interview questions were wrong. In her second attempt, she had a change of address and missed her citizenship interviews appointment. The daughter sounded desperate because her mother is getting old and sickly.

We conducted the consultation mostly in Tagalog. She was very candid about her mother getting her citizenship soon so she can get Social Security and Medicare benefits.

There were some side stories about her siblings who are U.S. residents who do not seem to pay attention to the needs of their mother. She felt sad about this family situation and wishes that she could just bring her mother back to the Philippines as soon as her tourist visa expires. But her mother is adamant about getting her American citizenship. It the brief moments when her mother would interject, it was obvious that she had difficulty communicating in English. The daughter was honest enough to say that she is not expecting too much about the result. I told her about some missing documents and advised her to consult with the lawyers about this. There was a hint of hopelessness in her 59

tone so I told her to work with the lawyers and gave her some encouraging thoughts to keep her spirits up. After they left, I felt a sense of sadness creeping in until the next applicant came my way.

Applicant C came with an emotional baggage about a complicated relationship with her husband. She presented her documents and filled up all the forms correctly. She is a registered nurse who came to the U.S. on an immigrant visa. Her husband disappeared one day and never contacted her for a year. It was when she decided to apply for citizenship that looking for his whereabouts became more intense. Since they are not officially divorced, she needed her husband’s signature and evidence of support so she can proceed with the application. She soon found out from people she knew in the

Philippines that her husband had taken a mistress. Her inquiries were beyond the basic knowledge I have about legal requirements so I urged her to consult with the lawyers.

The spontaneity with which personal and family stories unraveled during my encounter with the applicants was obviously facilitated by a common bond. Even though there was a structured physical set up that separates us as consultants and applicants, an instant connection was forged making the formal set up of the place less intimidating.

The mood that pervaded in the room suggested a level of formality but one can see the hospitable ways AFIRE staff and volunteers were trying the create to make immigrants comfortable. Even though there was a set of outcomes to be expected at the end of the process, it was evident that a sense of community pervades. The human interaction seemed formal on the surface but hearing the individual conversations suggested casualness and empathy. Attending this event was a glimpse into the more serious stories 60

that FilAms can only talk about in such a setting. It gives a different side to diaspora life.

It humanized citizenship in the way immigrants situate their struggle in a system that downplays the emotional and financial costs of reaching the American dream.

Dinagyang Festival. The festival originates from Iloilo City, one of the few religious-cultural festivals popular in Southern Philippines. It features street parades of colorful tribal dances and chants celebrating the feast of the Sto. Nino (Holy Child Jesus).

The Chicago version is organized by FilAms coming from that region in the Philippines.

I attended the event in September 2018 held at the Drury Lane Hotel in Oak Brook, a

Chicago suburb. I was invited by a friend who is an active member of an all-volunteer group of Filipino nurses who served as one of the event’s organizers. The event is formal and attendees came in their colorful ternos and barongs. I arrived in the event held in a big ballroom halfway through the program just in time for the fashion show. There is a live band and a disc jockey situated in the small stage area. In front of it is a short ramp where the folk dancing, singing and fashion show were performed. The performers were mostly younger FilAms. The fashion show models were intergenerational composed of men and women. There was also a Ms. Dinagyang pageant that served as the culminating event of the festival. The tribal dancing, the fashion show and the coronation of Ms.

Dinagyang were the most documented on people’s mobile phones raised high enough to capture the pageantry of those activities. Eavesdropping on some conversations from a nearby table revealed amusement from older folks who take pride in watching their children perform the tribal dances.

The mood and energy of the event is similar to Piyesta Pinoy only in a smaller scale. Most people I met spoke in Ilonggo, the native dialect of the region. The tone of this dialect is very melodic, quite different from Tagalog that is more rhythmic than tonal.

I observed a strong sense of pride upon hearing people speak the dialect. Snippets of

English and Tagalog were mixed with the regional dialect in the way people communicate with each other. I do not understand or speak any other dialect than

Tagalog so in moments of intense laughter from some folks, I could only smile back as an expression of sympathy. Regionalism is in great display in this event as the sound and texture of Ilonggo prevailed throughout the night. It was here that I realized a sense of distance from the crowd because of language, a positionality on which being an outsider looking in became more pronounced.

Kultura Festival. The festival is organized by Filipino Kitchen, a not-for-profit group engaged in raising Filipino cuisine as an expression of community and cultural pride. On its website, the event is described as: “Kultura Festival is the Midwest's premier Filipino American food and arts event featuring Fil-Am chefs, performers, artisans, educators, and more. Carefully curated to appeal to both those who personally identify with Filipino culture and the merely curious or uninitiated, Kultura Festival aims to highlight the best in modern Filipino American food and arts in Chicago, the Midwest, and beyond”. I attended the event through the invitation of Natalie, a Filipina migrant who formed Filipino Kitchen five years ago. She is an old acquaintance who once volunteered in the theater group I am involved with. Filipino Kitchen is a traveling food project that believes in promoting Filipino food culture and chefs within and outside of 62

the FilAm community. The event was held at Emporium Logan Square, a food court and bar lounge located on the Logan Square district of northwest Chicago.

The space is filled with tables and stalls that had vendors selling food, t-shirts and various arts and crafts that featured Filipino and Asian artifacts. The food stalls I visited featured young chefs introducing new ways of concocting Filipino cuisine, quite different from what one can see in traditional Filipino restaurants in Chicago. The stalls are designed to highlight the background of the chefs and a brief history of the food being sold. Eighty percent of the space area is devoted to food stalls while the other twenty percent is occupied by arts and crafts and informational booths from community organizations such as AFIRE, Filipino American Historical Society, Circa Pintig (the theater group I happen to represent) and Asian American Advancing Justice, a group of lawyers doing pro-bono work on social justice. There is a stage area in a small corner in the back of the food court. Performances I was able to see included a young Korean

American rap singer, a Filipina-American spoken word artist who identifies as a

FilipiniX (gender neutral) and a Pan Asian comedy-improv group.

There is a strong attendance of millennials and generation X groups in this event.

It is also more ethnically diverse with pockets of Asian and Latino groups exploring

Filipino food and enjoying the live performances in the small stage area. What was obvious in the festive atmosphere of this event is a celebration of entrepreneurship, identity and youth activism. This is made manifest by the presence of young chefs passing out business cards and website information, rappers and spoken word artists performing themes related to gender equality and racial justice. There was no folk 63

dancing or tribal chanting and no ethnic-specific language conversations that one would normally find or hear at Piyesta Pinoy or Dinagyang Festival. English dominated the conversational talk in this event and the music motif is filled with contemporary pop music and rap. I stayed in the festival for about three hours and I did not hear one song, live or recorded, in Tagalog. As an observer, I was aware of my distance from the crowd not only because of age difference but also because some visual and sound motifs did not resonate with my own cultural sensibility. This then created an ethnographer-participant dichotomy that allowed me to assume the role of an outsider studying a culture that is both strange and familiar.

Filipino American History Month Celebration. This event is held annually during the month of October and is organized by the Filipino American National

Historical Society and the Philippine American Cultural Foundation with the support of the Philippine Consulate in Chicago. The event started in 2011 upon the passing of US

Congress Resolution 780 recognizing October as the official celebration of Filipino

American History across the U.S. The event commemorates the important contribution of

Filipino Americans in preserving Philippine history and culture. The event is a month- long celebration with activities and events that focus on current achievements of outstanding FilAms in various professional disciplines and discussions of relevant social issues that connect history to contemporary times. Like Piyesta Pinoy, this event requires the involvement of many FilAm organizations and groups with each one given the opportunity to highlight their work. This event, however, is spread out in different dates in October and occurs in different venues in Chicago and nearby suburbs. 64

I attended the cultural night event as a post-conference ritual in late October. It was held in a big community hall next to the Seafood City shopping mall. As an opening salvo, the night started with some tribal dancing where everyone is enjoined to participate. Next came the food celebration. This part was somewhat disorganized as the food items arrived in different batches and the lines that lead to the buffet tables were not in synch. At some point, the emcee requested everyone to settle down as they get their food and soon introduced the Philippine Consul for the opening remarks. The program was short with only two young singers, a short speech from a Filipino historian visiting from California and a rondalla performance of a children’s group from Skokie, a Chicago suburb. The program lasted 45 minutes. Then SamaSama Project, a local band, started playing a familiar Filipino disco song. Older Filipinos started moving to the center to dance and soon enough, the hall was filled with people dancing. As I expected, the live band broke into Billy Ray Cyrus’ Achy Breaky Heart and line dancing dominated the hall. It was as if most people were willing to let loose after a 3-day cerebral experience at the conference.

There were a lot of familiar faces in the crowd most of whom I have seen at

Piyesta Pinoy. The event was also held on a Thursday so the crowd was a modest size but still cramped for a space not meant to comfortably accommodate about 200 people. The crowd was a mix of American-born and immigrants judging from how people communicated language-wise. Some of the conversations I overheard still reflected the theme of the conference that focused on building a cohesive community, bridging intergenerational barriers and revisiting history. Buzzwords I overheard in attendees’ 65

chatter as I was moving around revealed regionalism, America’s got talent and what is

FilipiniX. Some of the younger crowd I observed tended to watch rather than participate in conversations. It was the older crowd who were more gregarious and ready to share smile or nods while moving among the crowd. The event was also less formal so most people except for the organizers, came in semi-formal, casual wear. A brief conversation with a documentary filmmaker revealed a passionate clamor for more representation in film. She herself is working on a film project on Filipino migrant experience and was taking some video footage on the event. We exchanged email addresses for future discussion.

Human Rights Forum. The event was organized by two community-based organizations, Malaya Network and FAHRA (Filipino American Human Rights

Advocates). The two organizations are volunteer-driven and are dedicated to fighting social injustice and human rights violations. Membership in these two groups is intergenerational. Older members are former political activists whose passion for human rights inspires them to educate and mentor younger FilAms about political issues in the

Philippines. The forum was conducted in celebration of the December 10 Human Rights

Day established by the United Nations. It was held at the Rizal Center on the northeast side of Chicago. The flow of the event is composed of sharing testimonies from victims of human right abuses, reading of solidarity statements and call to action pleas from different groups participating in the forum. Other groups participating in the forum came from Asian American, Latino American and LGBT activist groups. There were about 25 people in the forum, a much smaller crowd compared to other events I have attended 66

prior to this event. The heating system in the Center had some problems during the forum but people stayed on even if it means wearing their winder coats and jackets while interacting and sharing their experiences. It was a display of commitment to a social cause and an expression of solidarity in addressing common struggles that affect marginalized communities.

Seafood City. Serving as the mecca of anything Filipino, Seafood City was a place I visited every so often to get my supply of rice, local coffee, frozen egg rolls and many other items not available in other grocery stores. Seafood City is a place where

FilAms across class and generational backgrounds congregate and conduct the business of everyday life such as food shopping, sending balikbayan boxes, remitting money to relatives in the Philippines, subscribing to TFC cable service, bingo playing and real estate investments. On Saturdays, the Philippine Consulate holds office in an adjacent room to help process passport applications for those applying for dual citizenship. The

Consulate is aggressively pursuing this campaign to encourage FilAms to invest and vote in Philippine elections.

When I visited one day in August of 2018 to do some grocery shopping, I was dragged into becoming a judge for a singing contest sponsored by TFC. I met an old acquaintance who was one of the organizers of the contest and was invited to take part in the judging process in exchange for a bag of groceries. I accepted the offer and took part as one of three judges. The contest was staged in one corner of the big shopping center in front of the check out area near the main door. There was shopping, singing, men rolling

balikbayan boxes to a shipping office and eating in the various food stalls. It was like watching Philippine everyday life unfolding in one corner of Northwest Chicago.

Bibak Community Picnic. Attending this event was a last minute decision as a favor to a friend who needed additional hand for his one-year old child. The said friend is actually from the South but has developed a close relationship with BIBAK, a group of

FilAms from the northern side of the Philippines. The term BIBAK is an acronym for the five provinces that comprise the Cordillera region of Northern Philippines. The picnic was held at Labagh Woods, a forest reserve in the northwest side of Chicago. The place is a familiar picnic area frequented by other Filipino groups during summer. The group occupied a covered picnic booth with tables and benches mounted on the ground. There were about 40 people in the crowd, some of them in their regular attire. Some women have native Kalinga (local tribe) blankets wrapped around their waist. The group welcomed me with their smiles and pointed me to the table where different food items abound. There were typical Filipino dishes mixed with pasta, pizza, tamales and various types of deserts. Someone brought in a bowl of freshly roasted peanuts with lots of garlic.

The smell was so powerful that it transported me to another place and time.

There was no scheduled set of activities. Randomly, a middle-age man grabs a headdress adorned with chicken feathers and a gangsa, a round pan-shaped instrument made of bronze (similar to Indonesian gongs) and starts beating it with a stick. In an instant, the small pockets of conversation stopped as the man moves into another side of the picnic booth and starts stomping his feet while beating the gangsa. The action seemed like a cue as another man joins in and then another until there was about ten of them 68

moving in a circle with alternating beats. A couple of young boys maybe 14 or 15 also joined in trying to keep up with the beat taking cues from the older men in the group. My friend handed me his child, grabbed a gangsa and joined the group as well. Everything about this ritual is impromptu and there was a lot of improvising in terms of dance patterns and choreography initiated by older men.

After about ten minutes, some women joined the dance inserting themselves in between the men with their hands flicking like birds. The men and the women would then move in circles in opposite direction with the men inside the circle. There was instant synchrony in the way both men and women improvise their movements and conduct the gangsa (tribal gongs) playing in alternating beats. Only the men play the gangsas because the women use their hands for the waving movement. There were moments when some older people watching the group would correct the younger dancers on how to synch their instrument playing. It was a delight watching the men and women perform this ritual and communicate through music and dance. Mobile phones from the audience were raised up to document the dancing. After about twenty minutes, the group made a collective chant to signal the end of the ritual. There was applause and friendly heckling from the small audience. There was extra applause for the younger boys with the older crowd showing appreciation for what they did.

The dancing group disperses and joins the rest of the crowd. Some went back to eating while others move about and conducted more chatter and teasing of each other. A few newcomers trickled in placing their trays of food on the buffer table. Overhearing the small talk revealed a mixture of English and what sounded to me like Ilokano, the 69

dominant dialect of Northern Philippines. I asked Michelle, one of the women leaders of group who is from Ifugao, another tribe, what dialect was and she responded which one I am referring to. She went on to say “Igorot (an umbrella term for the tribe members) language has many variations depending on the tribe. But they all sound like Ilokano” she added. I have friends who speak Ilokano so I am familiar with the sound but my understanding of it is very limited.

After a long chatter, I heard Earth, Wind and Fire’s September song in a karaoke speaker with a mobile phone attached to it. A young male teen started dancing. After a while, an older man and woman joined in and people started laughing. A hip-hop song followed and other younger boys joined the singing and dancing. This ritual lasted about fifteen minutes. After which, the same man who started the tribal dancing an hour before started banging the gangsa to catch everyone’s attention. Pretty soon, another round of gangsa playing and tribal dancing ensued. There is a strong intergenerational bonding that became obvious in this picnic. I was amazed at how younger FilAms in this group embraced the gangsa playing and dancing with no hint of hesitation.

Golden Harvest Awards Night. Jose, one of my interviewees, called me out of blue and asked if I wanted to be his date for the Gintong Pamana (Golden Harvest)

Awards Night. His wife cannot make it and he already paid for the ticket ($75 per head).

The sudden invitation could not have come at a better time since I missed the other awards night event sponsored by another group that I had originally planned to attend.

With a free ticket offered, how can I refuse? I struggled look for a decent wardrobe to fit what sounded like a formal occasion. Jose told me he would bring his extra barong for 70

me. He picked me up and went along with the one hour and half drive to Hotel Regency in Barrington, Illinois. I wore the barong as soon as we arrived at the Hotel and off we went to the ballroom where the event is taking place. As soon as I took my seat, I realized the barong was a bit tight adding to the discomfort I was already feeling. I have a strong fascination for the barong as a formal wear. However, I was never an avid user of it only because I find the fabric too fragile to move around with. With this particular barong not fitting me well, I became too conscious of how I looked.

The awards night celebrated the achievements of FilAms coming from different fields of endeavor that included law, business, fashion design, broadcast journalism, education, philanthropy, medicine and social service. The youngest awardees who were in their early to mid 20s were two brothers who created a Filipino version of the salsa, a fashion designer who explores indigenous fabric in his collection and a female news reporter from ABC Chicago Television channel. The rest are in their 40s - 50s age-range.

According to Jose, selection for these awards is very arbitrary. To be selected, one should be willing to raise money for the event by selling tickets and playbill ads. It is through these strategies that the event is able to support the expenses on top of the $75 admission fee. The event is on its 23rd year, a good testament to the success of the event and its ability to keep in going year after year. According to Yoly Tubalinal, one of the main organizers, honoring the awardees is a good way to celebrate culture, community and fashion. It is a once a year event where women and men can showcase their ternos and barongs as a performance of success.

The emcee tried to make the audience at ease by mixing English and Tagalog in their spiels, infusing some Filipino humor to elicit some laughs. The female emcee even made a quick survey of those coming from the three main islands - Luzon, Visayas and

Mindanao – by making sounds. At a certain point, the woman seated to my right, mentioned that she felt like the emcee could be more formal and less showbiz because she feels like watching Showtime with Vice Ganda on TFC. In between the awarding ceremony, an impromptu fashion show was announced by the emcee encouraging those interested to gather around the stage area. About twenty women joined in. The emcee announced that the best three gowns will be selected and will be given prizes. Selection of the best three will be based on voting by the audience. The emcee also announced that audiences can take photos through their mobile phones and should post it right away on

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so families and friends outside of the US can enjoy the event as well.

I asked one Filipina woman, a manager of a home health agency on why she attend such event. “I like it when we celebrate our achievements. It happens once a year so it’s good to show off a bit. After all, we work so hard. Its good to spend some of our hard earned money and dress up really nice and be seen in a hotel even if the food is really bad” (laughs). One man in his 70s said: “I’ve been attending this event for the last fifteen years because my wife drags me into it. It’s the same format each time. But I go because it is good to see old friends, to connect with good friends I hardly see anymore.

It’s good to know who’s still living and who has passed on. I am not a big fan of fashion shows but I enjoy when women wear the terno really well.” 72

Karaoke at a Christmas Eve Party. I attended this party in December 2016 during a Winter break in my 3rd year of doctoral study. A Filipino close friend invited me to come along as a last minute gesture. I am used to spending Christmas Eve in some friend’s house since I don’t have family here in the U.S. It was an intergenerational and inter-racial gathering of grandchildren, parents and grandparents. Three of my friend’s sisters are married to white men and my friend is married to a half-Filipino, half-Polish woman. After the sumptuous dinner of various Filipino dishes, the teenage grandchildren moved to the basement and started karaoke singing. Soon enough, almost everyone followed and joined the singing. It was a delight to see half-Filipino, half-White teens singing a Filipino Christmas carol despite having difficulty in pronouncing the Tagalog lyrics on screen. The grandmother seated next to where I was sitting looked so happy watching the kids. “They do this every year but up to now they can’t get the words right”, she said with amusement.

This event is one of the many karaoke sessions I would eventually participate in between 2017 and 2018. These events included birthday parties of close friends, a post- wake celebration in a Filipino karaoke restaurant bar, a graduation party of a friend’s high school child and many impromptu sessions driven by our existential desires to eat, drink and gallivant.

An Impromptu Wake Party at Ysabel’s Grill. To call this event a ‘wake party’ sounds like an oxymoron. But because the gathering of the people involved, including myself, started during the wake of a common friend, revisiting the social bond that once united us together would inevitably find its expression through familiar cultural practice – 73

the karaoke. It was a Friday night in early February and Ysabel’s Grill was beaming with energy and warmth despite the single-digit frigid temperature outside. The place was packed when we arrived so some tables and chairs have to be added to accommodate the

24 people I came with. There was singing when we entered so the four big television screens plastered on the walls made the restaurant alive with music and images. There was a lot of catching up among this group of friends trying to top the singing that pervaded in the midst. We did not know the 40 or so people around us. Judging from the way the other tables were arranged, I don’t think everyone else know each other. But this did not stop everyone from bonding and interacting because when someone sings a familiar song, all barriers are broken and group singing becomes the norm.

Visiting Filipino Restaurants. This activity is a regular part of my routine.

Unimart, Ruby’s Restaurant and 3R are dining places I frequently visited at least once a month. Unimart is located on the Edgewater district, Ruby’s is on the Albany Park area and 3R is on the Ravenswood area, all on the north side where 90% of Filipinos in

Chicago reside. A common fixture in these three restaurants is a television screen tuned in to TFC. Unimart and 3R have small areas for grocery shopping while Ruby’s is pure restaurant. Interaction of FilAms in these places is largely consumed by food and in sporadic moments, by TFC. Conversations are kept to a minimum at least during the days

I visited.

The abovementioned events and activities that I participated in suggest a sense of ephemerality because some of them happen once a year while others have no fixed time frame and actual dates of occurrence. Such ephemerality poses some limitation in 74

asserting their epistemological potential. But as Van Dooremalen (2017) argues, events may appear ephemeral but the sentiments and feelings that arise from them are not always devoid of context and meaning. At the height of the Danish Cartoon controversy in 2005, the outrage displayed by Muslim activists in one protest event bonded together

Danish Muslims from different ethnic backgrounds for the first time. To claim that this one specific event established a collective identity in an instant may seem unconvincing.

But the social interaction that solidified a sense of solidarity because of such event reflects a sharing of common sentiments and feelings that according to Van Dooremalen

(2017) has existed for a while albeit unexpressed.

That events can be seen as social universes in themselves having logics of their own offers an understanding of culture not necessarily dependent on durations of time or routinized patterns of activity where an ethnographer spends his or her fieldwork (Van

Maanen (1979). Even in longitudinal research projects not everything about a culture can be understood. There is a discourse to be had even in ephemeral moments of everyday life. Understanding the complexity of any culture is always temporal and subject to constant modification as argued by Deleuze and Guattari (1986).

Interviewing

Interviewing is where intimate interaction between ethnographer and participant happens (Glesne, 2011). Whether face-to-face or through a phone call, interviews involve not only word exchange but also a sharing of emotions that reduces the perceived distance between interviewer and interviewee. This means that data gathered through interviews, whether audio recorded or written down on journals, should not be seen as 75

lifeless sources of interpretation bereft of context. How words are articulated and what gestures and emotions accompany them can suggest different meanings. Formal and informal talks are forms of data gathering where multiple meanings can emerge. They can inform an ethnographer’s process of interpretation in ways that broaden the context in which certain words are articulated and internalized.

I conducted interviews in structured and unstructured ways. Structured interviews are those planned ahead of time. Some of them were scheduled and arranged in advance on specific dates and places through email and Facebook messaging. Confirming the dates and places for others were done through face-to-face meet, texting and phone calls.

As early as December of 2016, I started making a list of possible respondents with whom

I can schedule structured interviews. My initial list had 20 names, a combination of close friends and people I know casually. This casual group were composed of publishers of community newspapers some of whom I have never met, Executive Directors of AFIRE,

Bayanihan Worldwide Foundation and Filipino American National Historical Society and community leaders who I have seen in community events and gatherings. This interview list eventual grew as days and months went on.

Structured Interviews. I had originally planned to conduct 30 to 40 minute interviews for my structured interviews. But as my record shows, the average length for these interviews lasted at least 60 minutes each. I started the interviews with two basic questions: How did you come to the U.S. and how did you adjust to the new culture. The responses I got from these two questions lead to many forms of stories and memory sharing. Some recollected memories of their first airport experience arriving at O’Hare 76

such as not knowing how to operate a pay phone or how to ask direction taking the train to the city. Others revealed the change of smell upon landing on the airport or how the images they have seen in Hollywood movies reaffirm their vision of America. In these stories, jokes are embedded in their recollection and the sound of laughter they produced suggest as if they are telling these jokes the first time. It is in these moments when the interview evolved into more of a conversation. The sense of formality felt in the beginning starts to dissolve animating the conversation through shared laughter and familiar anecdotes.

As an ethnographer, inserting jokes was a good strategy to make respondents feel more relaxed and comfortable. Even with those participants who I don’t know that well, the use of jokes not only broke the ice but also forged an instant connection that allowed me to ask follow-up questions. It underlined how a shared history or cultural background between ethnographer and participant makes the context of interviewing less formal. I conducted these interviews in different places: in people’s living rooms, at a Starbucks

Coffee shop, at McDonalds, in office spaces, in kitchen tables of peoples’ homes and in

Filipino restaurants. I used my mobile phone to record the interviews. Doing recorded interviews in restaurants and coffee shops was challenging because ambient sounds like passing cars or dog barking would interrupt the conversation. There were moments where

I had to request my interviewees to speak a little louder so we can overcome the sound interruptions.

My interview with Via Times publisher took place at her apartment-studio where her own cable television program is recorded. Taking advantage of my presence, she 77

requested if I can be interviewed for a segment on her cable show, to which I willingly agreed. So we switched roles with her being the talk show interviewer and myself being a guest interviewee. From the kitchen table, we moved to the living room area where the two video cameras are set up and where she would normally conduct her talk show interviewing. Most of her questions centered on my research topic and what I intend to do after getting my degree. She also asked me how I define diaspora. I took a short pause to answer the question. I did not want to sound too academic so I focused on sharing a short synopsis on why I migrated to the U.S. Her interview with me lasted about 30 minutes.

For the structured interviews, I was able to gather 30 participants. About 5 from this group of participants are people I met during the different events I attended for observation. I had originally planned on doing an interview with Jose Antonio Vargas, the undocumented social activist. I sent him a message on his Facebook page but never got any response.

I started doing my interviews in December 2016 around Christmas time. Because of the busy holiday season, I was only able to conduct 3 structured interviews. In May

2017, I moved out of my Athens apartment and moved back to Chicago to conduct more interviews. I revisited my initial list of interviewees, crossed out a few names and added some more. Introducing the topic of my dissertation to the first batch of interviewees was received with mixed reactions. I sensed a level of formality which was made more rigid when I handed them the consent form that all of them signed. In the next batch of interviewees, I decided to be less formal and performed the consent form signing ritual at

the end of the interview session. By February 2018, I have conducted 26 structured interviews.

Unstructured Interviews. Unstructured interviews are short conversations I conducted in big events like Piyesta Pinoy, Dinagyang Festival, the Golden Harvest

Awards Night, citizenship workshop and in spontaneous gatherings like karaoke sessions and family parties I attended. I define unstructured interviews as those conducted onsite and those that occur as spontaneous conversation in the events where I conducted participant observation. I would call these candid and short conversations as a form of onsite interviewing similar to a strategy adopted by Ossman (1994). Onsite interviewing occurs as part of everyday talk that happens in private and public spaces.

As Mansbridge (1999) argues, the lack of structure in this kind of interviewing encourages spontaneity allowing an information exchange that is not pre-conditioned by roles established in traditional interviewer-interviewee dynamic. There were 2 people I met at a CTA Montrose stop while waiting for the train. These two people approached me and asked “Pilipino ka?” (Are you Filipino?). They heaved a sigh of relief when I said

“oo’ (yes) displaying a sudden rush of joy in their faces. I took the opportunity to chat with them for about 15 minutes asking questions about how long they have been in the

U.S and how do they keep connected back home. It was through these questions that I learned they are recent immigrants working as caregivers for a Filipino-owned health care services. It was an instant conversation in our native tongue, something the three of us found refreshing. I conducted 14 unstructured interviews at different times in various places and events. 79

Storytelling as Data Gathering

Smith (2002) asserts that the art of storytelling reflects the values, belief systems and forms of resistance of a culture. Epistemologically, she further argues that stories in themselves are connected to knowing and that storytelling can be both method and meaning. As a data-gathering strategy, storytelling gives voice to personal histories a retelling of which provide interviewees the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences. It locates the instability of memory as interviewees recall the past from different vantage points. Storytelling locates memory itself as a discourse subject to competing interpretations.

Transitioning into a storytelling mode was a natural recourse for most of my participants. Opening the interview with questions like “how did you come to the U.S?” or “do you remember interesting moments upon arriving in the U.S?” typically evolved into a trip down memory lane. It usually began with a deep sigh as if preparing for a heavy lifting of something they feel excited about. The eagerness to relive this part of their history was evident in the tone of their voices and the employment of hand gestures and eye movements to illustrate their emotions. The act of retelling is mixed with nostalgia, self-deprecating confessions and mundane details of childhood past. One participant recalled looking forward to opening the balikbayan boxes her mother would bring when visiting the Philippines because she can smell the scent of America.

In particular, storytelling as a data gathering strategy became most engaging with

Victoria and Manolo, publishers of the two community newspapers in the community.

Their vast knowledge of people and events in the community are an impressive archive of 80

stories and gossips. Asking them to relate how they started their publishing business was an entry point to a telenovela. Response to this particular question lead into a storyline with intricate sub-plots of how they came to the U.S., what was the community like when they ventured into the newspaper business, gossips about certain personalities and opinions about social issues happening in the community. At certain points in their storytelling, they took a swipe at each other indicating a shared history and a relationship that spanned three decades. It was in these storytelling moments that I got a broader portrait of the community’s history and character. The conviction and pathos that accompanied these storytelling moments expressed different perceptions of and feelings about the community. Investigating the social dynamics of the community through the prism of their wisdom and lived experience empirically situates the potential of storytelling as a data gathering mechanism. What they offered as storytellers was a rich source of data that cultural researchers can benefit from.

Interjecting little pieces of my own story proved to be a good strategy in making my interviewees more comfortable in telling their stories. At first, the act of interjecting happened spontaneously as a reaction to familiar anecdotes and experiences. This made the conversation more dialogic and interactive. Given this newfound knowledge, I became more discerning and deliberate about when to interject to keep the storytelling flowing. This strategy became useful in deciphering how to gear the conversation into the next interview topic without losing the storytelling momentum.

An important argument that Smith (2002) asserts is that storytelling can also be an indigenizing process. When an ethnographer poses questions to participants, questions 81

arrive as constructed words that sometimes may sound esoteric or formal. This then can lead participants to respond differently from what ethnographers expect of them leaving little room for conversational storytelling. Establishing an atmosphere where ethnographer and participant are able to share personal stories through jokes and gossips indigenizes complex concepts like identity, resistance or diaspora. It provides a local flavor to a definition of identity as being proud of wearing the terno or barong or tattooing the indigenous Filipino script into one’s shoulder as a performance of resistance. This then locates storytelling not only as a data gathering mechanism but also a process of cultural translation.

Documentation and Transcription: Writing, Re-listening and Translating

All of my structured interviews were tape-recorded. The real names of my participants in this batch were coded to protect their identity. I assigned a different name to each one like characters in a story. I maintained the first letter of their real name as an identifying mark. The unstructured and onsite interviews were not tape-recorded but documented on my field notes. I recorded my structured interviews on my mobile phone.

I chose to adopt this documentation method so I can exercise mobility in listening to them before transforming the recorded voices into the written form. In some instances, I listened to the taped interviews in their entirety before I actually started transcribing them. Revisiting the recorded interviews before transcribing them was a strategy I found useful to refresh my memory about how the interview went. Reliving the interview moment through my mobile phone was a useful exercise in keeping the emotional connection with my participants alive. Hearing their voices the second time gave new life 82

to the words that although mediated by technology still reverberate with some degree of emotional resonance.

As Nelson (1989) argues, the transcription process can be problematic because it reduces the actual interview experience into static words. When interview quotes are written down on paper, the words become inactive symbols and the context in which they were uttered become archival records of history. The body dynamics that animated the interview process become descriptive details that remain static. This challenges the interpretive ability of the researcher in capturing the meaning of the words now recorded as symbols and the immediacy with which such words were originally articulated.

Realizing this challenge forced me to revisit the taped interviews and the transcribed versions of them multiple times during the interpretation phase.

Listening to the taped interviews more than once helped to make the transcription process less tedious and passive. While some snippets of the interview process remained vivid in my memory like emotional outbursts or being confused with interview questions, most remained elusive because of the vast amount of information stacked in my brain.

Reliving the conversation through the taped interviews helped facilitate how and when to transcribe them. I was sitting by my small dining table listening to my mobile phone as I was transcribing my first interview on my laptop computer. It was my interview with

Victoria, the Via Times publisher. It was an hour and a half interview so going back and forth to capture the actual words on screen was a tedious process. It took me more than two hours to finish the transcription and by this time I was mentally exhausted. Being physically immobile during the process was also daunting. 83

For my next transcription project that was also an hour and half long, I decided to listen first. I was starting a youth theater workshop that week so I did the listening on the bus on my way to the workshop venue. I knew the bus trip would be long (2 bus trips that lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes) so I took advantage of the long trip to listen to my second interview. It was in this listening session that I became conscious of paying attention to the voice itself, the pauses in between sentences, the stammering, the changes in tone because of nervousness or uncertainty about what had been mentioned or bursts of laughter that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Transcribing this second interview was filled with more information aside from the actual words spoken. I adopted this method in transcribing the other interviews and located other ways of conducting the listening part. I went to public parks and listened to my mobile phone while walking. I would sit on benches to take a rest from walking while watching people moving in and out in different directions. I realized that listening to the long interviews became more bearable if I situate myself in spaces where some movement is happening visually. It was either myself who is doing the moving, the people within my immediate vicinity, the bus or the train I was in or the cars and pedestrians moving left and right through the glass window of a coffee shop. Even though I may not be actually typing on my laptop while being in these spaces, I could hear the words becoming more familiar. Writing them down later made the transcription faster. This also made the transcription process more of a reflective exercise. And this is where different thoughts on interpretation and description of findings found its starting points. 84

A majority of my participants who are fluent Tagalog speakers responded in both

English and Tagalog. This made the transcription process for some interviews longer than others because I had to insert English translations in parenthesis on some Tagalog sentences or phrases. I found myself torn between doing literal or formal translation of some sentences or words. It was in this situation that Google became very helpful.

Structuring the Findings: A Polyphonic Strategy

In ethnographic research, the interpretation of any culture is influenced by how the ethnographer puts together notes or “tales” from the fieldwork into a narrative structure. Such narrative, as Van Maanen (1988) articulates, involves a style of writing that illuminates complex human experiences where different points of view are given voice. In this particular structure, findings from the fieldwork experience are documented as stories with characters and plot trajectories that do not aim for making solutions or predictions. But the illuminative strength of these stories only gains resonance if they are interpreted as a form of dialogue rather than a monologue coming from the sole interpretive voice of the ethnographer (Gonzales, 2003; Maxwell, 2005). In such an interpretation, a concept of co-authorship is presented to the reader. The members of a given culture become interpreters and storytellers in their own right. Life histories and competing viewpoints are presented as part of the complex reality upon which the cultural phenomenon under study operates. This concept of co-authorship, as argued by

Van Maanen (1988), makes interpretation more dialogic or polyphonic.

In adopting this polyphonic approach, I presented the interpretation and analysis of my findings in juxtaposition with direct quotes from my participants. The juxtaposition 85

was employed to create a dialogic flow of constructed narratives that can help the reader digest where my interpretation and that of my research participants cohere or diverge.

The use of direct quotes in all of the chapters was meant to hear not only what they said or thought but also how they expressed themselves in the language they are comfortable with. While most of the quotes are in English, I incorporated a few words and phrases in the vernacular because translating them meant sacrificing their original intent.

Polyphony in music suggests a simultaneous combination of two or more melodies that play at different intervals. In this research, polyphony not only pertains to the combining of my voice with that of my participants. What makes it polyphonic also resides in the way the different voices of my participants cohere or diverge at certain points in their thought processes and specific life experiences. Each of their stories produced its own context and life worlds providing emotional and psychological textures in support of or in contrast to my own analysis and interpretation. As storytellers of their own struggles and dreams, I locate my participants’ individual narratives as interweaving threads in a diasporic tapestry that is Filipino American. I consider them as co-authors in my search for defining the role of diaspora media and the meaning of diaspora in our everyday lives.

Representing the Stories: Thematic Analysis

Juxtaposing direct quotes from my participants with my own analysis and interpretation was a polyphonic structure to re-inscribe my own subjectivity within the emerging discourses in the study. However, as Glesne (2011) argues, the directness of such quotes as told by participants during the data gathering phase is lost when such 86

voices are transformed into textual representations. The real-ness of the lived experience from which such quotes emanate is constituted within the sole interpretive voice of the researcher. At the same time, there is also a certain art to interpreting or in representing direct quotes without losing the life world that informs their meaning (Richardson, 2000).

It is within this challenge that the researcher is conditioned to look for narrative strategies that allow participants’ voices to speak for itself in an analytic framework that provides the reader with a sense of empathy for research participants, one that illuminates insights about complex or taken-for-granted behaviors within the culture under study.

In representing the different personal stories I gathered and the many events I attended, I adopted thematic analysis as an analytical framework in summarizing my research findings. As Braum and Clarke (2006) argue, thematic analysis not only allows a researcher to summarize large sets of data but also to examine different perspectives or unexpected insights offered by participants. It incorporates the process of identifying, analyzing, organizing and reporting themes within complex sets of data (Nowell, et al,

2017). In this manner, thematic analysis serves as an organizing method from where participants’ behavior and activities can be analyzed as patterns suggestive of themes within emerging discourses.

Using thematic analysis, I focused on three different diaspora media forms within which general themes about everyday diaspora life, home making, social activism and political citizenship served as overarching frameworks. I constructed these themes based on the degree of similarity and various points of convergence within the diverse collection of individual stories. There were also points of divergence that I attempted to 87

incorporate to visualize how perspectives and experiences differ within a given discourse.

By giving each participant a narrative voice, individual themes emerged. The decision to assign short individual themes to each participant was my attempt at emphasizing the individuality of each one’s lived experience. That while some of their stories and experiences are similar, they are not necessarily the same because their life situations and histories come from different trajectories offering multiple perspectives. To hear their individuality within an assemblage of narratives that converge and disperse at the same time offers a rhizomatic perspective in appreciating the complexity of becoming Filipino

American.

As argued by De Certeau (1984), the seemingly mundane practices we perform in everyday life suggest meanings beyond their materiality. They can produce an emotional or poetic response that brings new meanings to nostalgia within the context of the present. In Chapter 4, I locate the poetics of everyday diaspora life as a theme as they are performed through and with karaoke. In Chapter 5, the process of creating a home away from home contextualized within my participants’ relationship with TFC is a thematic discourse that articulates a mediatized behavior from the perspective of culturally displaced diasporas. The phenomenology of community newspapers and the diasporic logic that expands their many essences within the lived aspirations and struggles of my participants is the thematic thrust of Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, the ambiguity of an eventual return is a theme I describe through my participants’ different points of view expanding the meaning of diaspora as a human experience.

Chapter 4: Karaoke and the Poetics of Diaspora Life

At a Christmas Eve karaoke gathering, I watched a group of mixed Filipino/White young people mangle the Tagalog lyrics of a classic Filipino Christmas carol. The lyrics on the screen were juxtaposed with images of popular Philippine beach resorts and tourist spots. The lyrics were in no way related to the visual images, but this disjunction was irrelevant to the partygoers. That the young people were clumsily singing at all demonstrates their relationships to the songs, despite the difficulty of pronouncing the words. This apparent deficit in language proficiency is itself an entertaining performance, and part of what makes karaoke fun.

The young peoples’ 84-year-old Lola (Filipino for grandmother), observing them from the other side of the couch, said, “I’ve heard them sing this song for many

Christmases and they still don’t know the lyrics. But I like that they still sing it even though their Tagalog is baluktot (distorted).” For Lola (who does not speak Tagalog, either), this is an important ritual performance. Her native tongue is Waray, a local dialect, and her grandchildren know even less of it than Tagalog. The young FilAms’

Filipino mothers sat on the couch and recorded their children’s antics on their mobile phones, which they immediately posted to Facebook for their relatives in the Philippines.

Through karaoke, a space is created where intergenerational bonding is made possible and longing for the homeland is facilitated through singing and technology.

In this chapter, I discuss how karaoke serve as a spatializing practice for FilAms in Chicago. Space, as argued by Lefebvre (1991b), is essentially empty but becomes occupied through visual cues animated by the gestures and actions of those who inhabit 89

it. The chapter looks into the different ways karaoke functions in FilAms’ diaspora lives and how it creates spaces of interaction where boundaries of performance and spectatorship are creatively re-appropriated to create a new poetics of everyday life.

The Evolution of Karaoke

Karaoke’s etymology has evolved into a polysemic signifier. Coined from the

Japanese words kara (empty) and okesutora (orchestra), karaoke is a popular form of global entertainment (Matsui, 2001). Karaoke can refer to its technology, to the act of singing with a pre-recorded soundtrack, or to a general social practice. Its transition from noun to verb, from technology to social act, signifies an evolution that can trace its affordances in affecting human expression and interaction. For Filipinos, the invitational command of “Let’s do karaoke!” can refer to a family gathering or a group of colleagues going to a restaurant after work. It can be integrated into any holiday celebration (e.g.,

Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Super Bowl, the fourth of July, birthday parties, and baptisms). Impromptu social gatherings are not considered complete unless they culminate into a karaoke frenzy. Most Filipino households have a “magic mic’” tucked somewhere in their drawers. And, now that karaoke songs can be accessed on YouTube, all it requires is a computer with speakers and an Internet connection. The microphone is no longer an essential component of the system, even though it was the one piece of equipment that gave the singer the sense of being a “professional.”

Like other media, karaoke evolved within a globalized cultural economy influenced by developments in communication technologies and changing patterns of media production and consumption. Originally intended as an extension of the jukebox, 90

and marketed as an outlet for amateur public singing, karaoke technology was developed in Kobe, Japan, in 1972 (Kelly, 2016). The machine was developed with 48 accompaniment tracks on cassette tape, a microphone mixer with an echo effect, and a lyrics sheet. As karaoke singing became more popular in Japan and other parts of Asia, major Japanese music companies such as Teichiku, Toshiba EMI, Columbia and RCA

Victor began producing karaoke tracks in 1976. It reached the United States in 1983

(Kelly, 2016; Matsui, 2001). Many bars in the U.S. adopted karaoke to attract Asian customers, mostly traveling businessmen and diplomatic personnel. In the late 1990s,

Asian restaurants in California, New York and New Jersey incorporated karaoke singing as a way for people to connect to cultural traditions, to practice one’s traditional language, and/or to escape the banality of daily life. In most of these places, karaoke singing offered a means to create camaraderie and community. Quality of singing is just an afterthought.

Karaoke as a Spatializing Practice

Lefebvre (1991b) argues that space is a complex social construction constituted through relationships and practices involving multiple and differentiated characters. It is essentially empty but becomes occupied by visual cues animated by the gestures and actions of those who inhabit it. He articulates that:

Every social space is the outcome of a process with many aspects and contributing currents, signifying and non-signifying, perceived and directly experienced, practical and theoretical. In short, every social space has a history, one invariably grounded in nature, in natural conditions that are once primordial and unique in the sense that they are always and everywhere endowed with specific characteristics (Lefebvre, p. 110). 91

The social space that karaoke creates is driven not only by escaping the drudgery of the weekly work routine. It is socialized into FilAms’ everyday lives fulfilling practical, emotional and creative needs. But what critical insights do we gain from analyzing this socialization process? And how does one define everyday life in the context of such socialization? The phrase everyday life has been thrown around to suggest something neutral or bereft of political meaning. It’s signifying mark is that it is a cycle of repetitive acts related to work and leisure that is devoid of discursive potential. I have come to view going to the cinema or doing karaoke on weekends as a reprieve from the tediousness of my Monday to Friday, 9-5 work routine. This is the ontological reality where I view everyday life - a single sphere of cyclical moments dominated by material convenience and creative release from the excess of materialism. But as De Certeau

(1984) and Lefebvre (1984) argue, the dialectical tension between materiality and creativity is the reality of capitalist modernity that makes everyday life a political life. It occurs not in a single sphere but through an ensemble of practices of cultural reproduction and transformation (Highmore, 2002)

Amplifying this tension is where moments of critique of or resistance to the excesses of capitalist modernity become possible, a non-signifying mark that opens a new understanding of everyday life as a space of discourse. Adopting a Marxist perspective,

Lefebvre argues that capitalism, as a structural framework, is unstable because its efficient functioning is grounded on the dialectical tension between material capital and human labor. When humans realize that their full creative potential is not fulfilled, they feel alienated from themselves. Feelings of alienation breed resistance against full 92

conformity to materiality giving way to re-appropriations of everyday social practices that inspire creativity or inventiveness (Lefebvre, 1991a). For Lefebvre, such creativity or inventiveness locates everyday life as producing its own opportunities of critique.

De Certeau (1984) however proposes that creativity and inventiveness as expressions of critique or resistance do not always have to aspire for a predetermined political outcome (Highmore, 2002; De Certeau, 1984). Creativity as resistance to the oppressive materiality of everyday life can be discursive and poetic. It can offer possibilities of creating new social relationships and spaces for emotional enrichment and transformation. It can breathe life to a reinvention of quotidian rituals such as watching movies or practicing karaoke in the everyday. For diasporic people, practices such as karaoke serve not only as entertainment but also as space to navigate the cultural tensions in embracing a life of in-between-ness (Alonzo and Oiarzabal; 2010; Ong, 2009).

For FilAms, the social construction of relationships in karaoke is temporal but the essence of its sociality is created in a cultural space sustained by an embodied performance of human affect and experience informed by memory and storytelling. At the same time, its occurrence is both deliberate and spontaneous in the public spaces of restaurants, bars, and community halls as well as in the domestic spaces of living rooms, basements, and back porches. However, the deliberateness or spontaneity of the performance is not without cultural or historical currency. Karaoke is a performance of affective human interaction where identities can be creatively re-invented by resisting fixed concepts such as language and cultural traditions. The simple act of selecting a song

opens up shared childhood memories and personal anecdotes about “coming to America” as gleaned from Lola’s Christmas Eve ritual in Chicago.

Lola: An Intergenerational Bonding

In the middle of this karaoke singing, I managed to strike a short conversation with Lola and asked her favorite karaoke song. “I am tone deaf” she replied. But it did trigger memories of her first Christmas in Chicago in 1989, when she was 56 years old and working as an aide in a nursing home. The daughter of a Polish patient insisted that she wear her winter coat, because Lola’s was not thick enough for a cold December night in Chicago.

The young woman told me I can return the coat the next day. That I can get cheaper coats at Salvation Army which is where she got her coat from. That gesture made my first Christmas Eve in the U.S. memorable. When I got home, I called my husband in Samar and told him how nice this lady was. I did not have phone card then so I made the regular long distance call. It was so expensive. But it was worth it. I got to speak Waray again. My Filipino co-worker invited me to a Christmas party the next day. So I went after work. I was not into karaoke but I sang anyway. Who cares? I just enjoyed being with my kababayan (country folks). That’s why I told my two daughters who are married to white men to teach their kids our dialect so they grow up learning about Filipino culture. They said they tried but it was hard. Thank God, there’s karaoke.

Karaoke for Lola is no longer a piece of technology but a social practice infused with nostalgia and emotional memories. Her relationship with karaoke allows her to keep parts of her homeland culture alive for herself and for her family. Through sound and images, she brings memories of migration to the present transcending linguistic and cultural barriers that forges a social bond between her and her grandchildren. It is a bond created in a social space constructed through singing, laughter, gestures and technology.

It is a space where she enjoys the cultural dynamics of her intergenerational and interracial family.

Claire: A Signifier of Identity

The role of language as a signifier of identity is a process of constant negotiation.

The process of negotiation is not always evident in communication practices where speaking English is the norm. For Claire, a 39 year-old nurse who is half-Filipino, half-

Ukrainian, growing up in a small town in Minnesota was a confusing experience. When she was five years old, a white boy she was playing with asked her, “What are you?” This moment was her introduction to the discursive practice of identity. She responded, “I’m a girl!” to which the same boy responded, “No, but what are you really?” Being aware that her skin is darker than the other kids on the playground (including her own sister), she told her father about the incident. Her Ukrainian father replied, “Whenever someone asks you that, you tell them you’re American.” Claire’s confusion was exacerbated when her

Ukrainian grandmother told her, “Your mother came from across the pond. She speaks another language.” Claire refused to believe her. She explains:

It really was confusing growing up like why my mom looks different, why her grammar is not perfect. Her vocabulary wasn’t great. I remember being frustrated by that, being embarrassed by that. One time, my grandma happened to be in the house and my mom got a call from the Philippines and she was speaking in her language and according to my grandmother, my mouth just fell open. I think that was my first encounter with identity, when I was 10. I realized I was half and half.

While language plays a huge part in constructing cultural difference, it also serves as a negotiating agent especially when it is mediated through the use of certain objects people treasure in their everyday lives. Locating such objects and the social practices they 95

engender are crucial sites of analysis that can open up new understandings about seemingly mundane and pleasurable rituals like karaoke singing. Karaoke plays a facilitating role in the way it has provided a space for cultural reproduction and linguistic hybridity embodied in Filipino Americans diaspora experience. For Claire, learning more about her mother meant learning more about herself as manifested in a family trip to

Chicago one Thanksgiving dinner:

When I was 10, we came to Chicago to visit our cousins. That was a big deal. We found ourselves in a house full of Filipinos. And something just clicked. They all looked the same, they sounded the same, the same mannerisms. They talked really fast and something just clicked. Wow this is mom’s people. It was very intriguing for me. We were suddenly thrust into a non-traditional Thanksgiving. No turkey. It was all Filipino food. Some older folks played mahjong. They were all talking in their own language similar to my mon’s and they were laughing a lot. It was a big family party. And there was karaoke.

That Thanksgiving dinner opened Claire to her duality as a person of the diaspora.

The sound of a different language, the taste of dinuguan (blood soup), the ticking of mahjong tiles, and karaoke singing introduced her to the other half of her hybrid identity, that until that point she never knew existed. Claire’s perception of identity expanded beyond linguistic referentiality. She was swept by the energy and creativity of the

Filipinos at the party that playing mahjong and singing karaoke, while totally alien to her, seemed like second nature. She performed these actions while navigating a linguistic barrier that did not prove to be a barrier at all. She got used to hearing English spoken with a Filipino accent that became music to her ears. Reminiscing about childhood memories in the Philippines and making fun of each other’s karaoke singing animated the entire evening.

I remember there was a cassette tape player and a stereo, a microphone and believe it or not the first song I remember was a song by George Michael. I remember my mother had a cousin whose daughter’s husband who is really a good singer and he likes singing George Michael songs. I was so impressed and I started liking George Michael. And there was an uncle who loved singing Elvis songs. So those two would kind of switch off during karaoke nights. They were really good. Later on, I learned that the Filipino uncle actually used to be an Elvis impersonator in a Casino. He was about my parents’ age that time. So he must be in his 70s now.

Judith Butler’s theory of performativity argues that identities are constructed in the moment of their performance (Butler, 1988; Stoller, 2010). Categories of male and female, as mere biological markers, cannot define the totality of a person’s identity as it relates to gender. There is no prior identity until it is performed through gestures and action, through the material objects that we play or work with (Saldana and Omasta,

2018), and the interaction of bodies that form instant relationships. For Claire, that

Thanksgiving dinner not only introduced her to a new sense of identity. It also was an event that forge new relationships with her mother’s relatives most of whom she has never met before. Getting exposed to this new culture made her realize how little she knows of her mother’s life in the Philippines.

As young child, all she knew of her parents was that they met in Subic Bay, a naval base where her father was stationed in the 1950s. She was told that her mother was working as a call girl on the base, a term she never really understood. Via snippets of information, she gathered through movies suggesting prostitution. By eavesdropping on multiple, overlapping conversations during that Thanksgiving dinner, she heard her mom’s cousin say, “Call girl means telephone clerk, not prostitute!” supported by laughter from the crowd. 97

At the age of 10, I realized half of my identity. I think this is why I moved to Chicago after college. I loved diversity. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing for my younger sister and brother who still live in Minnesota. I can’t even say they acknowledge their Filipino half as much as I have.

Forging new relationships with her mother’s relatives and friends gave Claire a new perspective on her duality as FilAm. Through objects, gestures and storytelling, unique and specific characteristics of her mother’s history and culture unraveled offering new possibilities of re-inventing her identity. Claire was most upbeat and animated when she talked about that Thanksgiving dinner during our conversation. Whenever she engages in karaoke, memories of that Thanksgiving dinner rush back in. There are intense moments in our past that heuristically inform how we are transformed through the practices we perform in daily life that brings new perspectives of our ourselves as argued by De Certeau (Highmore, 2002). When Claire’s mom sang a Visayan folk song on karaoke, she was surprised that she can even sing. Even though she did not understand a word of it, the lyrics sounded familiar like those she heard as a child from the long- distance phone calls her mother would make to the Philippines -- the same words that her

Polish grandmother would make fun of. But in this Thanksgiving event the words sounded different. “It was almost lyrical in a way. I felt that she was reaching out to someone or she was longing for something,” Claire said. While practicing karaoke allowed Claire a new path towards accepting cultural difference and a new sense of

Filipino identity, invoking the cultural significance of this practice for Rowena is a place of confrontation on the politics of cultural representation.

Rowena: Promoting a Cultural Stereotype?

Rowena, a 48-year old social worker, is an avid karaoke performer who loves to sing to Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On from the movie Titanic. She never misses a chance to sing this song, not only because she loves the melody so much, but because it allows her to belt out her emotions. I have witnessed her performance many times, and it never fails to elicit laughter. During a training seminar at work, she was asked to name a fun fact about herself, and she said, “I’m Filipino and Filipinos love karaoke.” After the seminar a white female co-worker took her aside and warned her that she was promoting a cultural stereotype. Rowena stopped for a moment to consider the validity of that comment:

I didn’t know how to react when I heard her comment. I felt guilty and questioned myself. Did I make a caricature of my own people? Maybe it wasn’t the right venue for me to say that. At the same time I felt I’m being blamed for being insensitive to my own culture.

The fact that Rowena did not register any obvious reaction of anger or dismay over the white woman’s comment intrigued me. Feeling guilty that she made such comment intrigued me even more because guilt was not the element I was expecting. As I did not have the benefit of an extensive knowledge of situation, I took Rowena’s reaction as a testament of her gracious openness to critique. The fact that I felt more outrage than she did reflects our differing positionalities as interpreters of the white woman’s comment.

What exactly is a cultural stereotype? The question points back to my youthful contempt for karaoke in the 1980s. My earliest exposure to karaoke was in the beer

gardens a few blocks away from my family’s house (in the Philippines), where drunken men would belt out “Hotel California” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” through distorted loud speakers on the verge of exploding. I was not impressed by the sound quality nor the singing. At that time, my aesthetic standards were grounded in professional theater, whose criteria did not include the unbridled enthusiasm required by karaoke. My elitist attitude extended to even my own family’s karaoke sessions, which weren’t that bad, but when they started devolving into “Hotel California” territory, I rolled my eyes and deliberately removed myself by turning my Walkman to Phantom of the Opera.

A class component influenced the way I regarded karaoke in those bars, simply because I associated the practice with the manual laborers in our neighborhood. My family lived in a medium-sized two-story house surrounded by high concrete fences that shielded our view of the smaller houses that, from my vantage point, looked like shanties.

High fences are markers of difference and reinforce the illusion that those inside are protected from the envious gaze of “the less fortunate” neighbors. The architectural design, typical in Manila and other large cities, visibly reinforces class difference. I was judging karaoke as inferior to other forms of music I liked, because I associated the social practice with people I perceived as “less than” because of how they dressed and where they lived. I bought in to the cultural stereotype of people whose love for karaoke was distorted by my own limited understanding of its cultural function. It was not until I came to the U.S. that I began confronting my bias. I made new friends whose enthusiasm for karaoke was not about the singing or the look, but about the camaraderie. I found a

100

different set of criteria to understand what karaoke means to people, and now every social gathering I go to culminates in “Hotel California.”

That karaoke promotes cultural stereotype is a statement with epistemological consequences. Rowena’s knowledge of karaoke comes from her lived experience rooted in her diasporic body and her family’s cultural history. Karaoke mediates between the demands of her host culture and memories of a mythical homeland, between the material and the abstract. Rowena’s innocent assertion that she is Filipino and Filipinos love karaoke is a reclaiming of a cultural space that signifies her duality as a diasporic agent.

The typical representation of karaoke as “pure fun” disallows its other potential functions. Locating karaoke in Rowena’s lived experience de-territorializes the outsider’s claim of stereotyping, a strategy crucial to the postcolonial critique of those perceived as cultural others (Bhabha, 1994; De Castro, 1999).

The white female co-worker’s comment is a cultural impression. Although it maybe be informed by a lived encounter with the karaoke social practice, it is rooted in a different place, not a diasporic body but one privileged by the dominant culture of

Rowena’s host country. Her knowledge of karaoke suggests an impression influenced by representation, the discursive potential of which operates in textuality rather than lived experience. Claiming that not all Filipinos love karaoke is definitely true. But asserting that loving karaoke creates cultural stereotypes of them is suspect in its assumptions.

Without the critical insight of history and tradition, the comment’s reductionist tendency ignores the complexity of Rowena’s relationship with karaoke. It forecloses new possibilities of a more open understanding of the role technology in the everyday lives of 101

diasporic people. Locating Rowena’s lived experience with karaoke not only resists the homogenizing impact of representation. It also articulates a new understanding of diaspora illuminated by the lived experiences of migrants and their engagement with media in the postcolonial diaspora (Merten and Kramer, 2016). For Rowena, locating the emotional complexity of leaving the homeland in pursuit of economic survival is engraved in her memory. While she has crafted a new life in the U.S., the memory lingers but only to the extent that strengthens her identity as a diasporic agent, one who finds comfort in revealing her migration story and her embrace of karaoke as existentially integral to her process of cultural assimilation.

I know I’m Filipino. But that’s not how I define my identity. To me identity is memories about my struggle coming here to America. It is about honoring my mother who sacrificed a lot working as a waitress, as a caregiver for 2 dollars an hour. I remember when we were in Narita airport in Japan on our way here in 1984. I was 10 years old. That scene is engraved in my head forever. We didn’t have enough money then so my mom told us to eat all the food in the airplane because we have to wait eight hours in Narita before our connecting flight to Chicago. While in Narita, we entertain ourselves by looking at tourist stuff just so we don’t feel hungry. My mother bought one apple and sliced it into four so we can all eat. I felt privileged then since only rich people can afford apples in the Philippines.

One might also construe that Rowena’s white female co-worker did not want to make caricatures of Filipinos in general because of how karaoke singing has been portrayed in popular media. Portraying karaoke in film like Duets (2000) and TV sitcom like The King of Queens (1998) creates impressions that essentialize the practice as pure fun. They portray those who practice it as goofy and in need of attention. These characteristics are part of what makes karaoke an interesting cultural experience.

102

However, such portrayals carry evaluative assumptions about social groups and making caricatures of them create consensus especially in popular fiction (Dyer, 2000). Dyer argues that it is from stereotypes created in popular fiction that audiences get some knowledge about certain groups of people. However, who produces such knowledge and how it is represented problematize consensus-making as another strategy of cultural homogenization. In a globalized cultural economy, cultural homogenization is an inevitability that needs interrogation (Appadurai, 1994).

In a popular show like American Idol, bad singing is part of the spectacle. Making it part of the show’s narrative adds humor and rewards bad singing as entertaining comparable to some scenes one sees in movies and television sitcoms where karaoke singing is ridiculed (Brown, 2014). This elevates karaoke as pure fun and paints a popular perception that karaoke singing is nothing but a performance in a cultural economy hungry for attention and laughs (Fairchild, 2007; Kraidy, 2011; Sloan, 2004)). It makes singing the focus and not much else. Its entertainment value precedes its other possibilities as a social practice making it easy for anyone to claim lovers of karaoke such as Rowena, a cultural stereotype. The judgment that Rowena places on karaoke goes deeper than her white female co-worker’s perception of what her comment might suggest. Karaoke for Rowena is an extension of her identity rooted on childhood memories and cultural history, the stubborn insistence of which engages her to perform karaoke so she can re-invent herself creatively in an entertaining way.

I am a frustrated singer (laughs). That’s why I love karaoke because I get to release my frustration. It gives me a sense of pride when I see 100 as my score on screen (laughs louder). I’ve mastered the technique. 103

Just say the lyrics clearly closer to the mic. The machine doesn’t care whether you’re in tune or not. I like the bonding that happens when we do karaoke. It brings back a lot of childhood memories. I like singing Tagalog songs because it connects me to my original home. I’m reminded of my favorite movies of Sharon Cuneta. I remember sneaking into our neighbor’s backyard to watch Sharon on TV. Our neighbors were very nice. They would allow us to peak through their walls so we can watch Sharon every Sunday.

Connecting to an idea of an original home underlines the power of memory and imagination. For Rowena, such power is made more evident when associated with larger than life cultural references such as Sharon Cuneta, a popular singer-actress in the

Philippines in the 1980s. Listening to Sharon Cuneta’s songs in karaoke not only brings childhood memories in some of our karaoke sessions but also opens up conversations about how sappy Filipino movies and music are. Such conversations build up to mocking famous lines or dialogues from old movies, sometimes making a parody of still remembered scenes like slapping or throwing wine in someone’s face. In these instances, mockery and parody become inventive re-appropriations of childhood memories. They register poetic expressions that allow emotional anxieties and frustrations to unravel as sources of fun and youthful nostalgia, sometimes as social critiques of racial inequities in the workplace.

Rowena’s happy memories as a young girl in a provincial town south of Manila, is a crucial reference point that kept her sanity intact as a struggling young migrant in

America. Experiencing the harsh realities of poverty and alienation in the Southwest side of Chicago, Rowena grounds her identity on a painful struggle to gain legal status in the

U.S. The years of seclusion on her Aunt’s basement for fear of being deported kept her glued to her CDs of Sharon Cuneta stacked beside her karaoke machine. It is the painful 104

path that led her to social work and community activism. It is that struggle that informs how she is raising her mixed-race children. It is those memories of struggle and perseverance that animates her attachment to a sense of collective healing and belonging that she finds in karaoke. How these memories and her concept of identity relate to having I Will Survive, a popular Gloria Gaynor disco song of the 70s in her karaoke repertoire next to Celine Dion and Sharon Cuneta, one can only guess. She further articulates:

On my citizenship oath taking, that same day, I grabbed citizenship application forms on the upper floor of Dirksen building so I can petition my mom. I took the train on my way home. That train ride seemed like the longest train ride I ever took in my life. For some strange reason, I found myself shaking while inside the train. I don’t know what it was but it was a reaction in my body that I can’t explain, up to now.

In a recent karaoke session at Rowena’s house, I was surprised to see a different set up. Attached to a laptop was a video projector facing one of the living room walls.

After a quick dinner of burritos and tortillas, the singing ensued. No more magic mics.

The songs were searched via YouTube, and Rowena started with one of her favorites:

Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” Steve, Rowena’s white husband, shares his fascination with

“Car Karaoke” in James Corden’s popular late-night show on CBS. Pretty soon, the singing gave way to watching some of James Corden’s celebrity car karaoke episodes.

Rowena interrupted the viewing group and switched back to singing. She chose a song from Les Miserables and soon all five of us were singing “Do You Hear the People Sing” with all the patriotic gusto we could muster. When karaoke culminates into group singing, the emotional texture of the space that it creates signifies a social bonding that

105

challenges the performer-spectator binary. Singing becomes a shared undertaking where the power dynamic between performer and spectator gets re-appropriated. Performance and spectatorship assume shifting functionalities offering new ways of practicing karaoke and interpreting social relationships. Group singing as a performance is culturally and historically embedded in FilAms’ collective psyche. It comes from a cultural history in which the shifting roles between performer and spectator become negotiable spaces where new politics of everyday life can emerge.

Albert and Ysabel’s Grill: The Cultural Politics of Group Singing

Group singing is what attracts Albert, a 34-year old medical consultant for Abbott

Laboratories, to karaoke. He owns two magic mics that he purchased in Manila and South

Korea. The latest one features a wider selection of songs from a variety of contemporary

American popular singers. He and his wife always bring the two gadgets with them during family gatherings. It did not matter whether there’s karaoke singing or not but having them around makes them secure. Albert elucidates:

I like group singing because it breaks away the singer-spectator roles. To me it is not about the singing but the fun of singing together. The more we fumble, the more fun it becomes. I mean when the singer is good, I don’t mind listening. But that’s rare in the family (laughs)

Karaoke is less casual at Ysabel’s Grill, a Filipino-owned restaurant in the

Belmont Cragin district of Chicago where singing is more of a structured performance.

Whoever wants to sing writes down the 4-digit code numbers of the song. Singing is arranged according to the succession of song requests. There tends to be more individual singing than group singing when I was there, and most of the singers were quite good.

106

This creates an intimidating feeling for crude singers like myself as the set up reinforces the singer-spectator binary.

It was a packed Friday night and the tables were filled with large groups. I came with a friend and we were the only table with two people in it. Most of the tables were put together to accommodate the bigger groups. One group of about ten next to our table, both men and women, are in still in their nursing outfits. They look like they were in their early 20s. They were busy looking at the menu and going over the karaoke booklet.

Another group of men in their 40s and 50s across our table were drinking San Miguel

Beer, a popular drink in the Philippines. One of them is singing a Filipino ballad from the

80s reminiscent of OPM (Original Pilipino Music). OPM is a cultural movement in

Philippine music industry where original Filipino music is all you can hear on the airwaves, a rare occurrence in Filipino music history. OPM eventually faded in the late

1990s as more western music poured in.

Hanging on the walls are four large TV screens so one cannot escape the glare of images coming out of them. Some of the songs are unfamiliar to me especially those performed by younger singers. One can see an inter-generational landscape inside the restaurant based on the selection of songs. For most of the time, one would see someone singing along with the person holding on the microphone. My friend and I did it a couple of times as both of us never dared to sing solo for fear of being ostracized for bad singing. That particular night only a few people sang solo. The rest of the people on large tables sang as a group. Mixed with the singing are chatting and laughing and speaking in

Tagalog pervaded the sound waves. The place is open until 4am on Fridays and 107

Saturdays. It was around 11pm when we left but more groups started coming in as we were leaving.

Group singing is common in many cultures. It has a long history in Filipino culture. My first exposure to group singing was through religion. As a young child of 9, I was invited by a playmate to go to his house. He said, “We’re having Fatima”. I did not know what he meant but because he also said there was going to be food, I obliged. A group of older people with rosaries in their hands, praying in front of the statue of the

Virgin Mary was the sight I was introduced to upon entering the living room. The statue was Our Lady of Fatima, a replica of the image that appeared to the three children in

Fatima, Portugal in 1917. That was the only piece of history available to me at that time.

But the energy and the camaraderie were fun to watch. The ritual lasted about 30 minutes and then there is food. That is the part we waited for as kids. The nightly ritual would last for nine days. The ninth day ends with group singing and a procession as the group walks the statue to the next house. As a child, I found the ritual fascinating. I enjoyed the group singing because it was more casual compared to singing in church where the line between priest and parishioners are clearly drawn. The statue never came to our house. I figured since our house was small, there was no space for group singing and praying.

Being born into a predominantly Catholic country, I was surrounded by religious rituals and traditions where group singing is popular. From the feast of the Immaculate

Conception and Christmas in December to the Lenten Season in March to the

Santacruzan, the honoring of the discovery of the holy cross by Helena of Constantinople and Constantine the Great celebrated in May (Fernandez, 1997). During the Lenten 108

season or Holy Week, it is typical to hear group chanting in different houses, especially in the provinces. Holy Week is a week of repentance and spiritual healing. It usually happens in late March or early April, the start of the summer season. The group chanting is called pabasa (the reading). It is a musical recitation of the Passion of Christ or

Pasyon, performed for three or four days, depending on the sponsor of the reading (Ileto,

1979). A sponsor is someone who organizes the reading, someone who owns a santo

(religious statue), a life size image like a mannequin of the bloodied Christ carrying the cross, wearing a red velvet dress with sequins, or a dead Christ lying in a glass coffin.

Owning a santo is a status symbol in the community. Older women usually perform the group chanting in front or around the santo. They take turns as chanting can be vocally draining. There is a steady supply of salabat (ginger tea) and cans of biscuits for snacks.

There is also a steady supply of chanters who see chanting as form of healing and renewing their devotion to the Catholic faith.

This ritual fascinated me as well as a child. I would spend most of my summers in my parents’ hometown in a province east of Manila to witness this ritual. I would sneak into different houses just to watch people chanting and partake of some biscuits. Chanting starts usually at noon and ends before midnight. The lyrics are in Tagalog written in verse translated from the Bible. No one knows who wrote the music or where it came from.

Older folks would say it was passed on from generation to generation. Pabasa is open to the public. Anyone can sing as long he or she is willing to stay on for a couple of hours.

The melody is easy to learn. It has sixteen bars repeated several times, each time with a different set of lyrics. An intertext to Pabasa is Senakulo, a theatrical version of the 109

Pasyon performed on stage for three nights at the town plaza. It is a two-hour presentation rich with colorful costumes and performed by volunteer actors in the community (Fernandez, 1997). Like the pabasa chanters, the senakulo actors see performing as a form of healing or penance.

Locating religious rituals like pasyon and pabasa as places of discourse is well articulated in Reynalto Ileto’s (1979) book, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Ileto critically evaluates how the indigenization of the pasyon equipped Filipinos with new ideological tools that translated Christ’s sacrifice into their own oppressed lives changing a culture of subservience to a culture of resistance. He locates religious rituals imposed as tools of colonization as fertile grounds in re-interpreting the meaning of resurrection in the context the de-colonization.

Group singing is also a long- held tradition among tribal communities. There is a song for harvesting, for hunting, for weaving, for daily chores that require communal sharing of responsibilities. There is a song of war and a song of peace. These cultural practices are lived experiences in the everyday as tribal people interact with their living world. Such interaction allows the act of singing to cohere with the wider world where affective and spiritual powers are nourished (Mora, 2005). Within these powers emerge cultural knowledge passed on from one generation to another. Sadly, some of this knowledge are commoditized and packaged for touristic purposes, while a few remain in the tribal people’s cultural consciousness (Baes, 2004).

These cultural histories are repositories of memory that live in the collective psyche of FilAms. They embody the impact of capitalist modernity in heterogeneous 110

ways manifested through the technologies that become integrated into their everyday life.

To what extent is group singing in karaoke a cultural re-appropriation of the pabasa or tribal singing? This question is difficult to answer but it is a starting point to consider in analyzing how a social practice like karaoke can be located as part of a cultural continuum.

However, marking certain practices as part of a cultural continuum can be problematic. It can lead to cultural essentialism denying the stubbornness of bodies, memories and cultural histories in everyday life their oppositional potential, maybe not in terms of power reversals as defined by Lefebvre (1984) and Ileto (1979) but in poetic terms as argued by De Certeau (1984). The group singing that karaoke inspires may be seen not as mere continuation of the pabasa or tribal singing but part of a cultural imaginary that is creatively and politically re-appropriated in Filipino Americans’ everyday lives. And because karaoke is not fixed on any physical location or social event, it resembles an ambulatory or nomadic behavior that inspires the formation of new relationships in both signifying and non-signifying ways (Deleuze an Guatarri, 1986;

Lefebvre, 1991b).

Lefebvre and De Certeau assert that re-appropriating cultural practices in the everyday should be seen as part of a cultural imaginary that is evolving rather than a cultural memory fixed on nostalgia (Highmore, 2002). The extent to which they excite present conditions without prescribing any fixed solutions or preordained political outcome is what makes everyday life a place of critical discourse. Clair and Rowena’s karaoke experience may be animated by fond and painful memories of the past but the 111

emotions and meanings they trigger articulate different diasporic conditions that for

Ronnie, strengthens cultural openness.

Ronnie: Performing Cultural Hybridity

Ronnie is a 47-year old mental health counselor who has integrated karaoke in his weekly therapy program. Every Friday from 3-5 in the afternoon, he holds a karaoke session for his mental health clients. He brings his own ‘magic mic’ and attaches it to a

42-inch TV screen in the recreation area at his workplace. He knows the list of songs that his clients would request. He has memorized each song’s 4-digit code that his clients usually forget.

I do music therapy for my mental health clients and I use karaoke as a tool. It’s very popular among minorities. I have this Mexican guy who likes to lipsynch songs by this Canadian country singer. More like sing-along. He comes to the group and he would already have a list of songs with him. I usually put him in the end because that would be the signal that the therapy session is about to end (laughs).

Ronnie loves karaoke because it helps him release tension and stress from work.

He uses it as therapy for his clients and as well as for himself. Therapy for Ronnie is also rooted on being a culturally displaced person of the diaspora. He was not ready to be uprooted from a country he still calls home even after being away for 27 years when he was forced to migrate to America before he reached the age of 21. Going past this age would disqualify him for family petition. To him, being a US citizen is just a passport, a legal document and not much else. As a student activist in the 1980s before migrating to

America, his nationalist ideals never left him. In fact, he still embraces it by actively supporting social justice causes in the FilAm community in Chicago. He compliments

112

this by having a huge collection of Filipino nationalist songs in his CD collection.

Sometimes he would play these CDs in a different machine and sings along with it to add more nationalist flavor in our karaoke sessions.

Ronnie has three sets of “magic mic” which he acquired during his many visits to the Philippines. Each one contains a different repertoire of songs updated according to the latest pop tunes from new artists. The latest one has more Filipino songs with a variety of selection in Tagalog and Cebuano, a dialect widely spoken in Southern Philippines.

Ronnie’s house is considered karaoke central among my circle of friends because he likes having people around for drinks and conversations about politics. When he became a father, he sings Filipino lullabies to his newborn twins through his ‘magic mic’. His favorite is Dandansoy, an old, haunting Visayan folk song about love, separation and longing.

Dandansoy, bayaan ta ikaw Dandansoy, now I will leave you Pauli ako sa payaw I'm going back to my hometown Ugaling kung ikaw hidlawon Though if you yearn for me Ang payaw imo lang lantawon. Just look towards my hometown

Humming this tune to his newborn twins connects Ronnie to his native homeland in a small village in Southern Philippines. According to him, he still regrets being uprooted but he has managed to accept his reality. He overcomes this regret through music and subscribing to TFC, the Filipino international cable channel. A friend once quipped that going to Ronnie’s apartment is like going to a Philippine village. Ronnie’s love for his homeland is evident in the interior design of his apartment. He has accumulated more than a dozen native backpacks made of rattan, bamboo and woven

113

fabric displayed on top of his kitchen drawers. His living room is adorned with lamps made of capiz shells, shelves and tables made of rattan. The fireplace is framed with small bamboo tiles which he pasted himself. The walls are laced with woven fabrics made by tribal communities in the mountain regions in the Philippines and paintings made by Filipino visual artists. Other friends’ house would have similar motifs to project their Filipino-ness but Ronnie’s collection takes the cake.

Ronnie’s display of these products and objects is more than just fetish for anything ethnic. It suggests an attempt to reclaim a lost sense of cultural identity meant to intermingle with the more Western-inspired visual motifs in his apartment. The curtains by the windows looked like fabrics bought at Pottery Barn, the sofa at the center fronting the 50-inch TV resembles a set one sees at IKEA and the centerpiece rug was bought from Turkey during his last European trip. Having his place as the karaoke party central suggests an experience of cultural hybridity where images, sound, language and food converge in temporal moments of group singing, emotional release, collective nostalgia and cross-cultural talk about American and Philippine politics. Karaoke itself is a hybrid media text that fuses music, language and visual images representing diverse cultural meanings. Its presence in Ronnie’s place blends with the fusion of Philippine and

American inspired visual motifs suggesting a hybrid identity open to artistic experimentation and cultural non-exclusivity. Experimentation and non-exclusivity are attributes that bear a more political intent for Marissa as a performance of postcolonial hybridity.

114

Marissa: A Postcolonial Dialectic

Marissa, a playwright, poet and English teacher in her early 50s, shares Ronnie’s sentiments about karaoke as form of therapy. Therapy for Marissa is not only a stress- related kind of release. It is also political and moral. What makes her engagement with

Karaoke political is connected to her advocacy as a person of color and a feminist. She explores the political expression of these advocacies through her involvement with the

LGBT community in Chicago as seen in her poetry, plays and performance.

I attended staged reading of her new play Nanay (Mother), part of a larger creative project called Night of Living Moms performed at Free Street Theater in the

Humboldt Park district of Chicago. Her new play uses magical realism to tell the story of a daughter who struggles to accept that her mother might be a manananggal (monster), a popular character in Philippine mythology likened to a vampire. The play interrogates the oppressive domestication of rural women in Philippine society. Marissa interprets the monster as an indigenous creature demonized by colonialism to suppress political dissent.

She incorporates history, the CIA and martial law to articulate the play’s anti-imperialist message. She utilizes drama, dance, movement and music as aesthetic elements to bring the play in a performative coherence.

At the end of the performance, Marissa tagged me along for a nightcap with her lesbian friends. After a few minutes of drinking at a friend’s back porch, the magic mike was brought in and karaoke singing began. Marissa, a pretty good singer herself, starts the session. She picks a Tagalog song called Babae Ka (You’re A Woman), a popular song in the 80s in the Philippines. She sings the song alone but when the refrain came, 115

everyone joined in, including myself, raising our can of beers up in one hand and the other arm raised with a fist as if we were in a rally. The refrain goes:

Ang pinto ng pag-unlad sa ‘yoy nakasara The door of progress Sa ‘yo ngayo’y nakasara For you is now closed Harapin mo, buksan mo Face it, Open it Ibangon ang iyong pagkatao Stand up, defend your dignity Babae ka You’re A Woman Kalahati ka ng buhay You are the other half of life Kung ikaw ay wala If not for you Saan ang buhay ipupunla Where would life be sown

The fire that burns inside these women, some of whom I just met, echoes that of the play’s anti-patriarchal theme. Marissa was an active lesbian activist when I first met her almost 20 years ago. She now identifies as bisexual married to a straight Puerto Rican man. She adopted two kids at age 50, a Hispanic boy and an African American girl. She has a signature repartee when gender and sexuality come up in intimate conversations within our circle of friends. “Gender is fluid, it’s a social construct”, she would assert.

And this she would articulate with some form of dance ritual like that of a babaylan (an indigenous priestess) holding a can of beer or a glass of margarita exposing Alibata, the

Filipino indigenous alphabet, tattooed on her shoulders. While Ronnie’s penchant for ethnic motifs plastered on his walls reveals a subtle resistance to Western and abstract paintings, Marissa’s passion for Filipino myths, protest music and indigenous alphabet embodies an identity performance that is interventionist (Shome, 1996). At the same time, the fluidity with which she embraces the idea of identity as becoming suggests a tendency towards cultural openness in defiance of the binary constructs she faces as a

116

person of color. Invoking her feminist values in critique of patriarchy through karaoke and her plays opens alternative spaces of interpretation.

Identity is a social construct. It is fluid, not permanent. It is the names we give to ourselves when society boxes us into categories, straight or gay, male or female, legal or undocumented, Fil-Am or Fil-Fil, like we can only be one or the other. I used to get offended when people tell me I’m so political or dogmatic. But not anymore. Now I tell them ‘the personal is political’ and they would give me a puzzled look. I think social activism is always about self-inscription. The good thing about karaoke is that there are no boundaries. You are allowed to put yourself into the song and be as self-deprecating as you want. You can be emotional, nostalgic and political at the same time even if you’re off key, like some people I know (laughs). Too bad, there aren’t too many revolutionary songs in magic mic or YouTube.

The visual presence of Alibata emblazoned on Marissa’s shoulders while belting out a Filipino feminist song can also be seen as a diasporic expression that allows her to rediscover a newfound Filipino-ness in her adopted hostland. Karaoke not only strengthens her politics and linguistic hybridity, but also allows her to enjoy being

Filipino in America not only with Filipinos but with other politically active individuals in the LGBT and immigrant communities. It underscores the dialectics of a postcolonial duality where the decolonized body is given a space to confront remnants of a colonial upbringing through singing and indigenous symbols (Chawla and Rodriguez, 2011b).

Mark: A Living Community Art Form

Mark, a 32-year old U.S.-born Filipino is the Executive Director of AFIRE

(Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment), a not-for-profit organization working with Filipino immigrants in Chicago. He is a lawyer by profession.

After a few years of working in a corporate law firm in Texas, he moved to Chicago to

117

work for a not-for-profit immigrant advocacy organization. This decision still bothers his parents who are active leaders in the FilAm community in Houston. Mark’s parents are both medical professionals who came to the U.S. in the 1980s in search of a better life.

His father, who migrated with a medical degree from the Philippines, had to study nursing because he could not get a job as a doctor. His mother, also a nurse, supported the entire family until his father passed the nursing board exam. It still confuses him that his parents, who are immigrants themselves, cannot appreciate his work with the immigrant population. According to him, the only time they connect is through food and karaoke.

He articulates:

I enjoy karaoke because it celebrates the arts. It creates dialogue not just through talking. Talking is only accessible through language either in English or Tagalog. There is always something that happens when dialogue is expressed in a creative outlet that can never be captured in words. I see karaoke and singing as a reflection of that, and sometimes a tool for coping with oppression and things you can’t change. It’s a way of connecting to fundamental human emotions like love, despair, loneliness, longing even hope, just a spectrum of things. It’s a form of communication, of resistance, of expressing your identity in way that is not like ‘I have to write a paper’. It is connecting to tradition, history and shared memories.

Moving to Chicago opened Mark to a more socially connected FilAm community quite different from the FilAm community he was exposed to in Texas. According to him, there seems to be a more involved engagement with karaoke among FilAms in

Chicago because every social gathering he goes to culminates in karaoke singing. That karaoke has evolved into making community events attractive to a lot of FilAms fascinates him about the social practice. That people commune through singing, exchanging stories about what is happening in the community locates karaoke as

118

important in community organizing, a feature that is very relevant to his not-for-profit work. For Mark, karaoke is a celebration of the arts because it is able to express basic human emotions where shared identities create a sense of community (Brown, 2015). It allows the breaking down of hierarchical structures and reversal of roles between the performer and the spectator, between the ‘professional and the amateur’ suggesting a

“carnivalesque aesthetic” espoused by the Bakhtinian thought (Bakhtin, 1984; Kirk,

2015; Kolodziej-Smith, 2014). In a carnivalesque aesthetic, the breaking of ‘assigned roles’ among participants transcends social boundaries). Because participants in the carnival create their own rules, transcending all aspects of social hierarchy is always a possibility however temporal it may be. Transcending social hierarchy can be seen as a political act performed in ways both material and symbolic. Such features resonate in a karaoke aesthetic in that perceived boundaries between immigrant and American-born, documented and undocumented are broken down inspiring a communion of bodies and identities that strengthen a sense of community. For Mark, karaoke can be considered as a community art form that is accessible, political, portable, even nomadic. They are attributes that anticipate new possibilities of identity formation as argued by Kirk (2015):

Participation in the carnival shows its participants that they as a community are the body, that the body exists in this form only temporarily, and that it will nonetheless subsist in a new and ever-changing form beyond its current one. . . the carnival provides a space for its participants to experience themselves as co-architects of their identities (p. 227-228).

As a ritual reflective of a carnivalesque aesthetic, karaoke articulates the emotional and intellectual content of FilAms’ diasporic experience as individuals and as a

119

community. Connecting to tradition, history and memory becomes a shared experience through an art form that transcends language and culture. As suggested by Mark, karaoke triggers fundamental human capacities of love, despair even resistance – capacities that humanize the diaspora experience. It proposes a radical cultural openness that breaks down regional differences and rejects a sense of cultural harmony that categorizes

FilAms as one homogeneous body.

Vanessa: Re-embracing the Vernacular

For Vanessa, a 45-year old Assistant Office Manager for a private construction firm on the southside of Chicago, karaoke is marker of identity because she can speak

Tagalog as much as she can. In her last visit to the Philippines, she was disappointed to see young Filipino kids not wanting to speak Tagalog anymore because they are so glued to video games on their laptops all spoken in English.

I was really annoyed to hear young kids like grade school age speak more English than Tagalog. I mean I knew a lot of Pinoys speak English well but to hear these young kids not speak Tagalog at all, especially my nieces and nephews caught me by surprise. I mean you hear it everywhere, in malls, in grocery stores. I’m sure American movies had a lot to do with it. It felt strange because it seems to be the new normal and nobody in reacting to it like I do. Not even my parents who are avid fans of Filipino poetry.

Speaking Tagalog has always been an external marker of identity. For Vanessa, since she now lives in the U.S., she has settled on Taglish as her way of speaking to accommodate the diverse population she works with. But at home, she speaks Tagalog all the way because it is the only means where she can express herself freely especially during karaoke sessions where she can sing and modulate her voice in a language that expresses her true self. She likes speaking Tagalog during karaoke sessions because she 120

does not have to translate what she thinks and feels into another language, which she performs eight hours a day, five days a week at work.

I have been here in the U.S. for almost fifteen years. I still find myself translating my thoughts into English before I open my mouth when I’m at work or when I am with my English-speaking friends. Isn’t that weird? I grew up in a household where we speak Taglish all the time. But when I came here I spoke more English than Tagalog. That’s when I felt I lost something. That’s why I enjoy watching TFC even if I’m not a big fan of teleseryes because they are so corny. But I like watching Filipino movies on Netflix although the selection is very limited. Sometimes I get annoyed by the subtitles because I end up reading them instead of listening to the dialogues. I also like the old movies on YouTube because they have no subtitles in them. I like karaoke. It’s like returning to an old home, you know something familiar.

Filipino overseas workers in London who engage in karaoke singing or watching

Filipino news programs on TFC are also re-embracing their Filipino-ness through the sound and texture of their native tongue. For these migrants, access to Tagalog through karaoke, is not only a reprieve from the English that occupies most of their waking hours.

It is also an important mediated cultural space that engenders what Ong (2009) calls

“ecstatic nationalism” – an emotive performance of identity embodied through a pattern of media consumption that allows migrants to reflect and reconnect with their Filipino- ness (p 172). The emergent potential of this re-embracing of the vernacular allows migrants who are non-Tagalog speakers, to speak what little they do know in karaoke singing, and in intimate conversations during community parties. Being a part of the singing and small talk conversation on different occasions enhances a sense of belonging to a nation.

121

Janice: Karaoke is like Returning Home

For Janice, her job as a Sales Manager for a T-shirt manufacturing company allows her to travel giving her a broader perspective in terms of cultural practices in different countries. She became an American citizen two years ago after realizing that having just a green card holds no guarantee that she can stay in the country for good.

According to her, taking the citizenship oath is more practical and it changed the way she embraces her mobility. Reading Facebook postings about poverty and corruption from her relatives’ exacerbates her discomfort in entertaining the idea of an eventual return. It strengthens her desire to make the U.S. her permanent home and not a temporary dwelling. And now that she has the legal capability to travel elsewhere in the world, she prefers to be a perpetual balikbayan who enjoys the material and emotional benefits of her de-territoriality.

I like the convenience of being able to travel back and forth, maybe winter in the Philippines to escape the snow in Chicago and the rest of the season here in the U.S. I like the idea of bringing people together like during karaoke singing. I’m thinking of putting up a karaoke bar as a lifetime investment. It is kind of a culminating event for me. I have worked long enough that I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor here in the US and not in the Philippines. It’s a bar so there’ll be food and drinks. But the food will be Filipino finger foods like lumpia (egg roll), barbecue so it’s less messy.

When Janice got laid off two months ago, the prospect of an eventual return to the

Philippines did not cross her mind because Chicago is where she locates her permanent home. The long-term manifestation of this vision is signified by her desire to put up a karaoke bar that for her is not only an economic investment but an emotional one as well

122

According to her, Café Ysabel is her ‘go to; place for karaoke because it is open until

2am on weekends. “It feels like being in Manila all over again” she enthused.

Conclusion

From being a machine to a social practice, karaoke reconstructs diaspora life as a space where social interaction defines identity and not the other way around. The heterogeneous ways it has become socialized into my participants’ everyday lives reveal aesthetic and material expressions that redefine language and race as signifiers of cultural otherness. The asymmetrical ways in which their cultural histories and identities are performed suggest a deconstruction of traditional social roles and identity formations predetermined by geography and class background.

The heuristic and ambulatory ways FilAms create spaces of interaction through karaoke proposes a dynamic relationship between bodies reproducing multiple identities of becoming and hybrid expressions of diasporic performativity. It resists nostalgia, music and childhood memories as objects of the past. On the contrary, it locates nostalgia, music and memories as cultural references that live in the present and thus offer new ways of re-producing identities and social relationships. Locating the lived practices of my participants with karaoke amplifies a diasporic performativity that contextualizes the complexity of their struggles and aspirations as individuals.

The social spaces that karaoke engenders constitute an aesthetic and emotional experience that encourage the performance of multiple and diverse identities that for

Lola, Claire, Rowena, Albert, Ronnie, Marissa, Mark, Vanessa and Janice reveal their individuality as well as their collective aspirations of community in the diaspora. It also 123

underscores their individual forms of resisting the materiality of their nine to five jobs that numbs their creative spirits, revealing music, singing and spontaneous storytelling as performances of diasporic life that is political as it is poetic.

124

Chapter 5: The Filipino Channel, A Home Away from Home

In the previous Chapter, I discuss how karaoke serves as a spatializing mechanism where creative resistance against the materiality of diaspora life redefines being Filipino

American beyond regional and linguistic differences. For my participants, enjoying karaoke facilitates a sense of connectivity that translates longing for the homeland through singing lullabies, protest songs, sentimental ballads and all the storytelling moments that ensue in between. These gestures are not only nostalgic expressions of home but are poetic confrontations with the social realities of everyday diaspora life. In this Chapter, I explore connectivity in the context of transnational cultural production where the idea of ‘home away from home’ emerges through conversations while watching soap operas or through ambient sounds and visual motifs that reimagine the homeland through the presence of the televisual screen.

Maintaining constant connection with the homeland has created a culture of technological dependence that alleviates the emotional and psychological costs of long separation between trans-national families. The economic imperatives of long separation and globalization alter traditional values of home and home making. Raising a family is now possible through transnational and interactive mobile technologies. This phenomenon offers an inter-subjective positionality that relates to my own family’s dependence on transnational media that to some degree resonates with that of my research participants.

My most recent summer trip was particularly memorable because it altered by view of technology in the context of diaspora. It was almost midnight when I arrived after 125

an 18-hour flight from Chicago. Upon reaching our old house, I opened my suitcase and handed out various pasalubong (souvenirs) that included Nike sneakers, old pair of leather shoes, chocolates, Nescafe Tasters’ Choice and bags of pistachio nuts. I was handing out the souvenirs when one nephew announced that another nephew, Rico, was on Skype. Rico is a maintenance worker in a hotel in the United Arab Emirates, and his wife works as accountant in a real estate firm. They have a 2-year old son named Joshua they left behind two months after he was born because their UAE work contracts were renewed. They left their newborn son under the care of my older sister. We all gathered in the room where the bigger computer screen was located exchanging greetings and family conversations while Joshua plays with his new toys. He would occasionally gaze at the screen while his parents talk to him continuously, and my sister coaching him to respond. It was around this time my nephew and his wife would Skype in four times a week to touch base with their son.

This ritual would happen a lot more frequent in the next few weeks as Joshua’s birthday got closer. When I asked my sister why they Skype so often, she said; “It was the only way Joshua can get familiar with their voices and faces. They like checking up on him to see how he is growing.” The next few Skyping sessions were more animated and scheduled at different times, sometimes with singing and dancing. In those intimate interactions between Joshua, my sister, my nephew and his wife, the literal sense of place and time is overlooked. They are all emotionally present in a virtual world connected by images and sounds coming from the 26-inch computer screen. How this transnational transaction affects the quality of family relationships in the long run is one that requires 126

extended analysis. However, it underscores how transnational media transforms social relationships by cultivating a sense of co- presence for those who are separated by geographic distance (Moores, 2005). A co-presence that collapses spatio-temporal distances where creating a home away from home becomes a possibility facilitated through and in a media infrastructure like The Filipino Channel.

The Filipino Channel: A Transnational Media Company

TFC’s website greets you with “Hello Kapamilya” (hello family kin). ABS-CBN5, the media company that owns TFC, addresses its audience as kapamilya emphasizing the network’s family-oriented approach to programming. Its chief rival, GMA76 addresses its audience as kapuso (heart to heart) emphasizing affection as its programming theme.

ABS-CBN Corporation owns ABS-CBN television station launched in 1953. It also owns

Star Cinema, a film production unit. The network operates through its regional networks of 25 originating stations, 38 relay stations and 8 affiliate television stations. Its programming is also available outside the Philippines as The Filipino Channel or TFC.

ABS-CBN and GMA7, two media giants who control the Philippine broadcast industry, are leading competitors in the international cable television business serving Filipinos in the diaspora. However, GMA7 took a back seat in recent years letting ABS-CBN take control of the Filipino diaspora market (Ong, 2009). While GMA7 still maintains some

5 ABS-CBN, Alto Broadcasting System-Chronicle Broadcasting Network 5 GMA7, Greater Manila Area 7

127

presence in the cable television market, the extent to which ABS-CBN has diversified its services and products installs TFC as the leading brand name identified with transnational television within the FilAm community in Chicago.

A TFC promotional brochure reveals a subscription package to TFC that ranges from $8.99 (Lifestyle) to $29.99 (Premium) per month through IPTV (Internet Protocol

TV), a broadband Internet service that comes with a small black box and a USB Wifi adapter. A premium subscription includes the following channels: a main channel featuring delayed telecasts from ABS-CBN’s flagship channel in Manila, a news channel

(ANC and the primetime TV Patrol), two movie channels (Cinema One and TFC pay per view), a Lifestyle channel, an MTV channel, a Retro-TV channel (Jeepney TV), a radio program channel (DZMM) and a karaoke on demand channel. The news channels are delivered in Tagalog (TV Patrol) and English (ANC). TV Patrol is the primetime news telecast in Tagalog. TFC is also available via cable subscription with Comcast, Time

Warner, AT&T and DirectTV. The rates vary depending on the package offered by the cable companies. TFC started operating through satellite broadcast in the U.S. in early

1990 where a subscription requires buying a dish for $200 and paying a monthly rate of

$10 for the cable service.

The extent to which TFC has diversified its products and services suggests how it caters to the needs of Filipinos spread all over the globe. But such diversification also reflects how FilAms re-appropriate the various features of this media technology to manage the emotional, cultural and psychological realities of de-territoriality. For example, an immigrant grandmother watches her favorite Filipino soap opera to stay 128

connected to the homeland while babysitting her American-born grandchildren. Nurses frequent a Filipino restaurant adorned with TV screens showing Filipino game shows to stay connected with gossips about famous movie celebrities. The bigger the TV screen, the closer they feel connected to the images and sounds of home. A former student activist who is now a father of two teens monitors TV Patrol and posts You-Tube clips of news of human rights abuses and anti-imperialist rallies on a Facebook chat room while embracing America’s version of democracy.

These activities reflect the disjunctive ways FilAms negotiate the hostland- homeland dichotomy. They fulfill personal and intellectual needs that produce certain dependencies on media’s disparate features. In looking at such media dependencies, it is easy to fall prey into internalizing a ‘technological determinist’ stance against which

Jansson (2013) articulates a non-media centric approach:

It is crucial to keep in mind that it is not the media as such that create these dependencies, but the different social, cultural, economic, and political forces that ultimately define what media should be used for and in what ways (p. 17)

A non-media centric approach to the study of FilAms’ relationship with TFC reveals an ecosystem sustained through social and cultural practices that differentiate specific media use and behavior in both private and public spaces. Interaction with TFC is no longer confined to the privacy of someone’s living room or basement but is now extended in restaurants and shopping stores. The boundary between private and public spaces is collapsed engendering the performance of shared identities. Such performance

129

is enhanced as one finds affinity to familiar textures of sound, language, visual cues, the smell of food in company with familiar gestures of the kababayan (countrymen).

The Public and Private Presence of TFC

The presence of the televisual screen allows audiences a view of the world outside of their immediate environs. The images and sounds it projects suggest being connected to an imagined community that oftentimes conflates fiction with reality. However, images and sounds in themselves are not endowed with meaning until audiences make sense of them in their everyday functioning. It is not the televisual content that is injected into the collective unconscious. Rather, it is the logic of the images and sounds themselves and the manner by which they influence identities and behaviors (Ossman,

1994). Through the televisual screen, viewing habits and sensory borders are negotiated and transformed. Ossman’s claim bears resonance in the way FilAms’ interaction with

TFC influences mundane habits that reflect both public and private performance of duality.

At 3R Restaurant, there are two television sets where 24/7 TFC programming accompanies FilAms who dine and enjoy Filipino food. One is located in the main dining area, a 42-inch screen tuned to Showtime, a noontime game and talent show. Showtime is the number one television show in the Philippines hosted by Vice Ganda, a male to female transgender whose satirical jokes and flamboyant banter made her one the highest paid performer on Philippine television. The second one is a 26-inch screen located in a small rectangular space with three tables adjacent to the main dining area. In this screen,

Balitang America (American News) is shown. The show features news from the 130

Philippines and news about Filipinos in the U.S. It is produced in Los Angeles,

California and shown in major cities where large Filipinos reside. Both programs are part of a subscription package to TFC.

On the day I visited, there was a mix of Filipinos in their 30s and 50s occupying the main dining area watching Showtime while eating, chatting and taking occasional glances at their mobile phones. Some are in their nursing outfits while others are in their ordinary summer wear. The restaurant offers a $5.50 combo special with rice and two dishes, a reasonably cheap treat compared to Mexican and Chinese restaurants dominating the area which lies at the border of Ravenswood and Albany Park districts of

Chicago. Connected to the restaurant is a small grocery store selling Philippine made goods, from deodorant to dried fish to phone cards. It has a separate door entrance and one is met by a bulletin board pasted with “room for rent” and “wanted caregiver’ announcements, business cards and posters of Filipino cultural events. Below the board are stacks of Filipino newspapers available for anyone to grab.

The smaller dining area is where I was sitting beside a Filipino man in his 40s enjoying his food while watching Balitang America. We were the only two occupying this side of the restaurant. President Duterte’s declaration of martial law in the island of

Mindanao in Southern Philippines dominated the news report. It featured video clippings of the ongoing conflict between Philippine military and the alleged ISIS-inspired terrorist group, Maute in Marawi City. It showed snippets of evacuation of citizens orchestrated by military men and President Duterte’s inflamed rhetoric during a press conference.

Mindanao is the third largest island in the Philippines and is predominantly Muslim. It 131

lies in the southern part of the archipelago close to Borneo and Indonesia. It has a long history of Christian-Muslim conflict dating back to Spanish colonization. After the news, programming switched to a documentary featuring the weaving culture of a tribal community in Mindanao.

The volume in this smaller television set was barely edible. I could hardly hear the lady newscaster much less the voice over narration of the weaving documentary. The visuals speak the message of this smaller television set. The volume of the television set in the main dining area where Showtime is being shown is much louder. The sound of

Tagalog coming from the TV screen well registers from where I was sitting to the point of drowning all sound coming from Balitang America. This may well explain why

Showtime registers more reaction from the customers in the entire restaurant. Both television screens suggest the same degree of familiarity because of the images they project. Why is there a bigger crowd watching Showtime and only two watching Balitang

America may be indicative of many factors such as difference of program preferences, volume or size of the screen. But the presence of the televisual screen enables the creation of spaces for bodies wanting to make a connection to images and sounds both familiar and unfamiliar.

As Lefevbre (1991b) argues, spaces are animated through the interaction of bodies, objects and visual cues in ways that are both signifying and non-signifying. The jokes that Vice Ganda perform may register differently than news about President

Duterte. Observing how this group of FilAms interact with TFC may reflect their individual subjectivities. But watching both programs on TFC regardless of the size and 132

volume of televisual screen suggests common desires of internalizing the double consciousness of a home away from home.

Manolo: Transporting Local TV into the Hostland

According to Manolo, a 70-year old part-time real estate agent and publisher of a

FilAm newspaper, most people who subscribe to TFC are older Filipinos from the first generation. First generation Filipinos are those who came to the U.S. as immigrants who, despite becoming assimilated to American culture and values, still longs to maintain connection with the homeland. Second generation are those born in the U.S. whose idea of a Philippine homeland depends on how much exposure and training they received from their immigrant parents (Aguilar, 2015; Mabalon, 2013; Tiognson, Gutierrez and

Gutierrez, 2006). Manolo further states:

Actually I don’t have TFC but a lot of my friends do. I am forced to watch TFC because that’s all they want to watch on weekends, especially the telenovela. We all grew up watching soap operas in the Philippines and it is the same culture that TFC brings here for Filipinos to enjoy. Sappy melodramas that involve a lot of shouting and eyebrow raising. Why can’t these actors act like Meryl Streep? (laughs). Sometimes they use TFC in babysitting. Married couples who petition their mothers to come to America usually end up babysitting their American-born kids. TFC is a good way to keep them company while these couples are at work. It makes these mothers less homesick. But then some families complain that although kids pick up Tagalog words, they learn TFC Tagalog (laughs mockingly).

Manolo makes fun of TFC Tagalog because dialogues in most Filipino telenovelas are spoken in Taglish, a mixture of Tagalog and English typically spoken by middle and upper middle-class Filipinos. Taglish is a kind of hybrid language most often heard in Filipino popular movies and television shows. It is a popular street language that

133

echoes what one reads in news tabloids and gossip magazines (Thompson, 2003).

Although it started as conversational language among those educated in rich private schools where English is the medium of instruction, the mixing of Tagalog learned at home and English learned in universities created a generation whose manner of talking infiltrated other spheres of communication, most receptive of which are movies and television (Llamson and Lee, 1980).

Watching soap opera to alleviate homesickness underlines the significance of transnational media in negotiating dualities of home (Ong, 2009). In Ong’s study of

Filipino migrants in London, watching TFC establishes a sense of public connectivity through language. Hearing Tagalog spoken in everyday street accent in soap operas and news not only alleviates feelings of alienation but also transports home into their private

London flats. As Ong argues, this practice makes these Filipino migrants feel one with their co-publics. For mothers imported from the Philippines to babysit their American- born grandchildren, a lost sense of belonging to a culture that shaped their habits makes assimilation to the new host country challenging. As culturally displaced migrants, the idea of home is renegotiated.

Tita Salud: Watching Teleseryes while Babysitting

Tita Salud, a 68-year old grandmother who teaches Tagalog classes part-time, considers TFC her second home. Tita or Tito is a gendered term of endearment for older

Filipinos signifying respect and camaraderie. Addressing an older Filipino Tita or Tito establishes a friendly connection. Traditionally, these terms are used to address Filipino aunts and uncles but using it in U.S. context strengthens a sense of family and 134

community. Tita Salud was petitioned by her daughter who works as a nurse at Swedish

Covenant Hospital in the Albany Park district of Chicago five years ago. She was an elementary school principal in a nearby province of Manila but decided to retire so she can join her daughter in America. She babysits two grandchildren, an 8-year old boy and a 6-year old girl. She begged her daughter to get TFC during her first month in the U.S. because she feels lonely. She adds:

My favorite is Be Careful With My Heart. Jodi and Doc are good together. Doc is so cute and Jodi, that girl, is so pretty. She’s not mestiza like the others. I like her Filipina beauty. When I retired, I made sure I was awake by 11 am so I can watch them. It’s obvious that Doc is really in love with Jodi but he’s so shy and timid.

Doc is the character name of the male lead actor while Jodi is the name of the actress who portrays Maya, Doc’s love interest. In her description, Tita Salud conflates the names of characters and actors as if they are the same. This narrative conflation of fiction and reality animates her everyday domestic life and one that serves as a survival mechanism for being culturally displaced. Tita Salud followed Be Careful With My Heart from its initial telecast in 2012 and remains a faithful follower up to her migration to the

U.S. She occasionally uses the show to teach her grandchildren Tagalog while babysitting them. She also uses the show in teaching Tagalog to young American-born college students at the Filipino community center. She further adds:

There’s a lot of mixing of Tagalog and English in the show. But that’s okay, that’s how Filipinos speak nowadays. But I also stress formal grammar and pronunciation so they don’t distort important phrases and words. Otherwise people will laugh at them when they visit the Philippines.

135

The movie and television personalities that once invaded her home in the

Philippines are transported into a new cultural space speaking a language that sounds foreign to her new host culture and to the immediate family members she takes care of.

According to Tita Salud, she does not enjoy watching TV Patrol anymore. TV Patrol is the primetime news broadcast of ABS-CBN comparable to the 5:30pm news programs in

U.S. major television networks. It is an hour news program that features local news about crimes, scandals in Philippine politics, government and entertainment celebrities, foreign news and weather reports. The program tends to be sensationalist in tone adopting a tabloid like reporting. Tita Salud complains:

They focus too much on crimes and scandals, especially among politicians. Of course, I like knowing about controversies especially about corruption in government. Now they are exposing Duterte’s son and his connection with the drug pushers in China. Trillanes calls it a mafia. Its good good to know these things even if I’m so far away. It is as if I never left. But then, I get tired of the gory images of killings. So I try not to watch it anymore especially when my grandchildren are around. My son-in-law tells me the kids get scared when they see those images. The last time we visited the Philippines, my grandchildren were scared to leave the house because they say they might be kidnapped because they come from America.

Reinterpreting the politics and local textures of home in the context of her new family life in the U.S. keeps Tita Salud in control of her cultural displacement. She still feels homesick occasionally but having her grandchildren keep her company while watching her favorite teleserye is a newfound joy. It strengthens her belief that it is necessary that her grandchildren appreciate the Filipino values she grew up with. For her,

136

teaching them Tagalog is a good start and having TFC on her side makes the activity more fun.

Agnes: Acquiring New Cultural Knowledge through Soap Opera

For Agnes, TFC is an exploration of localism and globalism in her family dynamics. Compared to Manolo who thinks Filipino soap operas more commonly called teleserye (television series) as dumb and shallow, Agnes articulates a different interpretation of TFC. Agnes is 28 years old, born in the U.S. to immigrant parents who migrated as health care professionals in the 1970s. She is an English major and works as a Constituent Advocate for an Illinois Representative to the U.S. Congress addressing social issues affecting the FilAm community. She calls herself a political junkie and is a self-proclaimed Democrat. She hates it when she hears the phrase “that’s so typically

Filipino” especially from her boyfriend. She grew up in a culturally diverse neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago. She considers herself fortunate to grow up in a family that embraces diversity. Accepting her duality empowers her to self-identify as Filipino,

American, Democrat, Midwesterner and Community Advocate.

Watching TFC for Agnes is an immersion to the local culture of her parents’ heritage. Her mother is a big fan of TFC. She is drawn to teleseryes because of their themes that circle around family and the unending search for a lost loved one. Her father however hates TFC. She states:

Whenever I would visit my parents, my mom would always have TFC on. My dad would complain, “my God I don’t know what’s happening in the world because TFC is always on.” Watching TFC with my mom helps me keep tabs of what’s going on in the Philippines. Even though they are mostly commercial shows like the game shows and teleseryes, it was still 137

helpful for me to know what is the culture there even if it’s in Tagalog. I actually understand Tagalog but I can’t speak it. Compared to my friends who don’t understand it, I think I’m pretty lucky. It would be great if I can speak it so I can connect more to the characters in the teleseryes. Good thing some of them have sub-titles. It’s the news that’s hard to follow because the newscasters talk too fast. Some of the gory images also can be nauseating. “Hay, that’s nothing. American news is very sanitized” my Mom would say.

Agnes was never a fan of soap operas. But watching her mother and her aunts gather around the television to swoon over favorite Filipino actors of their generation became her entry into their life worlds. Watching teleseryes became a form of social bonding and an opportunity to pick up new Tagalog expressions. It allowed her to gain a new appreciation of the mythical homeland her parents usually refer to in her growing years. She became witness to how her mother sustains a double life while fully embracing America as her new adopted home. She realized that watching teleseryes allows her mother and her aunts to re-imagine the Philippines not only as a place to return to when they retire, but a virtual space to cherish beautiful memories of their childhood.

In this context, TFC becomes a spatializing practice animated by stories, images, gestures and memories of the imagined homeland (Lefebvre, 1991b). Memories that reinterpret indigenous values in American context such as placing the hand of an older relative in one’s forehead as a sign of respect (called mano in Filipino) or calling fellow FilAms kuya (older brother) or ate (older sister, pronounced as ah-te) to express solidarity. Agnes remembers using these terms to organize a FilAm Student Club while studying at DePaul

University. She adds:

My parents never read bedtime stories to me as a child. It was not a practice they adopted in raising their children. But as I grew up, 138

watching teleseryes would always trigger childhood memories from my mom that she would share to me and to my younger brother. These occasions would end up becoming storytelling sessions fused with Filipino folktales and myths passed on from generation to generation. This is something some of my Filipino friends did not experience as a family.

To her surprise, Agnes eventually became a fan of teleseryes because of the narrative themes and plotlines that for someone like Manolo, sounds ridiculous and shallow. Themes that dramatize memories of departure and possibilities of return that characterize what living in liminal spaces means for diaspora people. She adds:

I know some people criticize teleseryes because they are not substantive. That it’s not the best way to learn about Philippine culture. But there are aspects that they use that resonate especially with my mother and aunts. Stories about ‘my long lost brother that I finally meet’ or ‘the twin I never had’ or ‘searching for the long lost mother.’ There’s always someone to be searched for or someone expected to return or to be found.

Her parents’ desire to return to the Philippines when they retire is a concept that used to boggle Agnes when she was younger. “Why would they want to go back after 50 years when they have established roots here in the U.S?” she asks. As an American-born, the idea of returning to the homeland is somewhat alien to her. But seeing that such desire is more than just a romanticized gesture of completing a diasporic journey, she welcomes the idea as an important step for her parents to enjoy and share the fruits of such journey. Her parents already bought their retirement home and her mother has been active in organizing medical missions to help her hometown’s community clinic.

Participating in a social practice like watching teleseryes integrates Agnes and her parents into a cultural experience where ideas about home differ according to individual contexts.

139

It provides a common ground where sameness and difference are embraced not as a binary construct but as a trait of an intergenerational family who bonds and disperses through storytelling, soap opera and celebrity gossips.

David: The Complexity of Homesickness

In David’s experience, TFC is an intervening agent in addressing the psychological cost of cultural displacement. David is a 45-year old community organizer who came to the U.S. as a teen almost 40 years ago. Like Agnes’ father, David is not exactly a fan of TFC but witnessing how his aunt dealt with depression was a painful experience that forced him to adopt a familiar social practice common among his friends and other relatives. David’s aunt waited 26 years to get her immigrant petition approved, a typical timeline for most family-based petitions. By the time she was approved, she was already 58 years old. She had a successful career as a nurse in the Philippines when she packed up and headed for the U.S. not knowing what kind of life she would have in a foreign land. Being culturally displaced at a later stage in life can have a devastating impact not only on one individual but on diaspora families as well. At first, David thought it was a severe struggle with homesickness and that her withdrawn behavior would eventually improve once she gets fully assimilated to her new environment. But as certain physical manifestations start to bother him, he realized it was more than just being homesick.

She had a hard time finding a job, failed the nursing exam twice and sulked into depression for months. It was hard seeing her depressed especially during winter. I would occasionally see her pull her hair. I thought it was just one of those things she does. But then I would see locks of gray hair scattered around our basement where she was staying. 140

I asked her if she was okay and she would always smile. One day I was shocked to see her going bald. She stopped going out of the house even on Sundays to go to church. She likes going to church when she first came here. We asked her if she wanted to return to the Philippines but she said no. I decided to subscribe to TFC to keep her company.

David’s decision to subscribe to TFC was both a material and a symbolic gesture to help his aunt deal with depression. It was the least he could do for a dear relative who is not culturally wired to entertain the idea of seeing a therapist. It took all the emotional resources of his family to help his aunt get away from the basement she was staying in so she can meet other people and get over her loneliness. As David realized, loneliness for her aunt is a lot more complicated than he and his mother assumed. His mother and his mother’s friends would schedule regular visits to keep her company so they could all watch soap operas, news programs and old reruns of Filipino sitcoms. This would become a weekly routine for months until his aunt finally adopted watching TFC on a regular basis on her own. Slowly, such practice pulled her out of depression as she finds a new way of making conversations with his mother and his mother’s friends. According to

David, such conversations became a sharing of specific characters and actors identified with several teleseryes and celebrity game shows that his aunt and his mother’s friends became huge fans of.

As social relationships for diaspora people become more complex, so too is media’s role in maintaining emotional relationships (Madianou and Miller, 2012). The re- socializing of TFC into David Aunt’s psychic life creates a dependency while at the same time improves her literacy about the affordances of transnational media. It provided a process where her lost identity is recaptured through the emotional connection she has 141

reestablished with the familiar faces she encounters on TFC. David’s aunt never took the nursing exam again. She is in her early 70s now and works part-time as a caregiver. She recently discovered the joy of Facebook. David adds:

She enjoys her regular teleseryes. She uses Facetime a lot to keep up with the latest gossips about her favorite Kapamilya stars with her grandchildren back home. Whenever these movie stars come to Chicago to do concerts, she would beg my mom and my nieces to accompany her. I think she enjoys being in America now. Although she would tell me every now and then that if she saved enough dollars, she would return to the Philippines and die there.

For Tita Salud, Agnes and David’s aunt, watching soap operas on TFC is a transnational lifestyle that reimagines the meaning of family. Family gets extended to the characters, personalities and plot narratives they interact with through their favorite teleseryes. For Tita Salud and David’s aunt, navigating their way into accepting and making sense of their new adopted home strengthens their agency as culturally displaced migrants (Chawla and Jones, 2015). TFC becomes more relevant within the socio- cultural dynamics of their deterritorialization. Their media dependency transforms the challenges of speaking two languages and negotiating two cultures. Through the presence of the televisual screen, symbolic connectedness to the homeland is experienced in the everyday and living in the diaspora can be seen a process of becoming and not a state of cultural dislocation.

Mary Jane and Her Sister: It’s Not the Images but the Sound

For Mary Jane, a 40-year old mother of two half-Filipino, half-Welsh children,

TFC is an anomaly. But her older sister Delia is a big fan. Mary Jane’s extended family gathers at her sister’s house for the annual Christmas family party. This is the only time 142

Mary Jane interacts with TFC and she dreads every minute of it not because of its content, which she finds uninteresting, but because of the way her sister keeps the volume of the TV when family is around. She complains:

She would have the TV turned on the whole time in high volume. It irritates me that for most of the time, she doesn’t even watch the show. I would always nag her to keep the volume down or just turn the TV off especially when we’re having dinner conversations. But she would insist on keeping the volume on. She says it makes her closer to home. She likes the sound of TFC to penetrate her entire household even when no one is actually watching it.

This behavior is particularly strange for May Jane because her sister has lived in the U.S. a lot longer than she had. She would have expected her to be the most assimilated to American culture among her three sisters and two brothers. Mary Jane considers herself fully assimilated to her host country. She is not oblivious to racism as a social reality of America. She has learned to accept her cultural difference that she constantly renegotiates whenever she auditions at several theatre companies in Chicago.

Mary Jane is an actress who struggles between keeping 9 to 5 job as an office manager in an upscale furniture store in downtown Chicago and sneaking to acting auditions after work or during lunch break. She is one of the very few Asian American actors in Chicago to have landed acting parts at The Goodman Theatre and Steppenwolf, two prestigious mainstream theater companies in Chicago.

Mary Jane still savors childhood memories attached to the Philippines but she locates home as grounded in Chicago with her children and Welsh husband. She imagines the homeland as an object of nostalgia, of fond memories as a young girl in a Catholic parochial school, of wide green fields in her hometown of Davao in Southern Philippines 143

– images that she does not find when watching TFC. All she finds in TFC are sappy melodramas, celebrities speaking Taglish which she finds irritating and gory images of robbery and street killings in local news programs.

Home for Mary Jane’s sister comes from another place. It is facilitated by TFC’s physical and auditory presence. Homeland is attached to memories re-imagined through sound. Memories that are re-lived in the present because as De Certeau (1984) argues, memories can be stubborn especially if they emanate from intense moments in someone’s past. However, while the power of memory reconstructed through transnational media can help diaspora people reconnect to lost identities, it can also compromise their assimilation to their host cultures (Rinnawi, 2010). In his study of Arab migrants in

Germany, Rinnawi argues that while Arab transnational cable TV strengthened pan identity formations for Arabs in the diaspora, it also made integrating into mainstream

German culture difficult resulting in lost opportunities for economic mobility. Even though the political context of Arab migrants’ presence in Germany differs from that of

FilAms in the U.S., the difficulty of cultural assimilation because of media finds a common theme between these two diasporic cultures.

Appreciating the value of TFC in their own lives maybe suggestive of cultural difference for Mary Jane and her sister. It also reflects how their assimilation processes differ as individuals despite having a shared family history. The traditional assimilation model assumes that all migrant groups undergo a period of struggle, adversity and rejection before they are accepted into the mainstream (Tuan, 1998). The problem with this definition is that it treats assimilation as a linear process that identifies migrants as a 144

homogeneous group bereft of individuality and contradicting values. It simplifies clashes with mainstream American cultural values as struggles that can be resolved to the detriment of denying a deeper understanding of the complexity of diaspora experience even for members of the same family (De La Garza and Ono, 2015).

The assimilation process for Mary Jane and her sister may differ because of age and the challenges they face as migrants in America. They may share the same blood and family history but their interactions with TFC reveal their individuality as diasporic people. The process of re-translating the narrative of the homeland into their everyday contexts is manifested in heterogeneous forms not always in synchrony with family’s cultural expectations (Smyer Yu, 2013). TFC as a cultural symbol may signify a coherent narrative of the homeland but as Marten and Kramer (2016) argue such “exposure to homeland media does not necessarily result in greater communal cohesion among migrants or greater political involvement in the affairs of the homeland” (p. 17). Mary

Jane adds:

I wish Delia would just subscribe to a podcast since she is only interested in sound. I’m sure TFC has that already. I don’t see the point of having TFC on a 50-inch TV screen when all she wanted is to listen.

In Mary Jane sister’s world, the sound of TFC is not confined to words or speech or vocal tones but extends to music, to ambient effects of tricycles or jeepneys that she hears in soap operas and news programs. They form the auditory contours of childhood memories that animate her personhood in the present. But as Blanchot and Hanson (1987) argue, language and culture as means of communication lose their mediating force

145

because that is what they are, just means or mediums of communication. What matters is not what language or culture signify but the “incessant coming in and out” of references or cues that excite the everyday-ness of daily life. It could come in the form of words or symbols that stir one’s imagination or offer a “promise to communicate” (Blanchot and

Hanson, 1987; p. 14). And this promise is made possible through the presence of TFC.

What TFC signifies to her sister may seem oblivious to Mary Jane because content matters to her more than context or history. But as Ossman (1994) argues, it is not what is projected on the televisual screen that matters but how media users like Delia makes sense of TFC’s presence in her everyday life. For Delia, TFC reproduces memories and how she makes sense of these in her everyday functioning only she can define (Silverstone, 1994). While sound plays a significant role in the re-imagining of the homeland for May Jane sister’s, the size of the televisual screen matters more for Larry in constructing imaginaries of his childhood past.

Larry: Size of the Screen Matters

Larry is a mental health counselor who treats his home as an expression of cultural hybridity. His 50-inch TV screen mounted on his living room wall is a sanctuary where he finds connection to a lost culture. He has a Direct TV subscription and pays an additional ten dollars for TFC even if he only watches TV Patrol for news. He likes watching movies on HBO and Star in the screen as well. Watching the news on a larger screen gives it a different emotional texture. He asserts:

I could watch news from the Philippines via YouTube on my computer. But I don’t like doing that. It makes me feel that I’m too far away. I’d rather watch it on my 50-inch television screen that’s why I 146

subscribed to TFC through DirectTV. Watching news from the larger screen on my living room makes me feel closer to what’s happening in the homeland. I feel like I’m in the middle of Manila’s traffic. I like the way the newscasters deliver the news in the way they overdramatize it. I like how they use street language in the news. It feels like home.

The size of the televisual screen for Larry establishes a sense of cultural proximity to his imagined homeland. As soon as he switches the television on, he is transported to the Philippines breaking the imagined wall between the screen and the world outside his window. Larry reimagines home through the size of the televisual screen in the same way that Mary Jane’s sister reimagines hers through volume. The specific features of media function as interpreters of the homeland that for Larry is constructed through TV Patrol.

Like Larry, news about Philippine politics is a source of interest that keeps other FilAms glued to TFC. The emotional triggers that animate this level of interest is drawn from a history of social activism remnants of which still live and breathe in the present for

Renato and Jose.

Renato and Jose: Re-embracing the Affective Footprints of Resistance

Renato, a 55-year old father of two American-born teens, is a medical researcher and a social activist. He is one of the founders of Committee on Philippine Issues (CPI), an informal group of former activists in the Philippines. With the recent spate of extra judicial killings adopted by the Duterte administration’s ‘war on drugs’, Renato has taken active role in monitoring the violent killings of innocent bystanders caught in President

Duterte’s political agenda heavily criticized by Amnesty International, the Pope and the

United Nations. This monitoring act he performs through TFC and Facebook. He

147

religiously watches TV Patrol and ANC almost everyday after work to get the latest updates on the victims. He also created a Facebook chat room called “EJK” (extra judicial killings) to engage other FilAms in promoting a dialogue in critique of Duterte’s

‘war on drugs.’

Renato’s political fervor is historically rooted in his college days as a student activist in the Philippines. When he migrated to the U.S., he continued his political work through CPI. But because of family obligations, he took a leave from activist work that lasted 16 years. When his youngest son started high school, he found time to get involved again in social justice work. According to Renato, social activism never left him even when he had to raise two young children. But now that he has more time in his hands and after witnessing how abuse of power, which he opposed thirty years ago, is re-emerging, he could not bring himself to stay unconnected to the struggles of his fellow Filipinos in the homeland. He states:

What is happening in the Philippines right now reminds me of the Martial Law days during Marcos. It’s like a return to fascism. Duterte’s war on drugs agenda is destroying what the People Power of 1986 accomplished. His complete disregard for due process of law is really alarming. I think he’s worse than Marcos.

Renato is joined by other FilAms in his human rights advocacy. Jose, a 65-year old community activist whose advocacy work in Chicago started with fighting for equity rights for Filipino WWII veterans in early 1990s, collaborates with Renato in facilitating the Facebook chat room. Jose used to work as a financial analyst for a Lutheran Hospital until he became Executive Director of a not-for-profit organization serving Filipino immigrants. He is now retired and helps take care of his grandchildren. Jose, like Manolo, 148

is not a fan of TFC. But like Renato, he has a subscription to TFC because of the news programs.

I don’t watch the soap operas but I watch the news. They tend to be sensationalist but that’s okay. We Filipinos like drama. We’re used to watching gory images back home. But watching poor and young people getting killed on the streets just breaks my heart. And you have a president protecting rich people who everybody know are drug lords.

The social activism that inspires Renato and Jose suggests a human affect that bridges lessons of history to the social issues of the present. It is a human attribute that blurs the boundaries between emotion and reason and is inherently political

(Papacharissi, 2015). It is a state of in-between-ness that locates the body’s potential to influence and be influenced by other bodies because affect is embedded in a “body’s perpetual becoming” (Seigworth and Gregg, 2010, p. 3). In postmodernist discourse, affect is both reason and emotion, rational and irrational experienced through a body anticipating subsequent emotions and thoughts. It is political because of its anticipatory potential leaving emotional and intellectual footprints that can rearticulate new discourses in contemporary settings.

The extent to which the emotional and political footprints marked by the Civil

Rights Movement of the 1960s rekindle the current political discourse and emotional power represented by Black Lives Matter is not a historical co-incidence. It is driven by a human affect that lives in peoples’ emotional and intellectual memory. In his discussion of Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, Papacharissi (2015) theorizes affect as a human attribute that united a public who expressed resistance against authoritarianism and

149

corporate greed. He locates these publics as inspired by a network of affective expressions through transnational media such as Twitter and Facebook. Papacharissi articulates that affective publics suggest structures of feelings and thoughts manifested through information sharing, storytelling and emotional exchange – strategies similar to what the EJK chat room wishes to accomplish. She further argues however that in locating affective publics, one must understand media technologies not as a determinant of change or any political outcome. She further states:

To understand the civic import of such technologies, we need to interpret them not as forces that bring about change, do activism or enact impact. We need to understand them as networked infrastructures that present people with environments of a social nature, supporting interactions aligned with particular cultural ethos and practices that have histories and geographical contexts (p. 120)

As practiced by Renato, Jose and the other members of the Facebook chat room, engaging in political dialogue and resistance in support of the current anti-Duterte social movement happening in the homeland resonate with Papacharissi’s arguments on affective publics. Re-appropriating the term, I call Renato, Jose and other members of the

EJK chatroom affective diasporas because they represent networked Filipinos invoking the political ethos and emotional footprints of a resistance movement into the present through media. It allows a contemporary critique of authoritarian tendencies that endanger civic dialogue and freedom of expression. “I hope he doesn’t totally crackdown on media although he’s been sending threats to TV networks in his speeches. And when you have Donald Trump congratulating him for a job well done, it poses a great danger in protecting human rights” Renato adds.

150

Media censorship in the Philippines is not a new phenomenon. It reached its peak during the 20-year dictatorship of former President Ferdinand Marcos that ended in 1986 through a People’s revolution (Templo, 2011). Since then, mass media gained a new sense of journalistic freedom although fraught with intermittent killings of local journalists in rural areas. But because of the Internet and transnational media, political news about the Philippines is more widespread and less subject to censorship (Coronel,

2007). This is the context in which Renato finds affinity to TFC and Facebook to make his fellow Filipinos in the U.S. more active in critiquing the Duterte administration as a threat to the promise of the People’s Revolution of 1987.

Duterte has been in the media limelight because of his incendiary rhetoric. He represents the common man in the eyes of the 16 million Filipinos who voted for him.

His populist appeal comes as a breath of fresh air in a political climate dominated by past presidents who all come from political dynasties in the Philippines. He was a city mayor when he decided to run for President in 2016. He is the first elected president from the

South and one who is not identified with the Philippine oligarchy. He is one to speak his mind in front of the camera using foul language and cusswords to attack anyone who questions his authority. Less than a year after he was installed, he became a sensation for questioning U.S. imperialism and calling Barack Obama the ‘son of a whore’ as reported by the New York Times. He called the Pope a hypocrite for questioning his ‘war on drugs’ that killed thousands without the benefit due process of law. For a Catholic country, one would expect outrage from its citizens for insulting the Pope. However, his foul mouth only made him more popular among his supporters. Making his “war on 151

drugs” the main agenda of his administration versus the war on poverty which he strongly campaigned for, earned him scathing critiques from media, human rights groups in the

Philippines and abroad.

Through media, the imagined homeland for Renato is no longer a place of nostalgia but a place of discourse on human rights and abuse of power. Through TFC, homeland is culturally demythologized from the romanticized view of a far away home and a safe place to return to. It underlines the role of transnational media in expanding the complexity of diasporic imagination.

I have fond memories of my childhood in Alaminos. I remember I would take a detour after school on my way home, walk another 4 miles of dirt road so I could watch movies of FPJ. I like his movies because he always fights for the poor peasants. All of his characters seems to be pro-poor. He likes making the rich hacienderos the villain. He draws his gun really fast so he could kill them all, especially the goons. I think that’s why I subscribed to TFC because they feature his films in their line up.

FPJ is Fernando Poe, Jr., a popular movie actor in the Philippines who is considered legendary for bringing the plight of the poor and oppressed in his movies. He is a movie icon in Philippine film culture whose career spanned almost five decades. He is an actor-director who also owns his own movie company. He ran for president in 2004 but lost to the then incumbent President Gloria Arroyo. There were allegations of voter fraud hurled against Arroyo strong enough to merit an investigation by the Philippine

Senate. My sister who is an avid FPJ fan claims that there was indeed cheating, “How can

FPJ get zero votes in Mindanao (the 3rd biggest island in Southern Philippines) when

Muslims love him. He always portrays Muslim characters in a good light”, my sister said.

A year after the election, FPJ suffered a heart attack and died in his mid-70s. 152

As Papacharissi (2015) argues, affect operates within structures of emotions and thoughts triggered by intense memories that have lingering footprints. Renato’s affectation toward TFC is built on a corpus of historical and cultural references connected to a past and reimagined in the present. In Duterte’s era, Renato locates the homeland as a place of violence. Interrogating the idea of home as a site of violence destabilizes the nostalgic notion of the imagined homeland (Chawla and Jones, 2015). Home as a space of imagination and discourse empowers diasporic individuals in articulating stories of oppression and marginalization. It is a perspective where transnational media plays an important role in creating affective diasporas.

For instance, in Kiram’s (2003) study of Turkish diaspora in London, he locates the critical role of transnational TV in demythologizing an idealized homeland by showing real violence on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara and everyday banalities of a modernizing State. Projecting these images on transnational television shatters the abstract nostalgia of diasporic imagination disengaging Turkish migrants from an idealized past to the violent realities of the present. For Renato and Jose, the nostalgia of their innocent childhood memories is transformed into tragic images of dead bodies including children lying on the streets of Manila killed at random with cardboard tags that says, “I am a drug addict”. Through TFC and Facebook, they reimagine the homeland through political conversations and storytelling in a networked group of affective diasporas. The homeland now becomes a place of political discourse.

The Facebook chat room has postings of video clippings, news articles, URL links to various online sources and personal opinions about the ongoing human rights abuses 153

being committed by the Duterte administration. It has also expanded the political conversation by including other social issues that affect Filipinos in the U.S. such as the cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) by the Trump administration, for which at least 3,000 Filipino undocumented youth are affected

(AFIRE Website). In recent blow to the cause of protecting human rights in the

Philippines, the House of Representatives, in act of vengeance, slashed the budget of the

Commission on Human Rights (CHR) created under the Cory Aquino administration in the aftermath of the 1986 People Power revolution. CHR has been the most vocal critic of

Duterte’s indiscriminate killings of youth victims. Adding insult to injury, more than half of the Philippine Congressmen and women who are strong Duterte supporters, allotted only 1,000 pesos (20 dollars) to CHR’s annual budget. It was an act of mockery that elicited condemnation from various sectors in the Philippines expressing rage on social media. In one of his chat room posts, Jose writes:

The battle is drawn. Duterte and his Congress undervalue and diminish the worth of Filipino human rights and human lives to nothing. DU30 adores killings and violence-a horrifying narrative of the years to come. I invite you all to join our community reflections on the 18th n 21st at 5:30 pm at Budlong Chicago Public Library and at AFIRE's office, respectively. Now is the time for people w conscience to come together n protect the rights of our kababayan (translated from Tagalog, posted September 12, 2017, 8:21pm)

The affective footprints that Renato and Jose re-appropriate in the hostland articulates a kind of long-distance activism that is now facilitated through the interweaving of various technological affordances through TV Patrol and social media.

This form of mediated, long distance activism resonates with Myrna, a 60-year old

154

community organizer, who is an active contributor to the Facebook chat room that Renato and Jose organized.

Myrna: Monitoring the Homeland through TV Patrol

Myrna recently moved to Los Angeles to work for the Pilipino Workers Center, an advocacy group focused on protecting the rights of Filipino domestic workers in the

U.S. Myrna’s active participation in the chat room is informed by a long history of social activism dating back to her involvement as a labor organizer at the height of Martial Law in the Philippines. She is a survivor of torture by military soldiers under then President

Marcos. She came to the U.S. in the 1980s to escape further surveillance from the military. She states:

I don’t know why I chose the U.S. I was a regular at rallies in front of the US embassy shouting ‘down with US-Marcos dictatorship, down with US imperialism’ and here I am in the belly of the beast. I also have relatives here so it made sense. You can say I have mellowed as a tibak (local slang for activist) but as the saying goes, ‘once an activist, always an activist’ and what Duterte is doing is like going back to square one in terms of political organizing. What happened? Did we not learn anything from EDSA?

EDSA stands for Epifanio de los Santos Avenue. It is a major thoroughfare where the 1986 People’s revolt against President Marcos was staged. Uttering EDSA in the context of Philippine politics is rife with memories of social protest, democracy, people power and resistance against dictatorship. For Myrna, invoking the memories of martial law and how it parallels the actions of the present administration in social media are affective expressions that originate from lived personal experiences. The quote “the personal is political” is a positionality embedded in affective publics (Papacharissi, 2015;

155

p. 96). Allowing the self to reproduce political narratives and remix visual and sound motifs drawn from history, are spatializing practices that when performed as networked conversations, becomes a space for alternative politics (Dahlgren, 2013). Dahlgren argues that these forms of networked political talk indicate the formation of new echo chambers that suggests the performance of democratic citizenship.

Myrna’s old forms of social activism are now transformed into new platforms of political messaging through Facebook. Like Renato, she also monitors the human rights abuses of the Duterte Administration though social media and TFC. The images she sees on TV Patrol about the ‘war on drugs’ campaign and the constant harassment of journalists ignites a newfound activism in her gut that she now wants to share with other

FilAms through social media. “The strategies of activism have changed. The content is the same but the messaging is different” Myrna asserts. According to Myrna, this new media convergence enables her and the likes of Renato and Jose to expand the dialogue with other FilAms allowing them to bring history into the conversation to as far back as the Philippine Independence Movement of 1896 to the anti-martial law movement of the

1970s and 1980s to the growing Anti-Duterte movement now active in social media.

Such conversation intensifies a shared historical memory and a resistance discourse that can counter the media trolls employed by the Duterte administration. Renato, Jose and

Myrna hope that this new conversation facilitated through social media and an independent TV news journalism like TV Patrol now available globally will ignite a contagion that would forge political talk among FilAms anywhere in the U.S.

156

What inspires political agency for affective publics is not what they talk about but how they create environments of political talk in networked spaces (Papacharissi, 2015).

How these networked spaces give birth to new forms of political participation especially among diaspora populations is a fertile ground for redefining diasporic citizenship. From holding placards on picket lines while spewing slogans on a megaphone to organizing a

Facebook chat room with multiple viewpoints not bound by time-space locations, transnational media transforms a culture of resistance for affective diasporas like Renato,

Jose and Myrna.

Mara: Re-interpreting Activism through Long Distance

Mara, a 40-year old daughter of a former political activist locates the Malaya

Facebook page as an extension her desire to engage in long-distance activism. What animates her and her mother’s newfound passion for activism includes political conversations about human rights, video clips of protests from the past and present, memes of Duterte that mock his misogynist, anti-Catholic and pro-China rhetoric, protest songs and slogans that bring together old and young activists – all performed in a platform they know can be risky and subject to surveillance. This performance of mediated activism allows them to become part of an online network of active individuals mobilized by a political conviction against a culture of violence (Alonzo and Oairzabal,

2010; Bernal, 2010; Dahlgren, 2014; Kiram, 2013).

According to Mara, there are obvious trends in the current political situation in the

Philippines that appear similar to what happened during the oppressive Marcos years in the 1970s. Mara, a former youth activist in the Philippines migrated to the U.S. in late 157

1980s with her mother who was active in the labor sector during the oppressive years of

Martial Law. When the family moved to the U.S., both she and her mother still became politically engaged and found a new way to engage in social activism. At the urging of her mother who wanted to stay connected to what is happening in the Philippines, she subscribed to TFC so her mother can watch TV Patrol News Program on TFC on a regular basis. Her mother is also active in social media so she can take part in the ongoing conversations about President Duterte. According to Mara, her mother feels obligated to share her stories as a political detainee during the Marcos years even through social media to enlighten those young people who think that Martial Law was good for

Filipinos.

I told my mother to be careful sometimes when she posts because Duterte employs a lot of trolls who monitor social media. I get scared sometimes because the last time Senator Trillanes was here, he revealed that Duterte has his own army of paid trolls who attacks his critics. She gets enraged when she hears news about human rights abuses on TV Patrol that she quickly critiques in her Facebook postings.

Among the issues she and her mother often include in their postings are questions about the proposed legislation to change the Philippine constitution into a federalist model to ensure that Duterte stays in power, the blatant harassment of independent journalist Maria Ressa, CEO of the online news publication, Rappler.com and the campaign on ‘war on drugs’ as a pretext to imposed martial rule – issues that for Mara and her mother are events reminiscent of the Martial Law years under Marcos. These events re-invigorate a passion for social activism that Mara now conducts through long distance using TV Patrol and Facebook as sources of information. But despite the long

158

distance, Mara and her mother still feel a connection to the strengthening of a civil society in the homeland. The fear of authoritarian rule which both she and her mother became victims of is something that activates their commitment to the struggle in the homeland (Georgiou, 2013; Ghorashi and Boersma, 2009).

As the daughter of a former political prisoner, Mara is no stranger to paranoia and being persecuted for standing up to someone’s political beliefs. As a ten-year old, she remembers traveling 60 miles south of Manila every week to visit her mother in prison, walking through the cramped halls of a dilapidated prison inhabited by petty criminals and political detainees, not knowing whether she will find her mother dead or alive.

When Cory Aquino took power after Marcos fled the country in 1986, Mara experienced a sense of freedom that she vowed never to take for granted.

TFC: A Transnational Media Ecology

In one of my visits to Seafood City, a new shopping center for Filipino and Asian food lovers in northwest Chicago, I was introduced to a universe of Filipino-ness I have never seen before in Chicago. TFC maintains a stall at the shopping center alongside a remittance center, a balikbayan box shipping office, two Filipino bakeries, the famous

Jollibee restaurant and a bunch of Filipino food stores all surrounding the main grocery area. A short conversation with a Sales Agent reveals new information about TFC’s products and services. The Sales Agent handed me a flyer on IPTV (Internet Protocol

TV), the newest addition to TFC’s services and products designed to boost subscription sales since partnership with Comcast and DirectTV is not picking up. She handed me another flyer and states: 159

TFC is launching a Sing Sikat: The Search for the Next Pinoy Singing Star next month. It’s like American Idol here at Seafood City. Tell your friends about it. The winner gets $5,000 with free airfare to the Philippines. The winner also gets to appear at Showtime with Vice Ganda. We are also putting back Friday movie nights. John Lloyd and Sarah G. has a new movie. They’re really cute together. Tell your friends please ha!

At the time of my visit, there was a bingo session going on in one of the hallways for which the TFC Sales Agent is also the emcee. I did not realize it until she abruptly excused herself from our short chat because she has to return to the microphone to resume the bingo session. The TFC stall is adorned with movie posters featuring the current pop stars in Philippine cinema. There is glass shelf where Filipino films on DVD, music CDs and Kapamilya phone cards are stacked. There were young Filipino girls with their mothers looking through the glass shelf. Skimming through the table of flyers, I grabbed MyRemit, an online remittance service and Star Cargo, a shipping service for balikbayan boxes, both owned by ABS-CBN through the TFC banner.

On my second visit at Seafood City, I bumped into an old friend who begged me to sit as a judge for the Sing Sikat auditions. I obliged and found myself sitting in small rectangular table with two other judges who I met for the first time. We were given two wooden pads, one colored green which means ‘you’re in’ and red meaning ‘you’re out’.

It was the first day of audition on a Thursday afternoon. There were only seven Filipinos who auditioned. Only one sang from memory while the rest sang looking at their cell phones for the lyrics. They were all pretty good so they all got in. Two people sang in

Tagalog while five rendered songs English.

160

The TFC Sales Agent who was the emcee for the bingo session was also the emcee for the audition. The manner by which she switches from English to Tagalog with all the colloquialisms of Pinoy native twang was amazing. She manages to crack Filipino jokes to catch the attention of the audience and the shoppers. The spot where the bingo session was held on my previous visit was the same area cordoned off for the audition. So customers who were shopping and conducting whatever business they have to deal with inside Seafood City can hear the singing taking place. It sounded as if a karaoke session was going on in the middle of a shopping mall. At one point, while this young Filipino guy was belting out John Legends’ All of Me, three men walked in one at a time pushing carts containing several balikbayan boxes on the way to Atlas Cargo shipping office beside the TFC stall. Meanwhile, older Filipinos were conducting business at PNB

(Philippine National Bank) Remittance Center and young FilAms were lining up at

Jollibee, Red Ribbon and Valerio’s bakery stores.

Not too far from where I was sitting at the judges table is the fresh seafood section of the grocery mall where one can buy fresh fish and have it deep-fried in a few minutes.

Suddenly, the familiar smell of fried tilapia came running through my nose. The three of us in the judges’ table looked at each other exchanging smiles that suggested solidarity. A female contestant who was about ready to reach the high note of Whitney Houston’s

Saving All My Love For You lost her momentum when a male voice over suddenly interrupted the airwave saying “Order 246 Daing na Bangus (smoked milkfish) ready for pick up.” I almost crack up but kept my composure as did the lady contestant who finished the song to a warm applause. There were twenty or so audience members sitting 161

in a row of chairs facing the audition stage, while customers walking by with their shopping carts would stop and observe the live singing.

It was a scene of overlapping activities, a cacophony of sounds and crisscrossing bodies experiencing the Philippines outside of it. Through sound, smell, food, objects and visual symbols, the homeland is reimagined right at the heart of the Albany Park district of Chicago. It is a merging of the material and the symbolic in ways that establish a microcosm of a daily routine of FilAm diaspora life. The movement of people, material goods and money revealed economic, cultural and personal transactions in multi- directional ways resembling an ‘ethnoscape’ in the context of de-territoriality

(Appadurai, 1994). Some are coming from the homeland and some are going to the homeland exchanging desires and memories while embracing liminality as an expression of agency and identity (Kiram, 2003). Through transnational media, a cultural ecology emerges in which FilAms congregate as assemblages that blur the lines between regional affinities, age, class and gender.

The presence of inter-generational Filipino families shopping together dominated the group of consumers at Seafood City during my visits. Thematically, it underscores

TFC’s Kapamilya slogan. Its location at Seafood City is an apt marketing strategy to promote its media services and products, especially with the new addition of remittance and shipping services to its current line up entertainment programming. As sending money back home and shipping balikbayan boxes are everyday behaviors as well as watching TV Patrol and teleseryes, FilAms’ engagement with TFC engenders complex dependencies that shape a transnational media culture. As proponents of mediatization 162

theory argue, it is within these complex cultural and economic dependencies created by specific features of media that socio-cultural realities of media users are constructed through and in media (Couldry and Hepp, 2013; Deuze, 2012; Jansson, 2013).

How TFC becomes integrated into Filipino Americans’ everyday lives as diasporas negotiating two versions of home is a question that can only be addressed in a longitudinal ethnographic study. However, the degree to which TFC has diversified its media services and the technology infrastructures, from Satellite dish, to cable partnership with U.S. companies to broadband Internet service indicates a social bond that is shaping the psychic life of the FilAm community and TFC’s infrastructure and business models (McLuhan, 1964). It suggests a mutually penetrating relationship in which conditions of media production and consumption are transforming communication practices among FilAms in Chicago. It highlights themes of transnational homemaking, dualities of identity and assimilation, affective diasporas and democratic citizenship as media-enhanced behaviors for my participants. They embody diasporic identity and citizenship performed with and in transnational media.

Mediatized Behavior: Dependency or Agency?

As the dominant player in the transnational media market that caters to FilAms in

Chicago, TFC has captured a market whose interests and needs are closely linked to its media products and services. It controls most Filipino transnational media programming that includes entertainment, local news, telephony, balikbayan box shipping and money remittance -- services deeply integrated in FilAms’ everyday diasporic life. Such relationship problematizes a power dynamic between media dependence and agency, 163

between media consumption and media production. How does TFC’s institutional power position impact FilAms’ performance of agency? Do FilAms’ growing dependence on

TFC compromise their autonomy as diasporic people?

Addressing these questions necessitates a further elaboration of how mediatization as theoretical lens provide a framework in understanding the dialectical tension between media dependency and human agency, a tension that I argue is embedded within the ‘home away from home’ double consciousness. That FilAms tend to depend on media technologies to maintain connection to the imagined homeland through karaoke and watching soap operas is a reality that attests to the great influence of media in FilAms’ everyday life. But as Jansson (2015) argues, media dependency should not be taken in isolation from how media itself is being transformed by such cultural practices.

There is a “mutual process of moulding” that occurs in a mediatized behavior recognizing that as technology shapes media users’ behavior, technology itself is shaped by users’ patterns of consumption within existing socio-economic conditions (Jansson,

2015, p. 16). It is within this process that dependency and agency emerge as dialectically interwoven in a mediatized environment where relationship between media users and technology are inextricably linked. Practices like watching soap operas or local news on

TFC or remitting money through TFC payment center not only address emotional and economic needs. They also domesticate technology into the specific lived contexts of

FilAms creating patterns of media dependency that alleviates homesickness or facilitates the homeland-hostland connection. However, such dependency also gives birth to 164

newfound interests and new expressions of agency in the hostland as exemplified in the case of Tita Salud in how she re-appropriates her dependence on teleseryes as a strategy of introducing Tagalog to her grandchildren and to her language students at the community center. The same argument can be said of Agnes whose fascination for her mother’s and aunts’ dependence on TFC re-appropriates the practice of watching soap opera as forms of women bonding and cultural renewal.

Such mediatized behavior can be understood as part of Jansson’s (2015) more layered description of media dependency based on three behavioral types. Jansson argues that media dependence can be functional, a behavior in which media users’ reliance on technology leaves them incapable of exploring other options in performing basic activities. Such type of dependence can be prohibitive and compromises agency. The second type of dependence can be transactional, one in which certain human values such as privacy are sacrificed because it is more convenient shopping online. The third type relates to media dependence as a form of ritual that, according to Jansson, is more complicated. It is complicated in the sense that the degree of dependence posits media behavior and technology as mutually penetrating. This suggests that as media users become more literate about how they use media and the myriad ways they can re- appropriate its material and symbolic potentials, they also develop a sense of agency in the way they re-appropriate media into their everyday lives (Madianou and Miller, 2012).

While functional and transactional dependencies subscribe to established rules set by media institutions, ritualized dependence subscribes to cultural expectations within a given socio-cultural order. It is a form of dependence that enhances media users’ ability 165

to adapt to different attributes of media technologies and how such attributes provide them with a sense of belonging to familiar activities and social practices. Watching local news on a 42-inch TV screen instead of a laptop to get a closer connection to images and sound of the homeland or giving importance to the sound of local game shows or soap operas instead of the images and visual motifs presented on the televisual screen invoke an emotional relationship with technology not pre-determined by signifying attributes of media but through media users’ capacity to re-appropriate media itself according to their preferences.

Such act of re-appropriation underscores the extent to which media technology becomes an extension of man, drawing from McLuhan’s (1964) famous adage. That dependency can be functional, transactional and ritualistic is illustrative of media users’ adaptive skills as cultural agents who engage media according to their social, emotional and psychological needs (Jansson, 2015). It locates dependency and agency as negotiable tendencies in a cultural environment where the power dynamic between media institutions and media users are constantly renegotiated according to changing economic conditions and technological innovations.

Conclusion

For FilAms in Chicago, what defines their acts of adaptability is both material and symbolic as well as utilitarian and affective. It addresses the changing dynamics of family relations, imaginaries of home and political activism that produce certain degrees of routinized dependence to TFC’s products and services. Watching soap operas for Tita

Salud may be routinely constructed in her daily activity but it also allows her to refashion 166

her teaching methods in a new cultural environment. Mary Jane and Delia may not agree on what TFC represents to them during family gatherings but it opens a dialogue on the different ways cultural assimilation operates for diasporic people. Posting old footage of martial law on Facebook may seem a passive review of Philippine history. But for

Renato, Jose, Myrna and Mara, it allows them to create new conversations where old resistance strategies and memories can be rearticulated into a new discourse on political citizenship through a digital format.

My participants’ evolving relationship with TFC varies from person to person producing media-enhanced activities that fulfill different emotional and psychological needs. These media-enhanced behaviors propose a qualitative transformation of their attitudes and behaviors about the intricacies of the ‘home away from home’ double- consciousness. It underscores the tension between media dependence and agency as they maintain a transnational and mediatized lifestyle (Jansson, 2015; Madianou and Miller,

2012). It reshapes longing for the homeland within their interests and aspirations in the hostland integrating TFC’s kapamilya brand into their everyday life. Not only does it reveal the complex attributes of living in liminal spaces but it also underscores how TFC itself is being reshaped as FilAms navigate the emotional and psychological implications of adapting ‘being here and there’ as a lifestyle.

For my participants, the convergence of TFC and social media and the affordances it provides reveal patterns of media consumption that allow them to reinvent notions of home making, cultural assimilation and social activism. Notions that are not

167

assigned fixed meanings but evolve as their everyday engagement with technology inspires the formation of a cultural environment facilitated with and in media.

168

Chapter 6: Community Newspapers and Its Many Essences

In the previous two chapters, I discussed the role of Karaoke and The Filipino

Channel in FilAms’ reimagining of home and identity. There appears to be a stronger affinity to these two media forms in contrast to community newspapers. Community newspapers seem to be their least favorite media for a couple of reasons. Some argue that they contain too many Philippine news stories that do not resonate with their life in

America. A recurring complaint is that community newspapers have become vehicles to promote certain community personalities for image building and personal aggrandizement.

When asked about what newspapers they read, most of my participants found it difficult to recall the names of any of the papers, let alone distinguish one from another.

However, they recall beauty pageants, local advertising and tourism promotions whenever they hear or think of community newspapers. A few concede that community newspapers are good promotional platforms for the religious rituals of specific regional groups. One participant shares that community newspapers are good information sources for the community to learn about issues such as immigration and disaster relief operations.

These are features that establish my participants’ level of familiarity with community newspapers as a communication medium. They resonate with my own observation of community newspapers as evidenced by Via Times’ consistent use of

Filipino women garbed in flashy gowns in its front covers, or Pinoy News Magazine’s colorful display of local Filipino restaurants and enchanting Philippine beaches in its 169

inside and back covers. I locate these images as visual markers that essentialize community newspapers’ identity and functionality. At the same time, their continued physical presence in local Filipino business establishments suggests an enduring enterprise where FilAms find meaning and significance in their own particular contexts.

However, there is a common feeling that community newspapers are becoming a thing of the past. That they have become too “ethnic” and parochial whose only reason to exist is to highlight cultural pageants and local advertising is a common perception.

These impressions may be challenging to dispel. And to argue otherwise requires a deeper introspection into how they function in the everyday lives of FilAms and where they fit within the community’s diaspora experience.

In this chapter, I argue that FilAms’ relationship with community newspapers is a diaspora performance that deconstructs the essence of community newspapers -- from a text that one reads, to a visual object that jogs cultural memory, to a communication platform that facilitates community dialogue. For example, an American-born student feels a sense of belonging to an imagined community whenever she sees Pinoy

Newsmagazine stacked in Asian grocery stores. She does not have to read the content to remind her that she is a hybrid child of two cultures – a consciousness that provides comfort and emotional stability. A retired nurse always grabs a copy of Via Times because it brings back fond memories when she was featured on a newspaper’s front cover for winning a beauty pageant. Her attachment to the newspaper elicits cultural pride and identity. A newspaper publisher consistently features images of Filipino heroes

170

to connect his American-born children to Philippine history. A high school student reads a citizenship workshop announcement that changed her views on immigration.

These activities locate the creative and political ways in which community newspapers speak to my participants’ affective diaspora present. I argue that these activities constitute performances with logics of their own, allowing diasporic bodies to explore new ways of articulating cultural agency and political citizenship.

The Essence of Community Newspapers

Phenomenologists argue that a thing of the past is always already present because even as the world in which it once anchored fades it opens a space where one can recall another world. In Polt’s (1995) phenomenological reflection on the typewriter, he recalls how the machine introduced typing as a human activity replacing handwriting as a form of communication. According to him, one may see the typewriter as an object of the past but the human activity that defines its essence still lives in the present albeit reconfigured according to features offered by newer writing technologies in the digital environment.

He argues that the activities we perform with technology reshapes technology itself that in the process reshape us as well. Medium theorists argue that old media technologies do not lose their essence but rather is complimented by new ones whose “eidos” or form add to a broad range of communication practices that alter social relationships (Polt, 1995).

Oral discourse did not disappear with the advent of writing but writing did change the function of speech, memory and patterns of human interaction (Meyrowitz, 1985).

Recalling the world where the typewriter once fit provides a window into how humans’ relationship with media technologies create new environments mediated by evolving 171

technologies.

When McLuhan (1964) argues that “the content of any medium is always another medium” (p. 80), he emphasizes the importance of looking at how patterns of media consumption shape each medium’s evolution or re-appropriation as they become integrated in humans’ everyday lives. For example, vinyl records may seem like an object of a bygone era but it links us to how technologies of sound production and consumption transformed the ways we experience music. The shift from vinyl to cassette tape to CDs to Spotify not only expanded our listening spaces and habits but it also introduced a new culture of music sharing, streaming and non-linear ways of thinking and experiencing music. “Not only can we think of things given to us in experience, we can also understand ourselves as thinking them” argues Sokolowski (2000, p. 4). Vinyl’s re- emergence in mid-2000s saw a new generation of music lovers appreciating the technology of the analog era in a new cultural environment dominated by digital platforms.

That there is no universal or fixed message of any medium or activity is a conceptual lens through which the many essences of community newspapers can be interpreted. How they are experienced or instantiated in real world reveals the different functionalities community newspapers serve in particular contexts (Polt, 1995).

According to one newspaper publisher, the reason why her newspaper was popular among Filipinos in 1984 was because hers was the only communication medium that made connecting to the homeland accessible. Since making long distance calls were quite expensive and phone cards were not yet in fashion, staying connected with what is going 172

on in the homeland was supplemented by local news stories lifted from Philippine newspapers. Migrants who needed to send money back home used her paper to find a remittance center closest to where they work or reside. Those who wish to find Filipino restaurants or grocery stores when such places were rare grabbed her newspaper for address and telephone numbers.

When TFC, social media and online remittance systems came into the picture, the utility of her newspaper started to wane. As migrants adapted these faster, more entertaining and interactive media platforms into their everyday lives, she was forced to explore other themes discovering an untapped readership who’s willing to pay money to have their birthday parties, weddings and regional beauty pageant events featured in her newspaper magazine’s front and back covers. Little did she know that there was an audience waiting to be tapped for this type of content. These changing patterns of media consumption, I argue, are not only influenced by technology but rather integrated in an assimilation process as migrants reinvent themselves to the conditions of the host culture with and in media (Couldry and Hepp, 2013; Madianou and Miller, 2012). As barriers of spatial, temporal and psychological distance that once motivated migrants to seek out community newspapers get blurred because of Skype or Facetime, longing for the homeland now becomes a cultural memory where migrants can get in and out as they create new identities and desires in the host land (Alonzo and Oiarzabal, 2010; Moores,

2005; Smyer Yu, 2013). Connecting to the homeland which community newspapers once fulfilled may have slipped away but how they function in FilAms’ diasporic present unravels their other attributes as a media platform. 173

The use of photographs has been an attractive way to engage FilAms with community newspapers. They document individual and collective experiences and struggles of the community. Photographs can also elicit stories that connect us to moments in our past through the power of imagination (Rose, 2012; Saldana and Omasta,

2018). For Via Times and Pinoy News Magazine, photographs are emblems of achievements and struggles as diasporic people. As Barthes (1981) notes, photographs represent its own world and interpretation of their meaning is contingent upon what they represent for the viewer and the degree of familiarity from which such interpretation emanates. He further states that we are drawn to photographs in different ways that could be sentimental, of pure enjoyment or to some extent disturbing. Photographs can familiarize us to the history or cultural context they portray.

In the case of one participant, looking at photos of Filipina women garbed in glittering gowns in Via Times front covers reminds her of an old terno dress she wore when she joined the Ms. Philippines-Chicago in the late 1960s. Her trained familiarity to the culture that these photos convey gives her comfort. At the same time, these photos also resonate with her experience with identity struggle from forty years ago. She still savors that moment because it allowed her to assert her ethnic presence in a space where she felt racially inferior. Now she views such photos for pure enjoyment. She can’t help but compare her old gown to those she now sees in Via Times causing her to laugh at how

“baduy” (unsophisticated) hers was.

However, phenomenologists argue that familiarity can breed a structured rigidity that limits an appreciation of how objects can function across space and time. The 174

familiar perception that community newspapers are too ethnic or parochial because beauty pageant photos and local news stories dominate their front covers locates content as an epistemological frame of reference. They assign language as the dominant explanatory grid where the essence of community newspapers is fixed (Seigworth and

Wise, 2000). Shifting the focus from content to context offers an alternative epistemological lens where an analysis of community newspapers can be framed based on how they are materially experienced in the lived experiences of its users (Polt, 1995).

How they re-appropriate everyday situations are critical positions from which to unravel community newspapers.

Community newspapers, as expressed by my participants, may be considered a thing of the past. However, as new generations of FilAms migrate to digital media, the activities performed with community newspapers in the present offers a new perspective in understanding its essence in a diasporic environment where it continues to thrive.

According to phenomenologists, certain activities operate on logics that reveal various degrees of intentionality (Polt 1995; Sokolowski, 2000). Such intentionality is what informs such activities as consciously performed and not mere happenstances devoid of any logical structure.

I argue then that the different ways FilAms experience community newspapers operate on a diasporic logic that allows them to perform their duality. A duality that allows them to refashion their individual and collective identities logically structured within their context of in-between-ness. Such duality serves as a discursive site in which to unravel the many essences or “eidos” of community newspapers as a communication 175

medium. It underscores a diasporic performativity that suggests individual forms of agency contextualized in different social and political spaces.

Erlinda: Reclaiming the Self through a Beauty Pageant

For Erlinda, reclaiming her body presence was sparked by a painful racist encounter dating back to 1965. She was assigned to a nursing home on the Southside of

Chicago, a not so friendly neighborhood for people of color at that time. She grappled with the term ‘person of color’ for some time until she realized her visual difference in a predominantly white work environment. Erlinda considered her light skin color to be an asset until she came to America. Even though she had passed the nursing board exam and was qualified in emergency room operations, she was always assigned to nursing aide positions. She explains:

An older white guy did not want me to assist him because he wanted a white nurse. He said he could not understand what I’m saying. I thought my English was fine. I had to swallow my pride. I wanted to smack him but I did not want to lose my job (laughs). But things are different now.

Erlinda swallowed her pride because she needed the work experience. She wanted to prove that she is a professional until she found herself being passed over for job promotions. She began to doubt her capability as a nurse and her worth as a human being.

She became witness to her own othering in the place where she spends 60 hours a week.

She was forced to accept her cultural otherness because she wanted to prove to her relatives back home that she could make it in America through hard work. She stayed focused on her work and made friends with other co-workers who were mostly black. She spent her off days making friends with other Filipinos at the Rizal Center, a community 176

center organized by the FilAm community in the north side of Chicago.

In 1969, a Filipino fashion model named Gloria Diaz won the Miss Universe title, the first Filipina to win the beauty title. Erlinda was watching the televised beauty pageant held in Miami, Florida when she burst into a loud scream after Diaz was proclaimed winner. Suddenly, she felt connected to a world outside her cramped apartment in Southwest Chicago. She remembers going to work the next day feeling proud that a kababayan (fellow Filipino) was the center of global media attention. The following year, the Philippines-Herald USA, a now-defunct local newspaper, sponsored the Miss Philippines-Chicago contest. Daring to pluck herself out of marginality, Erlinda entered the beauty contest even though she had “no chance of winning:”

I was already 26 when I joined, a lot older compared to Gloria Diaz, who was only 18 when she won. Plus, I’m only 5 foot tall and she is 5 feet 5. She speaks English very well. She is really not that pretty but she carries herself very well. Very confident. When she won I felt very proud. Imagine a Filipina winning an international beauty contest.

The opportunity to reimagine herself gave Erlinda the push to join the Chicago beauty contest. She bought a traditional terno gown from her hard-earned savings. She sought help from her Black co-workers to polish her manner of speaking and walking.

She won the title. She was so proud to see herself on the cover of the Philippines Herald-

USA and she continued to serve as emcee or judge until the publication closed shop in the mid-1970s. The beauty contest introduced Erlinda to a different view of America where race is not a signifier of inferiority but a signifier of inclusion. Through the pageantry of the beauty contest and the community that supported it, she gained a

177

renewed sense of agency. Seeing her image in the newspaper made her proud. Winning that contest provided her membership in a public sphere where her presence was celebrated.

Erlinda’s daughter, however, considers beauty pageants to be inconsequential pseudo-events. Shaped by different historical contexts and lived experience, this is one aspect where they differ in terms of perspective.

When my daughter turned 18, I asked her if she wants to join the beauty pageant. She vehemently said “No!” At that time they scheduled the pageant during Independence Day celebration. My daughter, who happened to be an Asian American Studies major asked me “What does a beauty contest have to do with independence?” I did not know how to answer her. I just ignored her. I just let her be. But when I asked her if she wants to wear a terno for her debut party, she got excited. I guess she likes the gown but not the pageant (laughs)

Featuring a beauty pageant in an event that commemorates resistance against colonialism may seem antithetical to Erlinda’s daughter as an Asian American Studies major. But for Erlinda, as an immigrant who resisted racism in a racist social system, beauty pageants are symbols of liberation that should be celebrated as a community. As a cultural practice located in contradictory discourses about sexuality, femininity and ethnic identity, beauty pageant is a site of debate for feminist scholars. Critics of beauty pageants argue that they objectify and commodify women’s bodies, incorporating them into a global corporate culture that reinforces patriarchal values and attitudes (Ahmed-

Ghosh, 2003, Balogin, 2012; Wolf, 1999). They promote a simulacrum of idealized femininity performed in a public forum that rewards visible signifiers of body comportment: dressing, walking, posing and speaking. However, pageant supporters

178

argue that these events produce narratives of women’s autonomy that promotes self- confidence and upward mobility (Banet-Weiser, 1999; Mani, 2005). Joining a beauty contest provided the confidence Erlinda needed at a time when she was losing her sense of self-worth as a nurse and as a woman. The difference in opinions about beauty pageants between her and her daughter is not a big issue. What matters is that there is a ritual that brings FilAms together and there’s a medium that gives visibility to their dreams and aspirations, even if they seem frivolous or trivial.

Beauty pageants maybe a marker of cultural difference for mother and daughter, but both find a cultural bond through the terno. According to Erlinda, her daughter fancies the terno because she likes the butterfly sleeves and the indigenous motifs embroidered in some of the gowns of other Filipinas she sees at community events.

My daughter particularly likes fabric designs identified with tribal groups from the Philippines such as tubao (indigenous handkerchief) and t’nalak skirt. I have seen it pasted on her bedroom walls. Some of these designs have now been incorporated by new Filipino designers into the terno which is different from the traditional terno I am familiar with, those worn by Imelda.

In the dark days of Martial Law, Imelda Marcos, the former first lady, wife of

Ferdinand Marcos, wore the terno in all public events drawing attention to herself and her ostentatious display of wealth amidst poverty and despair. As a cultural artifact, the terno is a discursive site that invites multiple interpretations. In her analysis of a performance by Barrionics and MOB, an artist group in San Francisco, Pablo-Burns (2011) argues that the performativity invoked by the terno is a confrontation with colonialism and patriarchy. Under the gaze of Spanish colonizers and the Filipino Ilustrado (privileged

179

men), the terno was used to regulate Filipina bodies as symbols of national identity and femininity. It essentialized the modern Filipina who is wealthy, mestiza-looking (mixed

Filipino and European) and demure against the indigenous Filipina who is poor, dark- skinned and unruly. In Barrionics and MOB’s performance, the terno is juxtaposed with the daster (ordinary wear for lower-class women), the tsinelas (house slippers), straw mats, military fatigues and technological gadgets – a parodic interpretation that releases the Filipina body from the gaze of a colonial past, one that inspires a counter-hegemonic discourse that disrupts the gendering and othering of diasporic bodies (Bhabha,1994;

Butler, 1993; Chawla, abd Rodriguez, 2011b). Such performativity deconstructs Filipino femininity and national identity in the neocolonial present.

Seeing the terno worn by FilAms in the covers of community newspapers can be seen as a reclaiming of ethnic pride – a significant gesture in a host culture that sees diasporic bodies as cultural others. “I make it a point to wear it during Independence Day celebration. Of course, we have other national dresses but it’s the one worn by most

Filipinas in the national costume parade in Miss Universe pageant” she asserts. As phenomenologists argue, certain objects have histories that draw attention to certain discourses or insights that connect the past to the present (Polt, 1995). The terno, as a cultural icon, mobilizes different ways of interrogating its significance and meaning in the postcolonial present. Erlinda’s pageant experience is an identity marker in her life story that punctuates a confrontation with racism. The terno and the newspaper cover that celebrated her pageant triumph serve as symbolic and material gestures that helped her resist the marginalization of her diasporic self. 180

Victoria: Visibility through Ethnic Fashion

If joining a beauty pageant is an act of subversion for Erlinda, publishing beauty pageants is an act of diasporic entrepreneurship for Victoria. At 71, Victoria is publisher- editor of Via Times, a news magazine she founded in 1984. She is the first Filipino woman in the Midwest to publish a community newspaper. She finished a Foreign

Service degree from the Philippines in the 1960s. She was a contributor to the Lifestyle section of Philippine News, a San Francisco-based newspaper when she was asked by the newspaper’s publisher if she was interested to put up a community newspaper in

Chicago. She felt excited at the offer but she did not have enough capital to start a publishing business, not with her meager salary as an office secretary in a small Chicago real estate firm. With a five hundred-dollar loan from Vic Exclamado, publisher of

Philippine News and Manny Figuracion, a San Francisco businessman, Victoria ventured into publishing and launched Via Times with little guidance from her supporters in San

Francisco. She navigated a male-dominated newspaper business, learning how to operate different technologies from compugraphics to desktop publishing to the digital platform she now uses:

It was trial and error for me. I had to learn how to lay out paper drafts on the floor with help from friends. I would deliver the paper to the printer and pick it up for distribution to Filipino business establishments using my old Toyota.

Putting her imprint on the paper meant using the first letter of her first name in giving the paper a title. She looked in the V section of the dictionary and found the word

“via: meaning ‘by means of’. Because she wanted to share her passion for Filipino

181

fashion and culture through a media platform that in 1984 was non-existent, “via” was the perfect choice. Victoria added ‘times’ to complete the title after consulting a numerologist. When people ask her what “via”stands for she would jokingly say

“Victoria In Action” or “Victoria In America”. She would amuse her close friends by saying that “via” actually means “Victoria is Alembong (a flirt)”. The first five years of the paper was exploratory as Victoria was trying get a sense of how FilAms in Chicago would react. She sought contributions from many local writers and some writer-friends in

San Francisco. After ten years, she became more committed to what she believed the paper should be after discovering a niche market that became her main audience: Filipina women and girls who love pageants. For example, in the July 2017 issue, the Philippine

Independence Week Committee (PIWC) was Via Times’ cover story. Featured in the front cover are individual photos of the two PIWC Chairpersons, Mrs. Philippines PIWC,

Mrs. PIWC, Mrs. Illinois PIWC, Mrs. Chicago PIWC, Miss Philippines PIWC, Miss

PIWC, Little Miss Philippines PIWC and Little Princess PIWC. The two chairpersons were in their colorful ternos while the rest wore their crowns and sashes bearing their titles. The cover suggests an intergenerational bonding among mothers and daughters and an appreciation of a cultural practice that for Victoria and Erlinda are important markers of ethnic pride. These are features of a particular lifestyle that Victoria wishes to cultivate through her paper.

I have always wanted Via Times to be a news magazine about culture and lifestyle. I am a big fan of fashion shows. When I realized that I can make money out of producing fashion shows and beauty pageants, I used the paper to promote them. That attracted a lot of women who have money to pay for gowns and for advertising 182

space in our front and back pages. Those pages are always in demand for community pageants like Miss Bicol-USA or Mrs. Philippines-USA. The paper now allots more space for photos because more people now are willing to pay for ad space using pictures. We receive a lot photos of birthday parties, weddings or community gatherings. I think they promote a more personal approach to the magazine. Photos tell their own stories too. It’s hard to do that in words, especially now with social media around.

The use color photos distinguish Via Times from Pinoy News Magazine and

FilAm Megascene. Colorful photos that capture the readers’ attention suggesting ways of seeing the FilAm community as family-oriented and culturally connected to traditions and values of the homeland. Via Times is the only Filipino newspaper in Chicago that features original articles and opinion columns rather than from Philippine newspapers.

Victoria has a volunteer staff of writers and photographers who consider the news magazine as a platform to promote Filipino culture.

In 1986 when the Peoples Power revolt was happening in the Philippines, Via

Times featured photos of the event including photos of the Marcos family. She was an admirer of Imelda Marcos because of her fashion sense but knowing the family’s excesses turned her off. One afternoon, her teenage American-born son came running to her holding the paper. At that time, images of the revolt were all over the international news media.

They were talking about the revolt in class. He showed the paper to his teacher and classmates. He said he was very proud to announce to the class that he is half Filipino. It was the first time I heard him say that. My first husband is white. He passed away when Bobby was twelve. For some reason, Bobby would always say that he is only a quarter Filipino which made me think that he does not like to acknowledge his Filipino blood. Maybe because he looks more white than mixed. But he has changed a lot over the years. He likes Filipino food more than I do (laughs). 183

Victoria shies away from discussing Philippine politics in Via Times because that is not her cup of tea. She would rather focus on culture, fashion and events that celebrate

Filipino heritage. These are also the themes featured in her cable TV program called

Chicago Philippine Reports TV (CPRTV) aired on Channels 25 and 3 on Comcast and

RCN. CPRTV is a 60-minute, weeky program that features community events. She interviews local Filipinos who are trying to make a name for themselves in theater, visual arts, dance and fashion design.

Visiting performers from the Philippines mostly featured in TFC programs visit the program to promote their concerts. The program covers the areas of Chicago, Skokie,

Niles and Park Ridge with an estimated audience of about 500,000. Advertising income from Via Times supports CPRTV since ad revenue from cable is very little. The show uses a segment of Victoria’s living room adorned with a green backdrop, two single sofa chairs with plastic tree plants on each side, two video cameras with lights, to shoot the hour-long program.

Via Times persists despite the advent of the Internet. Although it keeps a website, most of its readers prefer the print form. According to Victoria, the audience that the paper has nurtured is a group of supporters coming from the older generation whose familiarity with Via Times is associated with the print form. These are FilAms who prefer to grab a copy in stores and restaurants instead of logging on a computer, if they own a computer at all. Personal and service-oriented ads such as room-for-rent, caregiving agencies, transport services, skin rejuvenation clinics, dental services, balikbayan box pick-up, Tagalog classes and family-oriented rituals have increased most of which prefer 184

to see their ad in print for greater public visibility. In the early years of Via Times, ad placements would typically come from car dealers, real estate brokers and law firms selling the American dream to migrants. As Victoria notes, the influx of these new ad placements suggests a pattern of social mobility that shows how FilAm are exploring their entrepreneurial potential. This feature aside from its non-political slant gives Via

Times a different essence compared to its main competitor, Pinoy News Magazine.

At the end of the day, we are really a community publication. We write about community events and activities. We feature headline stories back home but most of the time I encourage my columnists to feature local events and stories. So if you would read Via Times, you get a sense that you are part of the community. Some people have asked me “aren’t you planning to go national”? I said no. I really want it to be just the Chicago community. I guess I’m being challenged by the community itself because who else is going to tell our stories as Filipinos. It was just lunacy for me because there was no female publisher when I started publishing, up to now. I’m the only woman publisher who survived.

Victoria may come from a different perspective in terms of focus compared to her closest competitor, Pinoy News Magazine owned by Manolo. But they share a similar conviction about the relevance of community newspapers not only as a news information source but as a link between the past and the present, between the host land and the homeland. For an ethnic community whose archipelagic character invites regionalist enclave formation, community newspapers serve as a platform in establishing a semblance of having a shared voice.

185

Manolo: Keeping History Alive

According to Manolo, publisher-editor of Pinoy News Magazine (PNM), a community newspaper should serve a more noble purpose than the frivolous display of beauty pageant contestants and fashion shows. As a major competitor to Via Times,

Manolo’s view of culture clashes with Victoria’s. At 72, he works as a part-time real estate agent while spending most of his time managing the paper. He began his journalism career as a political writer for the Philippine Free Press, a popular nationalist newspaper in the 1960s. A staunch critic of President Marcos, he migrated to the U.S in

1972 when Martial Law was declared. He was a Midwest correspondent for a leftist newspaper based in California. When Marcos was deposed in 1986, Manolo vowed to pursue his anti-dictatorship political discourse as part of his journalistic vision. Through the invitation of Victoria, Manolo wrote a column for Via Times that featured news stories from the homeland but political differences with Victoria cut short his tenure with the paper. According to Manolo, Victoria found his articles too militant and ‘lefty’. They parted as friends but when Victoria found herself embroiled in a real estate scandal that became fodder for community gossip, he distanced himself from her and put his writing ambition on hold. After working as a real estate agent for many years, Manolo returned to journalism as the publisher of Pinoy News Magazine in 2000. He shares:

I established PNM to promote advocacy. I don’t see any other reason for why community newspapers should exist. It’s definitely not a money maker. There is really no economics of scale. So even if you brag your circulation amount like 10,000 copies, people don’t really buy it. So what you get as advertisers are mostly small businesses like grocery stores, small law firms. It’s a struggle. So you really have to love being in the publishing business and providing information 186

despite the fact that it is not a money-making venture. My son keeps asking me “why are you still doing this?” I told him I came from the Philippines where you see a lot of bad things and you want to change them. You cannot just bitch about it. You have to do something about it. Newspaper can help change things.

Manolo considers the paper as his way of making connection to the homeland. By reprinting news stories from Philippine Daily Inquirer or Rappler.com, he is able to share local news stories with his readers in Chicago. Even though his children are not avid readers of his paper, he hopes that his children keep their Filipino identity. But the fact that his children help in the printing and distribution enables him to create a common activity where the family’s sense of Filipino-ness is awakened even in small ways.

Because his children were born and raised in the U.S., he realizes the difficulty of balancing two cultures and two histories. His paper produces a space for dialogue about the controversial topics he is most passionate about.

I want my children and grandchildren to feel proud of being Filipino not only when Manny Pacquiao wins boxing or another Filipina wins the Miss Universe beauty pageant. I want them to understand that our cultural traits, our food, our history, our activism as Filipinos are aspects that we can also be proud of. So in a way there’s a forum for them to advocate for the community on certain issues like racism or immigration or even help organize a fundraiser for typhoon victims in the Philippines.

According to Manolo, FilAms are quick to express cultural pride when someone like Lea Salonga became Miss Saigon, when Bruno Mars proclaimed that he is half-

Filipino or when another Filipina wins the Miss Universe pageant. While these cultural events are worth celebrating, other events outside the mainstream pop culture arena are overlooked. The standards that shape the community’s identity are premised on

187

extremely narrow representations that limit FilAms’ potential as active agents in other aspects of socio-political life in the U.S.

Why can’t we celebrate the bravery of Jose Antonio Vargas when he declared himself as undocumented? How about when Gen. Taguba voiced out his dissent during the Abu Ghraib controversy? I don’t think most FilAms in Chicago even know who these people are because everyone is so busy watching American Idol or teleseryes on TFC.

Based on these arguments, Manolo’s definition of cultural pride extends beyond pop culture or fashion show representations embraced by the likes of Victoria and Via

Times. When the Abu Ghraib torture photos were released in 2004 by the, Filipino

American soldier Major General Antonio Taguba wrote the 53-page report published by the New Yorker that detailed the systematic and sadistic treatment of Arab war prisoners.

He was one of the few high-ranking U.S. military personnel who dared to criticize the perpetrators and the systemic policy adopted by the Bush administration. According to

Manolo, Taguba was certainly worthy of media attention and yet Pinoy News Magazine was the only one who featured Taguba’s story when the expose’ became a hot topic in mainstream media. Politics and advocacy are important themes that encourage Manolo to continue publishing Pinoy News Magazine. But underneath this veneer of hope lies an uneasy suspicion that community newspapers are losing the battle with social media.

Although his paper maintains a website, most of his readers prefer the print version.

It’s hard to compete with TFC or social media. These technologies are more accessible and pervasive but they do not promote critical thinking because it caters to people with short attention span. Recently, we recognized the contributions of Filipino veterans in WWII and advocated to have them compensated for their valor as soldiers. We did this advocacy during Obama’s presidency. Issues like this need a united voice and a more in-depth discussion. You cannot do that on Facebook or Twitter. Community 188

newspapers provide more space for analysis and storytelling.

Keeping history alive and promoting heroic actions are important goals that continue to animate Filipino American scholars in interrogating intergenerational issues

(Ignacio, 2005; Mabalon, 2013). This is where Manolo wishes to contribute through his publishing. He makes it a point to devote a segment of the paper to Philippine history with photos of great Filipino heroes so younger FilAms can appreciate Filipino values about sovereignty and independence. Such values may seem abstract to some but giving a face to these values can help strengthen a sense of cultural identity. He asserts:

We need to show acts of heroism to the younger generations of FilAms from our history like Rizal, Bonifacio, Ninoy Aquino, Filipino WWII veterans. You don’t read them in US history books. We need something to connect younger FilAms to our local history.

The legacies of the abovementioned historical figures are only invoked during annual Independence Day celebrations. The values they inspire are seen as fragments of history lessons performed in speeches or dramatic reenactments that situate resistance struggle as spectacles fixed in time and space. For Manolo, re-locating the legacies of

Rizal, Bonifacio and Ninoy Aquino in the present is a gargantuan task. But this is where community newspapers can do its share in reinterpreting history in the context of the present struggles and aspirations of Filipinos in America. Manolo’s argument finds a similar conviction in how Puerto Rican newspaper Pueblos Hispanos created a space to educate Puerto Ricans in New York City about Puerto Rico’s history of resistance (Perez-

Rosario, 2003). Through its culture editor Julia de Burgos, Puerto Ricans were reminded of a history they were disconnected from, a history often minimized if not omitted in

189

most American schools and universities. The newspaper served as a facilitating mechanism for Puerto Rican migrants to rediscover poetry, literature and visual arts in a medium that is accessible. As a strategy, it was important for de Burgos to engage

Pueblos Hispanos readers into a collective reimagining of their creative and political histories to forge transnational connections between two homelands.

As publisher and editor, Manolo shares de Burgos’ view of community newspapers as a platform in educating diaspora communities about their history and indigenous identity. But with community newspapers being perceived as too ethnically and ideologically rigid by younger generations, the need to make the medium more relevant in hybrid digital media environments poses a big challenge (Cunningham and

Sinclair, 2012). For Manolo, keeping PNM relevant is premised on acknowledging that

FilAm identity is culturally hybrid – a kind of hybridity that recognizes the interplay of accepting and resisting values shaped by the community’s history and diasporic experience (Hall, 1994). Manolo considers such hybridity as a facet of the economics and cultural politics of FilAms’s everyday life in Chicago. He is still critical of fashion shows and beauty pageants but acknowledges that they are part of a hybrid culture that he now embraces and one that helps sustain his paper’s survival.

A lot of older FilAm women are willing to spend money to have photos of them published in FilAms newspapers. Where else can they showcase their dresses? I use the money to offset printing costs. I place them in the back section instead of the front cover. So far, no one has complained yet.

Manolo treats PNM as his third baby. Someone who not only keeps his spirit young despite his aging body, but someone who forces him to reinvent the profession he

190

once loved. PNM reminds him that looking at the past through a political lens brings new meanings as to why community newspapers still matter despite the dismissive reactions he often receive from younger FilAms and regional groups who refuse to talk about politics and social justice issues.

I think regionalism has good points and bad. That’s also why a newspaper like Pinoy is important. It helps create a united voice in issues like human rights which is not Visayan or Tagalog issue. There are certain issues that can unite us as a community. Unfortunately, we have a Philippine president who is so provincial and divisive. He does not promote universality. That’s why I think most Filipinos admire Rizal because he is universal man in the way he advocated for justice, human rights and equality, which he also applied in the struggle of farmers in Calamba. He is local and at the same time universal. So I think a community newspaper can help define that. It can connect issues like immigration to other undocumented migrants like Hispanics. It can promote solidarity and alliance building with other ethnic communities. This is what we learned during the anti-Marcos movement in the 1970s. So we need a responsible means of communication. I don’t take the newspaper business lightly.We should never be an agent for fake news, now that you have s ocial media. It will be the death of civilization.

As news writer and publisher, Manolo sees community newspapers as documenters of political and cultural events in the FilAm community. He has long accepted that he will never make money out of publishing but his newspaper thrives through community advertisements. It allows him to engage in an ongoing dialogue with what is happening in the homeland and the local issues affecting FilAms in Chicago.

Manolo’s and Victoria’s perseverance are indications of an entrepreneurial aspiration and a performance of citizenship that actively pursues print media as an important communication platform in maintaining connection between the host land and the homeland albeit with different editorial slants.

191

Mark: Translating Policy to Everyday Life

As a lawyer and advocate for immigrant rights, Mark recognizes the importance of community newspapers in deconstructing complex policy issues into a language that the average Filipino migrant can understand. Immigration is a complex behemoth that confounds both policy makers and immigrant support groups because of the polarizing political climate. Within this macro view of political polarization, community newspapers serve as a de-polarizing agent in discussing immigration. Because they are not perceived as an active player in mainstream politics operating within the partisan divide, community newspapers serve as neutral ground in which both local and national issues can find non-partisan expression. Although neutrality is contestable as publishing is still subject to editorial decisions, it is easier to engage community newspapers in articulating issues affecting community members in specific local settings. Mark states:

Access to Filipino media allows us to bring complex policy issues to everyday language. Deconstructing legal concepts like Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Dreamers Act can be eye-opening for someone who is not literate about immigration and citizenship. Of course you can hire an immigration lawyer but that is expensive. Translating these concepts as stories based on the lived experiences of our volunteers and seeing them published in Pinoy News Magazine or Via Times connects us to Filipino migrants who’s afraid to access support services for fear of being detained. Although it would be nice if Via Times would give us ample space in their front pages (laughs).

Mark appreciates community newspapers, despite having reservations about some of their editorial decisions. He does not understand why Via Times feature wedding photos on its front page while photos of street protests do not get printed at all. He appreciates Pinoy News Magazine for giving his organization a fair share of front cover 192

exposure, although at times he finds Manolo’s leftist politics polarizing. He was disappointed when FilAm Community Builder folded up because the paper has been a good ally in giving the community a political voice. FilAm provides Mark’s organization

(AFIRE) ample front-cover exposures and would print policy updates with little edits. Its

Op Ed writers feature personal stories from AFIRE’s workshop participants. While he recognizes the potential in voicing relevant issues such as the undocumented or the trauma of family separation, he is also aware that stacks of newspapers in public places is no guarantee that FilAms will closely read them. But having the support of community newspapers, front cover or not, gives Mark the assurance that the FilAms who are not reached through social media are informed through another medium.

In conducting citizenship and “Know Your Rights” workshops, Mark’s organization relies on the dedication of pro bono immigration lawyers who provide legal advice on complex immigration matters such as how to deal with being undocumented or changes in the waiting period for family-based petitions. In-charge of explaining confusing application procedures and providing language assistance are college students and random volunteers from the community. According to Mark, these activities help create an empathetic diasporic community that looks after the welfare and interests of migrants who are marginalized because of language and the stigma of being tagged

“illegal.” For some FilAms, accessing social services is considered a sign of not living up to the promise of the American dream. Being tagged as freeloaders is an anathema that goes against what is perceived of Asian Americans as the “model minority” (Tuan,

193

1998). As argued by Tuan, this mythologized view deepens inter-ethnic tension and inhibits Asian Americans from active civic engagement.

For example, some Filipino migrants think that undocumented Latinos give all migrant communities a bad name because of the controversy surrounding illegal border crossing. Others think that it is better to hide in the shadows than suffer the shame of being deported. That DACA is a government ploy to round up the undocumented is a misconception that created an atmosphere of fear. “This is the reason why FilAms ranked the lowest in DACA applications during its first year despite vigorous campaign through newspapers, social media and community forums” Mark emphasizes.

For Mark, having local writers talk about citizenship and immigration issues in their opinion columns translates complex laws into informal conversation. Fleshing out phrases like “administrative relief from deportation” or “deferred action” in vernacular terms that average readers can relate to is an important step to creating dialogue. Mark is not fluent in Tagalog so he appreciates community newspapers whose writers are mostly bilingual. Translating complicated legal terms into ordinary English is one process and translating ordinary English to Tagalog is another. It is this translation process that requires creating informal alliances with editors and writers that for Mark has grown over the years. Supplementing this process with face-to-face encounters through workshops is where complex policies are translated into the lived experiences of migrants. It is the space where internalized myths about amnesty are deconstructed giving the term

“deferred action” its own definition in the new diaspora context. It is where complex laws

194

like DACA, H1B petitions or first priority family petitions are translated and situated in personal stories.

There are many stories in the community that are not being told especially those related to immigration. Creating a space for these stories through the voice of those affected by it on a daily basis is not very common in the community because our forms of communication are limited. We have social media but such technology is mostly used by younger and more wealthy FilAms. Some migrants we work with have limited Internet access much less own a computer at home. If only we can maximize community newspapers to tell more relevant stories instead of using space for community gossips or having too much coverage of Philippine news, then maybe we can empower more migrants to tell their stories about their immigration experiences.

Mark also realized that personal stories related to immigration are sensitive.

Threats of raids seen in mainstream media force some FilAms to stay silent or invisible.

It requires a lot of organizing work to create a safe space where people can feel comfortable accessing the services his organization provides. Mark asserts that community newspapers play an important role in creating that safe space because they are identified as part of the community. It serves as a portable bulletin board for a variety of community events from where his volunteers and staff can identify where to conduct workshops and share his organization’s vision on immigrant rights.

Making a career change from corporate law to immigration law was a difficult decision for Mark. His parents were not very enthusiastic about it. While explaining his reasons to them, it became clear that his parents are not sympathetic to immigration issues let alone the undocumented. “They should wait their turn and not create a shortcut to becoming citizen. They should follow the law” are recurring comments he hears from

195

them. These comments unsettle Mark in various ways because in the eyes of his parents, if there is someone who should uphold the “law” it should be him because he is a lawyer.

However, such intellectual rigidity bothers him because it is devoid of compassion. As immigrants themselves, Mark would have expected that his parents would express more sympathy than he would -- a difference of diasporic perspective that continues to bother him. But after working in the not-for-profit sector in Chicago for a few years, he realized that his parents’ attitude is not uncommon. For Mark, immigration is a human issue and need not be a divisive social concern. But given the way mainstream media shapes immigration in partisan ways, nativist and anti-immigrant tropes proliferate reinforcing a reductionist view of immigrants as a threat to American values and lifestyles (Nicholls,

2014). This is where highlighting the personal dimension of immigration becomes necessary, an example of which Mark finds in the story of Teresa, a volunteer whose life was changed in extraordinary ways.

Teresa: Re-inscribing the Undocumented Body

While shopping at Unimart, a Filipino grocery store, Teresa, then a junior high school student, saw a cover page announcement for an immigration workshop in Fil-Am

Community Builder, a local newspaper. This encounter changed the course of her life. It had already changed dramatically when Teresa was offered a scholarship to attend

Harvard University. Her academic advisor said that she needed a social security number to process her scholarship papers. When she asked her father for it, she was stunned to discover that the entire family was undocumented. Her father forbade her to share this secret with anyone but after several reminders from her advisor, Teresa confessed her 196

predicament. Her advisor assured that the school would help her get a lawyer but that required a sum of money that both her parents do not have. Shaken by the thought that her entire family could be deported, she attended the immigration workshop to learn about her options.

That day changed my life. I did not know what to expect at the workshop but I went anyway without telling my parents. The people at the workshop were so friendly. I did not have any clue about being undocumented until I found out I was one. I was already losing hope since we really did not have money to consult a lawyer. We really don’t talk about things like immigration in school so I had no idea what to do. My encounter with the people at the workshop opened a new chapter in my life.

The workshop, sponsored by AFIRE, introduced her to pertinent information on how to deal with her situation including how to apply for DACA (Deferred Action for

Childhood Arrivals), an immigration policy signed by President Obama in 2012. DACA allows a temporary stay for children brought to the U.S. by their undocumented parents.

More than 750,000 DACA recipients can now legally work and study in the U.S. (Ruth,

2017). DACA is the Obama administration’s attempt to fix a broken immigration system after the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) failed in

Congress (Mahamtya and Gring-Premble (2014).

Teresa met other FilAms who connected her to immigration lawyers doing pro- bono work. The immigrant support organization gave her financial assistance to file her

DACA application papers. Because she is a minor, she needed her parents’ signature for the application papers. Her father got furious because this means exposing the status of the entire family to the world. Teresa was torn between protecting her family from

197

getting exposed or pursuing her dream to attend college. But her mother, who was diagnosed with early signs of breast cancer, convinced her father that it is high time to get legal help for the sake of the children. Teresa missed the deadline for the scholarship application and lost the chance to attend an Ivy League school. However, she found a community of concerned FilAms who gave her and her family a new life in America.

When her DACA application was approved, she opted to attend a state university and now studies political science. She wanted to pursue nursing before as her parents had suggested but changed her mind along the way. She continues to volunteer for AFIRE as a facilitator in ‘Know Your Rights’ workshops sharing her own story of diaspora. She further states:

I seldom read community newspapers before. It’s sad that Community Builder is gone but thank God we have something like that in our community. My story is just one story among many so community newspapers are outlets we can use to tell our stories. They provide a service to us as Filipinos.

Teresa’s encounter with Community Builder was a life-changing moment. It paved the way for other encounters with people, ideas and forms of expression that continue to redefine her identity as Filipino, immigrant, activist, community educator and student. These encounters enriched her perspective of diaspora politics serving as a reference point in the way she views and appreciates her diaspora position as both empowering and precarious. The changing tenor of immigration law and policy is something she keeps track of on a daily basis. When the Trump administration canceled

DACA, she was unsettled by the thought of losing the possibility of gaining citizenship.

But with community support, it emboldens her to defend the principle behind DACA. 198

For Teresa, DACA not only represented a policy of amending the pitfalls of a broken immigration system but a worldview inspired by compassion and inclusivity. It is for this reason that Teresa emphasizes the important role of community newspapers in grassroots education and in creating spaces for civic dialogue reflective of what Dahlgren

(2005) defines as “civic cosmopolitanism” (p. 114). Dahlgren defines “civic cosmopolitanism” as an ethic of humanism that opposes all forms of human suffering. It is driven by compassion and deepens civic dialogue through media in an effort to create an alternative public sphere (Castells, 2008; Dahlgren, 2000). Civic cosmopolitanism elevates social justice as a discourse upon which anti-immigrant attitudes and policies can be interrogated (Benhabib, 2004; Nicholls, 2014). It is a conscious political act that for

Teresa is sustained through her involvement with AFIRE as an immigrant advocate.

I feel empowered whenever I share my story during immigration workshops. However, my presence as a former undocumented can cause discomfort for some Filipinos, especially those who waited 20 years to get their legal status. When my story was printed in Community Builder, I was afraid some people will react negatively and I heard some people did. But I think we need to talk about it more. I know some people who did not like what Jose Antonio Vargas did when he came out as undocumented. We should not be ashamed to share our stories. There is no shame in asserting our rights as human beings.

As advocates of immigrant rights, Mark and Teresa explore the potential of community newspapers as a public forum in promoting an immigration agenda based on compassion and social justice. They are performing an act of civic cosmopolitanism and citizenship through media by engaging in a political discourse that resists the othering of migrants finding a similar narrative thread with Jose Antonio Vargas’ discourse on

199

alternative citizenship in his film Documented (O’Sullivan, 2014; Vargas, 2014). Teresa states:

I admire Jose for giving my own experience a voice. When he spoke in front of those US congressmen and women and asks “How do you define American?”, I felt empowered in a way I never thought possible. I am still in awe of what drives him to subject himself to that kind of open space. He can easily be arrested or deported. The symbolic power of his subversive act is inspirational. I wish I have such courage. I only met him once in a forum when he visited Chicago. But I felt an instant connection the moment he shook my hand. I can’t even remember what I said to him. I was star struck (laughs).

The spaces that both Vargas and Teresa explore in documenting their undocumented-ness deconstruct traditional definitions of citizenship that is not fixed on administrative or legalistic parameters. It is a space that proposes an expression of

“flexible citizenship” where challenging state policies on migration and labor flows form part of a global conversation on transnationalism and mobility (Ong, 1999; Stewart and

Mulvey, 2014; Thomas, 2007; Vargas, 2011; Wihtol de Wenden, 2007). It locates the unconscious convergence of community newspapers, film and social media as discursive spaces where immigration and citizenship are redefined. It suggests a diasporic performativity that embraces an ethic of civic engagement in a community where immigration as an issue is both empowering and polarizing.

Angeli: Embracing Cultural Duality

Angeli is 26 years old, a Linguistics major who works as a professional nanny.

How she ended up being a professional nanny is a decision borne of economic need and love of children. Her relationship with community newspapers rekindles childhood memories but also marks the duality of a person navigating two cultures. Angeli now 200

considers her cultural identity as more fluid not only in terms of race but also in terms of religion. Being born to devout Catholic and high-achieving parents meant going to church on Sundays, learning how to play Banduria (Filipino mandolin) on Saturday mornings and helping her father write press releases for Bicol-USA Chicago Chapter, a group of Filipinos originating from the Bicol region of the Philippines. Her parents are founding members of the group.

Activities of the group include picnic, donation drives for poor communities in

Bicol and preparing for the annual novena of Our Lady of Penafrancia. This annual ritual is inherited from Spain and celebrates the group’s devotion to the Virgin Mary whose miraculous appearance in 1401 in Paris strengthened the Catholic faith. During colonial times, Bicol adopted the ritual to instill virtues of perseverance and devotion. As a community liaison, Angeli was tasked to check if press releases are printed in community newspapers on time. She made sure that the half-page advertisement of the Penafrancia novena appears on Via Times, Pinoy Newsmagazine and FilAm Community Builder. She never bothered reading other parts of these papers especially those that have pictures of birthday parties and beauty pageants.

Angeli outgrew her relationship with community newspapers when she went to college. Studying at University of Chicago whose population is predominantly white and wealthy, she found a new cultural environment where the need to fit in consumed her four years of college. She led a fragmented life as a college student. Weekdays are for integrating into the culture of her white schoolmates and weekends are for re-immersing herself to her family’s cultural rituals. She never renounced Catholicism but going to 201

Church now depends on her mood. She identifies as ‘non-binary’ in relation to gender, a concept her mother shrugs off whenever she hears of it. Her father is more open and thinks that this is a product of her liberal education. She adds:

College exposed me to many perspectives especially about race and gender. Most of my friends are white and Jewish so I got exposed to their cultural rituals and values. It was then that I realized that I don’t like going to Church or any ritualized service. But I missed the festive mood of Penafrancia including the food and the singing. Somehow it keeps me connected to my parents and to my uncles and aunts whose jokes and stories about Bicol keep me grounded that I am Filipino and American.

For Angeli, the visual presence of community newspapers is a reminder of her hybrid culture. She does not attend church on Sunday mornings with her parents like she used to. But she makes it a point to be present at the Our Lady of Penafrancia novena held in September. It is an annual ritual that connects her to her parents’ cultural tradition and values that instill respect for older people, importance of family and concern for the less fortunate. “When typhoon Haiyan hit the Visayas in 2013, we shipped boxes and boxes of medical supplies and water to help the victims. It was great to see people from other regions joined the campaign. It was the first time I saw FilAms working together”

Angeli shared with fondness. The half-page advertisement of the novena in Via Times,

Pinoy Newsmagazine and FilAm Community Builder is engraved in her memory.

“Somehow I feel a sense of community whenever I see them in different places” Angeli adds. She has not grabbed a copy of the papers since high school but glancing at them in

Filipino stores makes her sentimental. According to her, for reasons she cannot articulate,

202

she feels a connection to these papers in some spiritual way. Angeli ceases to see them as newspapers but as cultural symbols that grounds her to her Filipino roots.

Conclusion

My participants’ lived encounters with community newspapers reveal multiple perspectives that re-appropriate the meaning of cultural pride, history, identity and resistance. For Erlinda, Victoria, Manolo, Mark, Teresa and Angeli, Via Times, Pinoy

News Magazine and FilAm Community Builder are sources of information, repositories of fond memories and a space where history and culture become negotiable discourses. The activities they perform in and with community newspapers propose a performance of diasporic agency that can be interpreted as oppositional, celebratory, interventionist, transformative and spiritual. They are activities that unmask community newspapers and its many essences based on how it is materially instantiated in everyday life (Polt, 1995).

The difference of perspectives between Erlinda and her daughter as to the meaning of fashion shows and independence, between Victoria and her son in determining racial identity, and between Manolo and his children as to the meaning of community newspaper in the context of digital media, underlines that sameness and difference are attributes that inform the logic of diasporic identities. Attributes made discursive through and in diaspora media forms such as community newspapers. That community newspapers are a thing of the past may be epistemologically entrenched in the minds of some FilAms, but it offers a window from which to understand how their essences or ‘eidos’ are re-imagined in the present.

203

Chapter 7: Diaspora Media and The Ambiguity of the Eventual Return

In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, I discussed how the ‘home away from home’ double consciousness is articulated in multiple ways through the facilitation of karaoke, the

Filipino Channel and community newspapers. What emerges is not only the blurring of the homeland-hostland binary but a re-articulation of the meaning of the eventual return to the homeland as proposed by the Jewish diaspora model.

The Eventual Return: A Constant Renegotiation

Diaspora scholars argue that in contemporary context, the hostland is no longer viewed as a temporary dwelling. This change of perspective de-mythologizes the homeland as the ideal place of an eventual return (Alonzo and Oairzabal, 2010;

Brinkenhorf, 2010; Innes, 2017; Smyer Yu, 2013; Vertovec, 2003). The homeland- hostland binary is blurred. But as Grossberg (2013) argues, binary distinctions are never fixed and have to be understood as to how they function in the lived experiences of people. Such understanding provides an epistemological foundation through which deconstructing essentialized meanings attached to binary thinking can be articulated.

There are multiple reasons that account for this change of perspective primary of which is when the homeland is no longer perceived as a desirable place to return to. For example, freedom loving Chinese expatriates gave up any hope of returning to China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre broadcast on international media in

1989 (Zhou, 2010). It took a long time for entrepreneurial expatriates to consider returning to the homeland as they witness China’s anti-democracy stance on global media. It intensified their beliefs that their newly acquired knowledge and skills do not 204

match the political culture of the homeland they aspire to make an eventual return. It was only when China adopted an economic policy identified with the West that returning to the homeland became a pattern for diasporic Chinese.

In Kim’s (2016) study of Chinese, Japanese and Korean female expatriates getting stuck in the diaspora opens a new understanding of the eventual return that now can be imaginatively accomplished through the Internet finding similar subject position with

Roy, a Filipino migrant worker whose nomadic experience drove him to embrace digital media as a tool of home making (Bonini, 2011). Roy internalizes returning to the homeland as an aspiration he can experience virtually that according to Bonini complicates the physical act of the eventual return to the homeland.

For my participants, unpacking the ambiguity of an eventual return to the homeland locates multiple perspectives the emotional, economic and psychological textures of which suggest shifting attachment to the homeland.

Vanessa: Recognizing the Glass Ceiling

There are many reasons why Vanessa is ambiguous about retiring in the

Philippines. Itt would take a lot of adjustment if she ends up returning to the Philippines on a permanent basis. She has learned to embrace the material comforts in the host land where basic social services like garbage collection, electricity and gas are provided with great efficiency. She cannot help but compare the frequent ‘brownouts’ (power outage), water shortage and long lines just to buy cooking gas that she had to endure while living in Manila, which according to her mother still happens up to now because the government is just corrupt. That the Philippine government is corrupt is nothing new to 205

Vanessa having worked for not-for-profit institutions back in Manila. But knowing that she would have to deal with inefficient delivery of social services the second time is something she dreads. However, realizing that economic mobility for a person like her is limited makes her unsure about staying in the U.S. in her senior years.

I like my job but at the same time I realize I can never be a manager or a head of a department because I am a woman of color. I’ve been stuck to being Assistant Project Manager for ten years and I don’t think I am headed for promotion anytime soon. I have been bypassed twice so I get the message. For years, I have had to endure the sexist and racist innuendoes of my male co-workers who are mostly white, especially my boss. I mean, it’s not very blatant. Things like “you speak good English” or “you are so organized like my wife”. I let it pass because construction as a workplace is so macho. Plus, the job pays well. Way above what I would earn back home. That’s why I don’t invite them in karaoke nights at home because I know my lesbian friends will not like them.

Retiring in the Philippines for Vanessa is still negotiable. To her, being a balikbayan is good enough for now so she can enjoy the memories of both the homeland and the hostland.

Ronnie: Raising a Bi-cultural Family

As someone who was forced to leave the Philippines because of family pressure,

Ronnie has always envisioned himself returning to his hometown of Samar one day. He is aware of what is happening in the Philippines because he regularly watches local news on TV Patrol on TFC either on his own apartment or in Filipino restaurants he frequently visits after work. He occasionally grabs Pinoy News Magazine to supplement his source of Philippine news. Like Manolo, publisher of Pinoy News Magazine, Ronnie’s longing for the homeland is constructed through the lens of politics because of his experience as a youth activist in the past. However, Ronnie’s resolve to make an eventual return to the 206

homeland is getting shaky because of his family situation. His wife who is half-polish and half-Filipino born in Minnesota does not see herself retiring in the Philippines and now that they have new-born twins, returning to the homeland gets more complicated.

My wife always asks me why do we have to settle in the Philippines when we retire? I tell her it’s because I want to enjoy old age there and not here. It is hard to be old here. I don’t want to live in a nursing home. My nieces and nephews will take care of me. Clair always remind me that our kids will still be in high school when get to our 6os so we have to work until we’re in our 80s. That made me think.

Ronnie’s dream of making a physical return to the homeland in his senior years is now complicated by a newfound responsibility of raising his American-born, bi-racial children. For now, his easy access to karaoke, TFC and community newspapers and cultural practices like Piyesta Pinoy, the annual Philippine Independence Day celebration or the Asian American Heritage Month celebration in May, may prove to be the closest thing he can imagine in terms of returning to the homeland as he evaluates the eventual return to Samar within the reality of raising a bi-racial family.

Erlinda: Getting Old in the Homeland

When Erlinda decided to retire after working as a nurse for 40 years, she vowed to make a yearly visit to the Philippines during the winter months to escape the snow. She visits her hometown in Batangas Province, south of Manila, every year and has planned to retire in the Philippines when she turns 75.

I don’t have any grandchildren because my daughter was not blessed to have children. But I have 18 kids that I support in our hometown. Some are grandchildren from my nephews and nieces and some are great grandchildren from cousins I grew up with. It is almost like having a scholarship foundation. I figure I will have enough support from relatives when I retire there eventually. That’s the problem here in America in terms 207

of getting old. I only have one daughter and she doesn’t have a child so probably I will end up in a nursing home. I used to work in a nursing home and I did not like what I saw. I would rather return to my hometown and die there. That’s what I like about our culture. We take good care of old people.

She turned 70 this year and enjoys being a balikbayan because it allows her to visit the beautiful beaches together with her Caucasian husband. Erlinda realizes the cultural difference between getting old here and in the homeland. Making a yearly trip to the Philippines is like preparing herself for the eventual return. She is easing her way into getting familiar again with the pace and rhythm of Philippine life and the kind of activities she plans on getting involved once she leaves Chicago for good.

David: Bridging Economic Gaps

When David decided to organize the Bayanihan Worldwide Foundation, he was equipped with a vision to use his balikbayan status as a facilitator between the homeland and the hostland. He found a good way to popularize his philanthropic vision through

Facebook. But the impetus for forming the Foundation was very personal.

What triggered my decision to form Bayanihan Foundation was my uncle. I was visiting the Philippines then and decided to take a side trip to Bicol where my mother is from. I did not understand what poverty looks like until I saw the place where my mother’s younger brother lived. He lived in tiny small shanty with four small children and a wife who works as a labandera (laundry woman) while not taking care of her young kids. My uncle just lost his job as a carpenter. The day I visited he was building a water pump so his children won’t have to carry jugs of water which they fetch a mile away from a public water pump. That visit changed my life forever.

For David, the transnational mobility that he enjoys as a balikbayan, dislodges any notion of an eventual return because he locates the homeland and the hostland as a liminal space he calls home.

208

Mara: The Economics of Giving Back

As making regular visits to the Philippines can be very expensive, Mara manages to practice returning to the homeland in symbolic ways. She still pines for home and believes in returning home one day as soon as her economic status improves.

Living here in the States made me realize how poor most Filipinos are. Of course I’ve seen poverty before but after being away for 20 years, being poor here is nothing compared to being poor there. I don’t earn a lot of money here but I still consider myself lucky compared to how much they earn there. There’s so much we can share with people there like clothes, books or medical supplies. We don’t have to wait for another typhoon to send these things over there.

By giving back to her local community, Mara expresses her love of country beyond politics. She is also partnering with a local elementary school in her hometown to help build a community library open to out of school youth. She manages to send at least one balikbayan box full of books once a month through supplies she gathers by visiting used bookstores in Chicago. She coordinates with Bayanihan Worldwide Foundation, a

FilAm digital philanthropy project in a campaign to help build computer labs in small villages with very little access to computers.

Janice: The Homeland is in the Heart

Finding a similar strain with Carlos Bulosan’s famous book title America is in the

Heart, Janice’s takes a reverse position by claiming that the homeland maybe in her heart the but America her hostland is now her permanent home. Unlike Vanessa, Janice’s idea of a permanent home is not negotiable and the ambiguity of the eventual return is no longer ambiguous. This does not mean however that Janice has abandoned longing for the homeland altogether. To her, the longing is appeased by making yearly visits as a 209

balikbayan. Psychologically, she intentionally makes her yearly visits short so she can miss the homeland enough to fuel her longing for the next visit.

I will always be Filipino both in my heart and in spirit. But America is my home now. I like to visit the Philippines but that’s about it. It will always now be just a visit. Nothing permanent, always temporary. In a lot of ways I have planted roots here. Work, friendships, lifestyle. I mean I know I will always be different because of my skin color or accent. But so is everyone else at least here in Albany Park. I cannot give up the material comforts I have right now. Besides the Philippines has so many problems especially with the current President. And the traffic, oh my God, grabe (horrible).

For Janice, the karaoke bar is the closest thing that one can have as an expression of returning home and as a representation of what a sense of community could look like.

It is also suggests getting stuck in the diaspora where the material and the symbolic coalesce and transnational mobility pervades.

Conclusion

The different perspectives offered by my participants regarding the meaning of an eventual return to the homeland complicates the already complex and evolving definition of diaspora. It defies the original meaning suggested by the Jewish model in ways that underscore the impact of diaspora media in the changing attitudes and motivations regarding the eventual return to the homeland as an aspirational goal for diaspora people.

In the case of my participants the imaginative deconstruction of an eventual return to the homeland locates the power of their engagement with diaspora media forms in replacing the physical homeland in symbolic ways. Through specific media practices and a conscious rediscovery of cultural artifacts, the original homeland is reinvented and recontextualized according to the material and social realities seen on TFC or social 210

media or read in community newspapers. Through these media forms, the homeland is demythologized that for some of my participants locates it as no longer a desirable place of dwelling the reasons for which can be political, emotional, economic or cultural.

For some of my participants, their shifting perspectives about the homeland reveals their level of awareness about the homeland itself and the diaspora media form they consume in their attempt to get connected to what is happening in the homeland.

This then locates the eventual return to the homeland as a place of discourse that offers new interpretations of what entails to be transnationally mobile as well as the economic, material and emotional ramifications of adopting the balikbayan status.

211

Chapter 8: Conclusion

My investigation into the role of diaspora media in the everyday life of my research participants reveals new ways of understanding the complexity of becoming

Filipino American. At the core of this complexity is a conscious engagement with karaoke, the Filipino Channel and community newspapers or what I consider as diaspora media forms through which new conceptions of identity, resistance and citizenship emerge. The extent to which these media forms have become integrated or socialized into my participants’ everyday lives reveal patterns of consumption and interpretation that locates identity, resistance and citizenship as performative discourses, meaning their discursive potential emerges as they are performed in and through media. The duality with which my participants renegotiate their subject positions as diasporic people reveals an ongoing relationship with diaspora media performed in private and public spaces where the process of assembly and dispersal underscore their agency and sense of community.

This relationship with diaspora media and the agency that inspires its sustenance fulfill emotional, nostalgic, psychological and political needs. It locates new subjectivities that reinterpret returning to the homeland as one sings Filipino songs during karaoke sessions or watches local soap operas and news programs on the Filipino

Channel; or debates the meaning of cultural pride as intergenerational families view images of Filipino women in ternos in Via Times or clenched-fists activists holding anti-

Duterte placards in Pinoy News Magazine; or sends balikbayan boxes to typhoon victims captured in real time and narrated on mobile phones. What emerges is a lifestyle that not 212

only celebrates duality but also re-interprets identity, resistance and citizenship as discourses articulated through the following performative constructs: A New Identity:

Becoming more Filipino in the diaspora, Mediated Resistance: Long Distance Activism, and Diasporic Citizenship: A performance of Cosmopolitanism.

A New Identity: Becoming More Filipino in the Diaspora

Transitioning from bulky karaoke machines, to portable ‘magic’ microphone to

YouTube videos articulate my participants’ embrace of karaoke and its attendant domestication into their transnational lives. It locates a performance of identity in the context of de-territoriality in which taken for granted cultural markers of Filipino-ness are given new meanings. Some of my participants find meaning in karaoke because it retranslates childhood memories in their present lived situations in harmony and in contrast with other Filipino Americans. The spatializing function of karaoke facilitates an expression of familiar gestures and a sharing of stories, jokes and anecdotes about coming to America, experiences of racial discrimination and funny exchanges about the difficulty of saying English phrases with a Filipino accent.

Through music and language, and sometimes with food, longing for the homeland is performed and rediscovered in a context that celebrates their individuality and sense of community. The celebratory mood that this space conjures is temporal but it also reinforces patterns of collective performance of identity during birthday parties,

Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving celebrations, Super Bowl gatherings, lunch time at restaurants and spontaneous gatherings after a wake. In these scenarios, Karaoke and its ambulant character destabilizes fixed notions of identity, breaking down perceived 213

barriers between American-born and immigrant-identified Filipinos, between karaoke performer and spectator, between the imaginary homeland and the material hostland.

In karaoke, the Filipino Channel and community newspapers, taken for granted markers of identity such as language or cultural motifs like the terno are not only rediscovered but also re-appropriated in everyday life. Speaking Tagalog has always been an external marker of identity. Whenever Filipinos hear it, regardless of place, a sense of ontological solidarity is instantly forged. For some, the forging of solidarity is made stronger through group karaoke singing or watching teleseryes as a family. In others, it is forged through teaching the vernacular to American-born Filipinos who cannot speak it, in community centers or while babysitting. The language that disperses them as communicative beings in the homeland because of regional differences is also what assembles them as Filipinos in the diaspora.

The double consciousness of a ‘home away from home’ is maintained through language and visual motifs in a way that strengthens a sense of national belonging while simultaneously adapting the strange-ness of the adopted hostland. The sound of the language whether it be in karaoke or TFC or the visual presence of the terno or pictures of national heroes on the front pages of Via Times or Pinoy Newsmagazine forges a membership to a community. It is a community who shares the same passion for cultural practices where becoming more Filipino in the diaspora than they had ever been in the homeland is emotively and bodily performed in patterns that are creative, entertaining and spatializing.

214

Mediated Resistance: Long Distance Activism

For some of my participants, becoming more Filipino in the diaspora is performed as a re-appropriation of the affective footprints of activism and resistance against patriarchy and authoritarianism. Such re-appropriation is facilitated through the interplay of transnational media and social media. In this case, the converging platforms of TV

Patrol on TFC and Facebook serve as discursive spaces where the current trends in

Philippine politics in relation to the authoritarian tendencies of President Duterte are debated and criticized. It is within this backdrop that the affective footprints of 1970s martial law activism for some of my participants are given expression.

The politics of martial law is a conversation that has assembled former activists in different parts of U.S. into a new space of public debate through social media. For my participants, this renewed sense of activism mediated through diaspora media allows them to engage in long distance expression of resistance interrogating human right violations, suppression of press freedom and historical revisionism in the homeland. By monitoring local events through TV Patrol, Pinoy Newsmagazine and posting comments on Facebook chat rooms in a networked system of information exchange, history is revisited and interrogated bringing new generations of Filipino Americans in a conversation that is hardly talked about in academic circles in the hostland.

In these scenarios, history is kept alive and interpretation of resistance as a place of discourse is expanded beyond Philippine politics. This mediated form of activism extends to helping immigrant Filipinos understand the complicated process of citizenship application and providing free legal support to the undocumented. Through diaspora 215

media, a kind of solidarity is facilitated not necessarily through language but through the stubborn insistence of history and memory the emotional footprints of which bring

American-born and immigrant Filipinos into shared performances of resistance against social injustice.

On a more microscopic sense, the discursive space that diaspora media provides locates resistance not only as external to dominant themes of authoritarianism on a macro level but is also performed through the individual body as a site of resistance. In the case of some participants, a critiquing of patriarchy and postcolonial cultural othering is performed through singing nationalist and feminist songs during karaoke sessions while re-owning symbols of indigenous identity such as Alibata (indigenous alphabet) tattooed on one’s diasporic body. In this performance, resistance reinforces its norms through music, singing, storytelling and visual motifs the discursive potential of which is political as it is poetic.

Diasporic Citizenship: A Performance of Cosmopolitanism

As a person of the diaspora, my intellectual journey into the meaning of citizenship has expanded beyond legal and administrative constructions. The questions posed by FilAms who attended the showing of Jose Antonio Vargas’ documentary film,

Documented, reverberated as I went through the research process. Such reverberation was made more emotional when I took my citizenship oath during my first year of doctoral study having no clue that saying yes to giving up my Filipino citizenship would leave a lingering feeling of rootless-ness. How does one then redefine citizenship in the context of cultural displacement? The performativity with which I confronted this question 216

gained a new interest in locating citizenship as a place of discourse as I saw it articulated and performed by my participants in their own individual and collective ways. Not only was my concept of citizenship reimagined beyond the emotionality of being cultural displaced, it also lead to locating citizenship in a diasporic context that is political, humanitarian and philanthropic.

In a global cultural economy, what constitutes citizenship is no longer defined by territoriality or nationality. Rather, it is now reframed according to new expressions of civic cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism the core logic of which is sustained by a newfound compassion for and opposition to the suffering of others. It is the logic that informs the active participation of diasporic people in the socio-political affairs of the homeland and that of their co-ethnics in the diaspora. For my participants, it is evident that this performance of diasporic citizenship is anchored in their desire to help fellow

Filipinos in the homeland and those marginalized in the hostland.

Cosmopolitanism as a performance of diasporic citizenship is manifested in some of participants’ commitment in helping undocumented immigrants find their way to legalization. In this performance, community newspapers play an important role as a media form most accessible to Filipino Americans. Community newspapers in Chicago have taken an active role in promoting events and workshops that help translate complex immigration policies and terms into understandable language. They continue to function as connecting link between Filipino Americans in Chicago coming from different regions in the Philippines. Via Times and Pinoy Newsmagazine serve as community bulletin boards for important civic and humanitarian issues such as donation campaigns for 217

victims of natural disasters in the Philippines, announcement of DACA (Deferred Action for Children Arrivals) applications or citizenship workshops that help Filipino immigrants both documented and undocumented. Despite being the least popular media form for my participants, compared to karaoke and TFC, community newspapers still maintain a strong presence in the minds of some of my participants.

For Filipino Americans who embrace citizenship through legal or administrative point of view, the role of community newspapers may seem irrelevant. But creating a counter-narrative against this legalistic framing through editorials and opinion columns in

Pinoy Newsmagazine or Filipino American Community Builder humanizes the emotional and psychological toll of being undocumented. For some of my participants engaged in community organizing work, establishing a partnership with community newspapers was instrumental in inspiring a community united by empathy for those labeled as illegal.

Using the adage “No human being is illegal” as quoted by the Nobel Peace Prize winner

Elie Wiesel in workshops, in Facebook postings and in community newspaper articles are strategies that opened new dialogues about citizenship through the lens of a cosmopolitan ethic grounded in compassion.

For others, the cosmopolitan ethic that informs their performance of diasporic citizenship is rooted on conducting philanthropic work to provide economic and educational relief to fellow kababayans (fellow Filipinos) in the homeland. Through a community-based organization, Bayanihan Worldwide Foundation, the homeland and the hostland are connected through social media and community newspapers. In this scenario, diasporic citizenship is performed by providing scholarship funds to young 218

people in poor communities, building a computer lab for the visual and hearing impaired, installing water wells, to name a few. The diasporic citizenship that Bayanihan (a

Tagalog word meaning unity) Foundation promotes comes from a cosmopolitan ethic that encourages a networked system of strengthening empathy and social responsibility. Its active presence on social media allows it to connect with younger FilAms whose desire to know more about Filipino culture and identity is materialized through cultural immersion programs that incorporate a critical study of economic inequality and social injustice in the homeland.

In conclusion, locating identity, resistance and citizenship as performative discourses underlines the critical role of diaspora media as a cultural environment in which Filipino Americans enjoy being transnational in the context of their de- territoriality. Within this de-territorialized subject position emerges the possibility of deconstructing predetermined notions of identity, resistance and citizenship through their everyday encounters with media. An everyday encounter that engenders a diasporic performativity that allows my participants to embrace and internalize a duality known as the balikbayan.

The term balikbayan is a polysemic signifier that in the Filipino diaspora language means a ‘home returnee’ who is visiting the homeland temporarily, an action verb that connotes the act of returning home; and a descriptive label attached to a box that most Filipinos bring with them when visiting the homeland. The term however has become synonymous with a temporary visitor, an itinerant traveler who is able to bridge the gaps between the land of plenty and the land of scarcity, between the home that was 219

left behind and the new home that was adopted to take its place. As a mode of identity, the balikbayan translates longing for the homeland as a routinized pattern of transnational mobility bringing different meanings to the concept of an eventual return.

As a researcher and a balikbayan myself, I recognize that the voices I heard and the stories I transcribed are both similar with and different from my own. To the extent that my own subject position intersected with how I constructed the themes and arguments in this study is not meant as interpretive overreach. Rather, it is to suggest that my own diasporic inter-subjectivity locates the hostland as a space for reinvention, as did my participants in their own individual and collective ways. It is a template from which a conceptual map for becoming Filipino American can be interrogated as it is performed through and in media. It is within this de-territorialized subject position that my research study wishes to contribute within a larger body of diaspora media studies.

In this study, a recurring theme that sustained an active engagement with my participants is the power of memory as a place of discourse. A kind of discourse animated not by pure nostalgia but through body gestures, storytelling, emotional release and spontaneous talk about the politics of everyday diaspora life. This was accomplished while singing karaoke or watching soap operas or glancing at familiar photos in community newspapers or posting old memories of activism on a Facebook chat room.

This process of memory-making has a discursive potential in that it invites new performances of global citizenship and renewed sense of national identity, that for my participants, offered avenues of solidarity and emotional connection.

220

However, the ubiquitous presence of populist rhetoric in the age of fake news and disinformation places diaspora communities in a vulnerable position because, as some of my participants argue, history is being re-written to serve a new politics of authoritarian ideology. This is a dangerous terrain especially for some of Filipino Americans whose allegiance to regionalist values and populist personalities can be exploited to sow division and discord in the community. Keeping history alive should be contextualized in a perspective that celebrates resistance against this kind of ideology as argued by some of my participants. To what extent can the avenues of solidarity and emotional connection that diaspora media inspires serve to articulate counter-arguments against historical revisionism in a media converged environment would be a relevant topic for future research.

In Reflection

On a snowy Friday night in February, tears were shed in sympathy to a dear friend whose early passing at age 52 caught everyone by surprise. Old friends gathered to celebrate the life of a friend and his contribution to making the FilAm community visible in Chicago’s diverse cultural terrain. After leaving the funeral home, a group of old friends drove to Ysabel’s Grill, a nearby karaoke restaurant, for a night of reconnecting and drinking. It was a Friday night so the place was packed and karaoke singing was alive and well in this part of northwest Chicago.

While waiting to be served, a sharing of our lived experiences as teacher, nurse, real estate broker, banker, social worker, postal worker, massage therapist, flight attendant, and visual artist ensued while people around us were belting out familiar songs 221

glued to the four large television screens. Pretty soon, the food was served in batches and the sharing of stories died down a bit. Suddenly, a member of the group grabbed one of the revolving microphones and started singing. A whiff of something familiar set in forging a connection that redefines friendship all over again and the changes that have occurred over the years living apart from each other. Some have changed jobs more than once, some have moved in warmer states to build new lives and others stayed behind to endure Chicago winter.

The night became a celebration of life and death, an existential act of experiencing the homeland in a cultural space where familiar songs became an impetus for group singing and re-establishing old friendships. At one point, a Filipina woman in the other table opened a song with the line “Once I was afraid I was petrified” and all hell broke loose. Rowena grabbed a microphone and joined the other woman in singing I Will

Survive, one of her favorites. To complement the act, Rowena started belting out the disco song with some dance movements and found herself on top of one of our tables screaming her heart out. Everyone in the restaurant cheered. Marissa, Claire and Larry acting like Rowena’s back-up singers, inhabited the empty space between the tables and danced as well. Other women from nearby tables joined in and the restaurant was suddenly transformed into a dance hall. All that was missing was a disco ball.

The grief we all felt at the funeral home transformed into a night of spontaneous glee and renewed friendships. The night became a space to re-assemble through music, food, gossips and a shared passion for karaoke, all familiar motifs that drift away as each one disperses into their individual lives in the hostland. The discursive potential of this 222

act of assembly re-articulates a temporary return to the homeland in material and imaginative ways. It locates everyday diaspora life as a process of simultaneously embracing the familiar and the foreign, sameness and difference embodied through and in diaspora media – a subject position I continuously internalize and practice as a cultural researcher and as a person in diaspora.

223

References

Afshana, S. and Din, H. (2018). Diaspora Media Usage for Creation of Identities – A

Study Report. International Journal of Communication and Media Studies. 8(5).

Aguilar, F. (2015), Is Filipino Diaspora a Diaspora? Cultural Asian Studies. 47(3). 440-461.

Ahmad-Gosh, H. (2003). Writing the Nation on the Beauty Queen’s Body: Implications for a

Hindu Nation. Meridians Feminism, Race and Transnationalism. 4(1). 205-227.

Alamar, E. and Buhay, W. (2001). Filipinos in Chicago. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing.

Alonzo, A. and Oiarzabal, P. (2010). Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics

and Community. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press.

Alquizola, M. and Hirabayashi, L. (2011). Carlos Bulosan’s The Laughter of My Father:

Adding feminist and class perspectives to the ‘Casebook of Resistance’.

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 32(3), 64-91.

Aniceto, B. (2007). Stay Tuned: The Golden Years of Philippine Radio. Quezon City,

Philippines: Atlas Publishing Company, Inc.

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Baes, J. (2004). To the Memory of an Angel: Philippine Indigenous Music and the

Politics of Cultural Appropriation. Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2(1).

44-58.

Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and His world. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press.

224

Balogin. O. (2012). Cultural and Cosmopolitan: Idealized Femininity and Embodied

Nationalism in Nigerian Beaity Pageants. Gender and Society. 26(3). 357-381.

Banet-Weiser, S. (1999). The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and

National Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography (R. Howard Trans.)0

(pp. 23-59). New York: Hill and Wang.

Benhabib, S. (2004). The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Bernal. V. (2010). Nationalist Networks: The Eritrean Diaspora Online. In. A. Alonso

and P. Oiarzabal (Eds.) Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics and

Community (pp. 122-135). Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.

Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.

Blanchot, M. and Hanson, S. (1987). Everyday Speech. Yale French Studies. 73. 12-20.

Bonini, T. (2011). The Media and ‘home-making’ tools: Life story of a Filipino migrant

in Milan. Media, Culture and Society. 33(6), 869-883.

Bowen, T. (2013). Graffiti as Spatializing Practice and Performance. Rhizomes. 25, 1-9.

Brewer, J.D. (2000). Ethnography. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.

Braum, V. and Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative

Research in Psychology. 3. 77-101.

Brinkerhoff, J.M. (2009). Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement.

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Brinkerhoff, J.M (2010). Migration, Information Technology and International Policy. In. 225

A. Alonso and P. Oiarzabal (Eds.) Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity,

Politics and Community (pp. 39-48). Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.

Brown, K. (2015). Karaoke Idols: Popular Music and the Performance of Identity.

Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd.

Brown, K. (2014). Sometimes a Microphone is Just a Microphone: Karaoke and the

Performance of Gender. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 26(1), 64–81.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology

and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–531.

Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical

and practical guide. New York: Routledge.

Carter, P. (2013). Tropical Knowledge: Archipelago Consciousness and the Governance

of Excess. Etropic.12.2. Tropics of the Imagination Proceedings. 79-95.

Castells, M. (2008). The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication

Networks and Global Governance. The Annals of the American Political and

Social Science. 616. 78-93.

Caughey, J.L. (2006). Negotiating Cultures and Identities: Life History Issues, Methods,

and Readings. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Chawla, D. and Jones, S. H. (Eds.) (2015). Stories of home: place, identity, exile.

Lantham: Lexington Books.

Chawla, D. and Rodriguez, A. (2011a). Postcoloniality and the Speaking Body:

Revisioning the English Oral Competency Curriculum. Cultural Studies/Critical

Methodologies. 11(1), 76-91. 226

Chawla, D. and Rodriguez, A. (2011b). Liminal Traces: Storying, Performing and

Embodying Postcoloniality. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Clair, R. P. (2003). Expressions of ethnography: Novel approaches to qualitative

methods. New York: SUNY Press.

Clarke, B. and Parsons, J. (2013). Becoming Rhizome Researchers. Reconceptualizing

Educational Research Methodology. 4(1). 35 – 43.

Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas: Further Inflections Toward Ethnographies of the Future.

Cultural Anthropology. 9(3). 302-338.

Cordova, F. (1983). Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans (pp. 1-9). Demonstration

Project for Asian Americans.

Coronel, S (2007). The Philippines in 2006: Democracy and its Discontents. Asian

Survey. 47(1), 175-182.

Couldry, N. and Hepp, A. (2013). Conceptualizing Mediatization: Contexts, Traditions

and Arguments. Communication Theory. 23. 191-202.

Cunningham, S. and Sinclair, J. (2001). Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas.

New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Dahlgren, P. (2014). Political participation via the web: Structural and subjective

contingencies. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 5(3), 255–269.

http://doi.org/10.1386/iscc.5.3.255

Dahlgren, P. (2013). The Political Web: Media, Participation and Alternative

Democracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

227

Dahlgren, P. (2005). The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication:

Dispersion and Deliberation. Political Communication. 22, 147-162.

Dahlgren, P. (2000). Media, Citizenship and Civic Culture. In J. Curran & M. Gurevich

(Eds) Mass Media and Society (3rd ed) (pp. 310-328) New York: Oxford

University.

Davies, C.A. (1998). Reflexive Ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others.

New York: Routledge.

De Castro, S. (1994). Identity in action: A Filipino American's perspective. In K. A.-San

Juan, D. H. Hwang, & M. A. Jaimes (Eds.), The state of Asian America: Activism

and resistance in the 1990s (pp. 295-320). Boston, MA: South End Press.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life [1980]. Steven Rendall, trans.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

De La Garza, A. T. and Ono, K. A. (2015). Retheorizing adaptation: Differential adaptation

and critical intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural

Communication, 8(4), 269-289. doi:10.1080/17513057.2015.1087097

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis, MN: University

of Minnesota Press.

Denzin, N.K. (1997). Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st

Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Deocampo, N. (2002). Imperialist Fictions: The Filipino in the Imperialist Imaginary. In

A. Shaw and L. Francia (Eds) Vestiges of War (pp. 225-236). New York: New

York University Press.

228

Deocampo, N. (2007). Cinema and Colonization: American colonization and the rise of

cinema in the Philippines. Comparative American Studies: An International

Journal. 5(2): 147-171.

Deuze, M. (2012). Media Life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Devitt, R. (2008). Lost in Translation: Filipino Diaspora(s), Postcolonial Hip Hop, and

the Problems of Keeping It Real for the “Contentless” Black Eyed Peas. Project

Muse. Winter/Spring.

Diaz, J. (2011). Immigration Policy, Criminalization and the Growth of the Immigration

Industrial Complex: Restriction, Expulsion, and Eradication of the Undocumented

in the U.S. Western Criminology Review. 12(2). 35-54.

Douglas-Jones, R., and Sariola, S. (2009). Rhizome yourself: Experiencing Deleuze and

Guattari from theory to practice. Rhizomes. Summer(19). 1-11. Retrieved from

http://www.rhizomes.net/issue19/sariola.html.

Dyer, R. (2000). The Role of Stereotypes. In P. Marris and S. Thornham (Eds.) Media

Studies: A Reader (pp. 245-251). New York: New York University Press.

Eid, H. and Ghazel, K. (2008). Footprints of Fanon in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of

Algiers and Sembene Ousamne’s Xala. English in America. 35(2). 151-161.

Espina, M. (1988). Filipinos in Louisiana. New Orleans: A. F. Laborde and Sons.

Espiritu, Y. (1995). Filipino American Lives. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Fairchild, C. (2007). Building the Authentic Celebrity: The “Idol” Phenomenon in the

Attention Economy. Popular Music and Society. 30 (3). 355-375.

Fernandez, D. (1997). Palabas: Essays on Philippine Theater History. Hawaii: 229

University of Hawaii Press.

Francia, L. (2010). From Indio to Filipino: Emergence of a Nation, 1863-1898. A History

of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (pp. 98-133). New York: The

Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers.

Georgiou, M. (2013). Diaspora in the Digital Era: Minorities and Media Representation.

Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. 12(4). 80-99.

Ghorashi, H. and Boersma, K. (2009). The “Iranian Diaspora and the New Media: From

Political Action to Humanitarian Help. Development and Change. 40(4). 667-691.

Glesne, C. (2011). Personal Dimensions: Field Relations and Reflexivity. Becoming

Qualitative Researchers: An Introduction, 4th Edition (pp. 139-161). Boston, MA:

Pearson Education, Inc.

Goh, D. (2008). Postcolonial disorientations: colonial ethnography and the vectors of the

Philippine nation in the imperial frontier. Postcolonial Studies. 11(3). 259-276.

Gonzaga, F. (2009). People Power as Immanent Collectivity: Re-imagining the Miracle

of the 1986 EDSA Revolution as Divine Justice. Kritika/Kultura. 12. 109-127.

Gonzales, M.C. (2003). An Ethics for Postcolonial Ethnography. In: P. Clair (Ed)

Expressions of Ethnography: Novel Approaches to Qualitative Research (pp.77-

86). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Grossberg, L. (2013). Deleuze and Guattari, Part 1: A polemic of projects and

possibilities. Cultural Studies. 28(1). 1-28.

Grow, L.M. (1995). ‘The Laughter of My Father’: a survival kit. MELUS. 20(2). 35-46.

230

Guevarra, A. (2010). Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational

Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Guyotte, R. and Posadas, B. (2007). Interracial marriages and transnational families:

Chicago’s Filipinos in the aftermath of World War II. In E. Barkan (Ed.)

Immigration, incorporation & transnationalism (pp. 121-141). Piscataway, NJ:

Transaction Publishers.

Hall, S. (1994). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In P. Williams and L. Chrisman (Eds.)

Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, A Reader (pp. 392-403) New

York: Columbia University Press.

Hawley, C. V. (2002). You’re a better Filipino than I Am, John Wayne: World War II,

Hollywood and US-Philippine Relations. Pacific Historical Review. 71(3). 389-

414.

Highmore, B. (2002). Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. London:

Routledge.

Houle, M. (2007). The Filipinos. Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press.

Huang, K. and Jiang, F. (2009). Understanding Diaspora Cultures in the Context of

Globalization. The International Journal of the Humanities. 7(10). 115-129.

Ignacio, E. (2005). Building Diaspora: Filipino Community Formation on the Internet.

New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Ileto, R. (1979). Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-

1910. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.

231

Innes, A. (2017). Mobile diasporas, postcolonial identities: The Green Line in Cyprus.

Postcolonial Studies. 20(3). 353-369.

Jacobson, M. (1999). Imperial Amnesia: Teddy Roosevelt, the Philippines and the

Modern Art of Forgetting. Radical Historical Review. 73, 116-127.

Jansson, A. (2013). Mediatization and Social Space: Reconstructing Mediatization for the

. Transmedia Age. Communication Theory. 23. 279-296.

Jansson, A. (2015). Using Bourdieu in Critical Mediatization Research. Journal of Media

and Communication Research. 58. 13-29.

Kelley, J. (2016). ‘Everyone’s magical and everyone’s important’: Karaoke community

and identity in an American gay bar. International Journal of Community Music.

9(2). 135-155.

Keown, M., Murphy, D. and Procter, J. (2009). Comparing Postcolonial Diasporas.

London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kim, Y. (2016). Diasporic daughters and digital media: ‘willing to go anywhere for a

while’. Cultural Studies. 30(3), 532-547. DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2015.1113638

Kiram, K.H. (2003). The Media of Diaspora. New York: Routledge.

Kirk, G. (2015). Bahktin, Dewey and the Diminishing Doman of a Shared Experience.

Contemporary Pragmatism. 12. 216-231.

Kolodziej-Smith, R. (2014). Bahktin and the Carnivalesque: Calling for a Balanced

Analysis within Organizational Communication Studies. Kaleidoscope. 13. 85-

90.

Kraidy, M. (2011). Reality television in new worlds. In M. Kraidy and K. Sender (Eds). 232

The Politics of Reality Television (pp. 307-218). New York: Routledge.

Lau, Y. (2007). Change, community and politics: Shifting agendas among Chicago’s

Filipino Americans. Conference Paper, 102th ASA Annual Meeting, American

Sociological Association.

Lefebvre, H. (1984). Everyday Life in the Modern World. Sacha Rabinovitch, trans. New

Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Lefebvre, H. (1991a). Critique of Everyday Life. [1947/1958], John Moore, trans.

London: Verso.

Lefebvre, H. (1991b). The Production of Space. [1974] Donald Nicholson-Smith, trans.

Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Liu, J. H and Gastardo-Conaco, C. (2011). Theory and Methods of a Representational

Approach to Understanding Social Movements: The Role of the EDSA

Revolution in a National Psychology of Protest for the Philippines. Social Justice

Research. 24, 168-190.

Liu, J., Ong, P. and Rosenstein, C. (1998). Dual chain migration: Post-1965 Filipino

immigration to the United States. In F. Ng (Ed.). Asians in America: The History

and immigration of Asian Americans (pp. 487-511). New York: Garland

Publishing, Inc.

Llamson, T.A and Lee, K.B. (1980). Patterns in the acquisition of bilingual ability and

language use in three Southeast Asian countries. In E. Afendras (Ed.).

Pattern of Bilingualism. Anthology Series 8, Singapore: SEAMEO Regional

Language Centre. 233

Longhofer, J., Floersch, J. and Hoy, J. (2013). Qualitative Methods for Practice

Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lumbera, B. (2002). From colonizer to liberator: How U.S. colonialism succeeded in

reinventing itself after the Pacific war. In A. Shaw and L. Francia (Eds.) Vestiges

of War (pp. 193-203). New York: New York University Press.

Mabalon, D. (2013). Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o

American Community in Stockton, California. Durham, NC: Duke University

Press.

Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2012). Migration and New Media: Transnational Families

and Polymedia. New York: Routledge.

Mahatmya, D. and Gring-Pemble, L. (2014). DREAMers and their families: A family

impact analysis of the DREAM act and implications for family well-being.

Journal of Family Studies. 20(1). 79-87.

Mani, B. (2005). Book review, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants

and National Identity. Feminist Review. 81(1). 132-134.

Mansbridge, J. (1999). Everyday Talk in The Deliberative System. In S. Macedo (Ed.)

Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement (pp. 211-42). New

York: Oxford University Press.

Martin, P.T. (1983). The “Silent Pictures” Era in the Philippines. In R. Guerrero (Ed.)

Readings in Philippine Cinema (pp. 18-28). Manila: Experimental Cinema of the

Philippines.

234

Matsui, T. (2001). “The genesis of karaoke: How the combination of technology and

music evolved”, In T. Matsui and S. Hosokawa (eds), Karaoke Around the World

(pp.31-44). New York: Taylor and Francis.

Maxwell, J. (2005). Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach. 2nd Ed.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

McLuhan, M. (1964). The Medium is the Message. Understanding Media: The

Extensions of Man (pp. 7-21). Cambridge and London: MIT Press.

Mehl, E. (2014). Mexican Recruits and Vagrants in Late Eighteenth Century Philippines:

Empire, Social and Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Pacific World. Hispanic

American Historical Review. 94(4). 547-579.

Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Mediation on Social

Behavior. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Merten, K. and Krämer, L. (2016). Postcolonial Studies Meets Media Studies A

Critical Encounter. Transcript Vertag.

Moores, S., (2005). Media/Theory. London and New York: Routledge.

Mora, M. (2005). Mind, Body, Spirit, and Soul: A Filipino Epistemology of Adeptness in

Musical Performance. Asian Music, 36(2). 81-95. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2005.0022

Myrow, R. (2013). Stockton’s Little Manila: the Heart of Filipino California. Retrieved

from https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/08/29/little-manila-the-heart-of-filipino-

california/.

Nelson, J. (1989). Phenomenology as Feminist Methodology: Explicating Interviews. In 235

K. Carter and C. Spitzack (Eds.) Doing Research on Women’s Communication:

Perspectives on Theory and Method (pp. 221-241). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing

Corporation.

Nicholls, W. (2014). Between punishment and discipline: comparing strategies to control

unauthorized immigration in the United States. Citizenship Studies. 18(6–7). 579–

599.

Nijhawan, M. and Arora, K. (2013). “Lullabies for Broken Children”: Diasporic

Citizenship and the Dissenting Voices of Young Sikhs in Canada. Sikh

Formations. 9(3). 299-321.

Nowell, L., Morris, J., White, D. and Moules, N. (2017). Thematic Analysis: Striving to

Meet the Trustworthiness Criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

16. 1-13.

O’Sullivan, M. (2014). ‘Documented’ movie review: Jose Antonio Varga’s self-portrait

with a mission. The Washington Post. Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/documented-movie-

review-jose-antonio-vargass-self-portrait-with-a-mission/2014/05/28/a5e5efd4-

e2b0-11e3-9743-bb9b59cde7b9_story.html.

Oiarzabal, P. J. (2010). Basque Diaspora Digital Nationalism: Designing: “Banal”

Identity. In A. Alonso and P. Oiarzabal (Eds.) Diasporas in the New Media Age:

Identity, Politics and Community (pp. 338-349). Reno, NV: University of Nevada

Press.

236

Ong, A. (1999). Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham:

Duke University Press.

Ong, J.O. (2009). Watching the nation, Singing the nation: London-based Filipino

Migrants’ identity constructions in news and karaoke practices. Communication,

Culture and Critique. 2, 160-181.

Orlando, V. (2000). Historiographic metafiction in Gillo Pontercorvo’s La bataille

d’Alger: Remembering the “forgotten war’.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

17(3). 261-271.

Ossman, S. (1994). Picturing Casablanca: Portraits of Power in a Modern City.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Pablo-Burns, L. (2011). Your terno’s draggin’: Fashioning Filipino American

performance. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. 21(2). 199-

217.

Palis, J. (2008). The ethnographic spectacle of the ‘other’ Filipinos in early cinema.

Geojournal. 74. 227-234. DOI 10.1007/s10708-008-9224-y

Papacharissi, Z. (2015) Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New

York: Oxford University Press.

Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 4th Edition.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Perez-Rosario, V. (2013). Julia Burgos’ Writing for Pueblos Hispanos: Journalism as

Puerto Rican Cultural and Political Transnational Practice. Centro Journal. 25(2).

4-27. 237

Pilar, S. (1983). The Early Movies. In R. Guerrero (Ed.) Readings in Philippine Cinema

(pp. 8- 17). Manila: Experimental Cinema of the Philippines.

Polt, R. (1995). Typology: A Phenomenology of Early Typewriter. 1-14.

Posadas, B. (1999). The Filipino Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Richardson, I. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (Eds.),

Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. (pp. 923-946). Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage Publications.

Rinnawi, K. (2010). ‘Cybernaut’Diaspora: Arab Diaspora in Germany. In. A. Alonso and

P. Oiarzabal (Eds.) Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics and

Community (pp. 265-290-48). Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.

Rose, G. (2012). Researching Visual Materials: Towards a Critical Visual Methodology.

Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Methods

(pp. 5-32). CA: Sage Publications.

Russel Bernard, H. (1988). Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Newbury Park,

CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Ruth, D. (2017). Ruth: Trump throws Dreamers into Limbo. Tampa Bay. Retrieved from

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/ruth-trump-throws-dreamers-into-

limbo/2336458/.

Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.

Diaspora. 1(1). 83-99.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Saldana, J. and Omasta, M. (2018). Qualitative Research: Analyzing Life. Thousand 238

Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

San Juan, Jr., E. (1995). On becoming Filipino: Selected writings of Carlos Bulosan.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Seigworth, G.J. and Gregg, M.E. (2010). An Inventory of Shimmers. In M.E Gregg and

G. J. Seigworth (Eds.) The Affect Theory Reader (pp. 1-25). Duke University

Press.

Seigworth, G. J. and Wise, J. (2000). Introduction Deleuze and Guattari in Cultural

Studies. Cultural Studies. 14(2). 139-146.

Shimakawa, K. (2002). National Abjection: The Asian American Body on Stage. Durham

and London: Duke University Press.

Shohat, E. (1992). Notes on the ‘post-colonial’. Social Text. 31/32. 99-113.

Shome, R. (1996). Postcolonial interventions in the rhetorical canon: An “Other” view.

Communication Theory. 6(1). 40-59.

Shome, R., and Hegde, R. S. (2002). Postcolonial approaches to communication:

charting the terrain, engaging the intersections. Communication Theory,

12(3), 249-270.

Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everday life. London, England: Routledge.

Sloan, P. (2004). Factory: FremantleMedia didn't invent reality TV, but it's minting

money with 263 shows in 37 countries, including megahits like American Idol

and The Apprentice. Here's how the U.K. media power came to rule the world's

airwaves. Business 2.0. 5(7).

Smith, C. (2014). The Wild Transpacific West and Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the 239

Heart. English Language Notes. 52(2), 133-129.

Smith, L. T. (2002). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples.

New York: Zed Books.

Smyer Yu, D. (2013). The Logic of Diasporic Selfhood. MMG Working Paper 13-15.

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. 1-22.

Sokolowski, R. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#Bib.

Sorgalia, Z. (2014). Film review: DOCUMENTED is an emotional story, gives face to

immigration issue. The Venture. Retrieved from

http://www.theventureonline.com/2014/06/documented-film-review/.

Steinbrock-Pratt, S. (2012). We Were All Robinson Crusoes: American Women Teachers

in the Philippines. Women’s Studies. 41, 372-392.

Stewart, E. and Mulvey, G. (2014). Seeking Safety Beyond Refuge: The Impact of

Immigration and Citizenship Policy upon Refugees in the UK. Journal of Ethnic

and Migration Studies. 40(7). 1023-1039.

Stoller, S. (2010). Expressivity and performativity: Merleau-Ponty and Butler.

Continental Philosophy Review. 43, 97-110. DOI 10.1007/s11007-010-9133-x

Templo, I. L. (2011) The truth shall set us free: The role of Church-owned radio stations

in the Philippines. Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. Retrieved from

http://www.cmfr-phil.org/2011/02/25/the-truth-shall-set-us-free-the-role-of-

church-owned-radio-stations-in-the-philippines/. 240

Thomas, J. (1993). Doing critical ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers.

Thomas, D. (2007). Blackness Across Borders: Jamaican Diaspora and New Politics of

Citizenship. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 14 (1-2). 111-133.

Thompson, R. (2003). Filipino English and Taglish. Languish Switching from Multiple

Perspectives. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.

Tiongson, Jr. A, Gutierrez, E. and Gutierrez, R. (2006). Positively No Filipinos Allowed:

Building Communities and Discourse. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Tololyan, K. (1996). Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless power in the transnational

moment. Diaspora. 5(1). 3-36.

Tsai, M. (2014). ‘Documented’ gives first-person account of Dream Act fight. LA Times.

Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-

documented-movie-review-20140509-story.html.

Tuan, M. (1998). Forever foreigners or honorary whites? The Asian ethnic experience

today. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press.

Van Dooremalen T. (2017). The pros and cons of researching events ethnographically.

Ethnography. 18(3). 415-424. Retrieved from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5646475/#bibr13-

1466138117709293.

Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the Field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

Van Maanen, J. (1979). The Fact of fiction in Organizational Ethnography.

Administrative Science Quarterly. 24(4). 539-550. 241

Vargas, J. (2011). My life as an undocumented immigrant. The New York Times

Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-

life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?_r=0.

Vargas, J. (2014). Jose Antonio Vargas: Why I made ‘Documented’. CNN. Retrieved

from http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/us/cnn-films-documented-directors-

statement/index.html.

Vertovec, S. (1997). Three meanings of “diaspora”, Exemplified among South Asian

religions. Diaspora. 6(3). 277-299.

Villenas, S. (2010). The Colonizer/Colonized Chicana Ethnographer: Identity,

Marginalization, and Co-optation in the Field”. In W. Lutrell (Ed.) Qualitative

Educational Research: Readings in Reflexive Methodology and Transformative

Practice (pp. 345-362). New York: Routledge.

Wertz, F., Charmaz, K., McMullen, L., Josselson, R., Anderson, R. and McSpadden, E.

(2011). Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological psychology,

grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative research and intuitive inquiry.

New York: The Guilford Press.

Wihtol de Wenden, C. (2007). The Frontiers of mobility. In A. Pecoud and P. de

Guchteneire (Eds.) Migration Without Borders: Essays of the Free Movement of

People (pp. 51-64). Paris: UNESCO Publishing and Berghahn Books.

Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and cultural form. London, England:

Fontana.

242

Wolf, N. (1999). The Beauty Myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New

York: William Morrow.

Yeatter, B. (2007). Cinema of the Philippines: A History and Filmography, 1897-2005.

North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Zhou, Y. (2010). The Migration of Chinese Professionals and the Development of the

Chinese ICT Industry. In A. Alonso and P. Oiarzabal (Eds.) Diasporas in the New

Media Age: Identity, Politics and Community (pp.242-264). Reno, NV: University

of Nevada Press.

243

Appendix A: Interview Questions

There were two sets of interview questions formulated for the study categorized as general and specific. General questions were addressed to all participants regardless of profession, age, gender, citizenship status and regional background. Specific questions refer to those addressed to individuals coming from particular experiences related to their professional background and history, such as newspaper publishers, community organizers and artists.

General:

1. When did you arrive in the U.S.?

2. What were the circumstances or the reasons why you came to the U.S?

3. Do you like karaoke or do you do karaoke?

4. We have so many community events, which ones do you go to regularly?

5. Do you watch TFC? If so, are you a subscriber?

6. What do you think of TFC?

7. How about community newspapers? Do you read any of the community newspapers

around? Which ones do you grab?

8. What do you think of Via Times or Pinoy Newsmagazine? Do you have any

preference between the two?

9. When you hear the word crab mentality, what comes into your mind? Are you

familiar with the phrase?

10. How about identity? When you hear that word what goes into your head? What about

citizenship? 244

11. Do you think the Filipino community is divided? What is your opinion about

regionalism? What can you say about what is happening in the Philippines?

12. What do you think of beauty pageants or fashion show events in the community?

13. Any migration jokes or Filipino jokes you want to share? How did you know of

them? How do you like living or being in the U.S.?

14. Do you have any question for me?

Specific: Addressed to the community newspapers publishers:

1. What made you go into publishing? When did you start publishing?

2. How do you think FilAms relate to community newspapers?

3. How are you adjusting to the entry of the Internet?

4. Is there strong competition between community newspapers in Chicago?

5. Community newspapers have been around for quite a long time, what keeps you

going? What makes you still want to do publishing?

6. What drew you into community organizing work?

Addressed to community organizers, artists and activists

7. What made you get into community organizing work?

8. How do you engage with issues like immigration or citizenship?

9. Do you think the FilAm community cares about issues like immigration or

citizenship?

10. How do you keep abreast of what is happening in the Philippines? What media outlet

do you access to get information about the Philippines?

245

Appendix B: List of Sites and Events Visited

In this listing of sites and events, website and Facebook page addresses are provided for useful reference for future researchers and scholars.

1. Piyesta Pinoy. An annual celebration of Filipino culture and history in celebration of

Philippine Independence Day. This event is typically held in the month of June to

coincide with the declaration of Philippine independence against Spain declared on

June 12, 1898. https://www.facebook.com/PiyestaPinoy/

2. Seafood City Supermarket. Includes a Filipino supermarket, Jollibee Restaurant -

famous for its friend chicken and hamburger, Red Ribbon Bakeshop, Valerio’s Bread

Shop, Three Stalls featuring Filipino food, a Remittance Center, a Balikbayan Box

Shipping Office, a Wet market for fresh seafood items and a TFC store.

https://www.seafoodcity.com/.

3. 3R Restaurant (now renamed Subo, meaning ‘to put into one’s mouth’). Features

traditional and fusion style Filipino food. https://www.yelp.com/biz/subo-filipino-

kitchen-chicago-2

4. The Filipino Kitchen. A mobile restaurant that travels to different cities and settings

introducing Filipino culture through Philippine food and the history behind the

evolution of Filipino cuisine and its diverse influences from other food cultures.

https://www.facebook.com/ourfilipinokitchen/

5. Dinagyang Festival. A cultural festival identified with a specific region in Southern

Philippines particularly the province of Iloilo.

246

https://www.facebook.com/events/hyatt-regency-ohare-chicago-9300-bryn-mawr-

ave/dinagyang-chicago-2019-2nd-ilonggo-festival-/395540354711063/

6. AFIRE. Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment. A not-for-

profit organization focused on providing immigrant support services.

https://www.afirechicago.org/

7. Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS). A nationwide volunteer

organization devoted to preserving Filipino American history through social activism,

scholarly research and community forum. FAHNS Chicago Chapter organizes the

Filipino American History Month celebration in Chicago every October.

http://fanhs-national.org/filam/about/

8. Gintong Pamana (Golden Harvet). This event is held annually and hands out the

“Prism Awards” given to outstanding Filipinos who excel in the arts, politics, fashion,

business and other endeavors worthy of recognition. It is a volunteer-driven

organization. https://www.facebook.com/gintongpamanachicago/

9. Ysabel’s Grill (Café Ysabel). A Filipino restaurant-karaoke bar in northwest Chicago.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/ysabels-grill-chicago

https://www.facebook.com/Ysabels-Grill-260312724390/

10. Uni-mart One Stop Shopping. A grocery-restaurant featuring traditional Filipino

food. https://www.facebook.com/UniMartOneStopShopping/

Ruby’s Fast Food Restaurant. A small storefront fast food restaurant serving

traditional Filipino dishes. Cash only basis. Good for dine-in and take out. Offers

247

buffet on weekends. https://www.facebook.com/Rubys-Fast-Food-

122749091083466/

248

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Thesis and Dissertation Services ! !