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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Managing the (Post)Colonial : race, gender and sexuality in literary texts of the Philippine Commonwealth Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6px6j526 Author Solomon, Amanda Lee Albaniel Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Managing the (Post)Colonial: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Literary Texts of the Philippine Commonwealth A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Amanda Lee Albaniel Solomon Committee in charge: Professor Rosemary George, Co-Chair Professor John D. Blanco, Co-Chair Professor Yen Le Espiritu Professor Lisa Lowe Professor Meg Wesling 2011 Copyright Amanda Lee Albaniel Solomon, 2011 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Amanda Lee Albaniel Solomon is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair ________________________________________________________________________ Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to: My parents, Dr. & Mrs. Antonio and Remedios Solomon. This project is the culmination of my attempt to understand their place in America, of my appreciation of all their sacrifices for me and my sister and of my striving to honor their example of always giving back to our community. Everything of value that I have in my life has come from them and I hope I have made them as proud of my efforts as I am of all they have accomplished. My sister, Reanne Albaniel Solomon, who has struggled alongside me in our journey to reckon with what it means to be Filipina American. I am humbled by her strength. My grandmother, Luz Del Rosario Abaniel, whose love and faith stands out to me as the most radical and transformative of political acts. My partner, Andrew J. Amorao, who was there for every painful and rewarding step of this process, who supported me through it all one day at a time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ………………………………………………..………………………… iii Dedication ……….………………………...…………………...……………………..… iv Table of Contents ……………………………………………..…………………….…… v Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………... vi Vita …………………………………………………………………………………….. vii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………….…… ix Introduction: Considering the (Post)Colonial .....…………………...………………..….. 1 Chapter One: Writing Feminine Authority, Erasing Philippine Possibilites: Katherine Mayo‟s Islands of Fear ..................................................................................................... 22 Chapter Two: “A Red-Blooded Literature:” En-Gendering the Nation Through Filipino Writing in English …..…………………………………………………………….......... 80 Chapter Three: The Hypersexualization of Philippine Independence, the Prose of Carlos Bulosan and the Poetry of José Garcia Villa ….....…………………………......…...... 140 Conclusion: Towards a Sisyphean Filipino American Practice ....……………….....… 202 Notes ………………………………………………………………………......……… 226 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………..…… 254 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the many people who have helped me make this dissertation project a reality. I thank my closest friends, Danielle Fairbairn and Megan Brennan, for their many hours of cross-country phone calls that were sources of wonderful empathy and encouragement. I also want to express my gratitude to Caralyn Bialo, Josen Gayle Diaz, Anthony Kim, Ash Kini, Viviana Macmanus, Yumi Pak, Davorn Sisavath and Thea Quiray Tagle, who provided years of sincere conversations, coffee and dinner dates, and innumerable moments of much-needed connection while at the literature program at UCSD. Without their support, I never would have succeeded. Beyond the walls of the university, the Kuya Ate Mentorship Program of San Diego (KAMP) has provided me a necessary and energizing space where I have been able to explore the critical issues of my research with fellow Filipino Americans committed to the transformative power of education and the fight for social justice. Thank you so much KAMPers for grounding me and inspiring me. Lastly, I acknowledge my committee – Rosemary George, Jody Blanco, Lisa Lowe, Meg Wesling and Yen Le Espiritu – who have encouraged and shaped my research. I aspire to emulate their examples of critical scholarship and pedagogy and am supremely honored to call myself their student. Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat. vi VITA 2004 Bachelor of Arts in English, University of San Francisco 2004-2009 Teaching Assistant, Revelle Humanities Program, University of California, San Diego 2007 Master of Literature, University of California, San Diego 2007 Candidate in Philosophy in Literature, University of California, San Diego 2009-2010 Literature Department Dissertation Fellowship 2010-2011 Teaching Assistant, Revelle Humanities Program, University of California, San Diego 2011 Doctor of Philosophy in Literature, University of California, San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Asian American Literature Studies in Asian American Cultural Criticism Professor Lisa Lowe Studies in Philippine Literature Professor John D. Blanco Studies in Postcolonial Theory Professor Rosemary George Studies in Queer Theory Professor Meg Wesling vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Managing the (Post)Colonial: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Literary Texts of the Philippine Commonwealth by Amanda Lee Albaniel Solomon Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2011 Professor Rosemary George, Co-Chair Professor John D. Blanco, Co-Chair “Managing the (Post)Colonial” investigates a range of literary texts – from American newspaper articles to Philippine state-sponsored poetry – which circulated just before and during the Philippine Commonwealth period (1934-1946), when the islands were neither an official U.S. colony nor an independent nation. I argue therefore that the Commonwealth period was an ambiguous and contradictory political moment which I signify through the parenthetical use of “post” in “(post)colonial.” I thus call into question whether or not an entire nation and its subjects could be simultaneously colonial and yet not, for it is at the moment of seeming official separation from the U.S. that political, economic, cultural and social policies actually ensured U.S. hegemony under the guise of independence. Ultimately, I analyze cultural and literary texts of the period to show how sexualized and gendered representations of the Filipino subject were not only viii utilized in an attempt to reconcile this contradiction of the Commonwealth, but also to imagine alternative nationalisms and forms of social emancipation. In the first chapter, I focus on the patriarchal formulation of benevolent assimilation and on American journalist Katherine Mayo‟s 1925 book Islands of Fear. I argue that Mayo discursively enabled her own access to the masculine realm of imperial power by positing a theory of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority meant to overwrite the patriarchal hierarchy between genders. This chapter demonstrates the mutually constitutive yet simultaneously contradictory nature of the imperial systems of racialization, sexualization and gendering. I trace the lines of this argument further in the second chapter as I investigate the 1940 Commonwealth Literary Awards. As the formal structure of an independent nation was established, state-sanctioned cultural projects such as the Awards not only obfuscated but also enabled the persisting economic and political ties between the islands and the U.S. Such projects did so by cultivating a canon of Philippine writing in English that posited normative masculinist nationalism as the telos of American democratic tutelage. In the third chapter I focus on what I term the hypersexualization of Philippine independence and the (im)possibilities of queer moments of desire in Carlos Bulosan‟s prose and Josè Garcia Villa‟s poetry – the impossibility of asserting a normative Filipino American subject and the possibility of imagining an America that is in the heart. Focusing on the queer moments in Bulosan and Villa‟s texts, I trace how the relationships between race, gender and sexuality are not only inundated with power but are also productively contradictory, allowing one access to spaces and acts of freedom. ix Introduction: Considering the (Post)Colonial In February 2009, an appropriation of almost $200 million earmarked for surviving Filipino veterans of World War II was included in President Obama‟s stimulus package. Recruited when the Philippines was a Commonwealth of the U.S., these veterans were rendered ineligible for military benefits when President Truman rescinded the promise of compensation for their service upon recognition of Philippine independence in 1946. In the months leading up to passage of the bill, I and other members of the San Diego Filipino American community gathered in front of the offices of our local congressman to urge his support. On one afternoon, a pedestrian stopped to ask me about the sign I was holding which read “Justice Now.” After I explained the situation, he responded, “Well,