Dawn Bohulano Mabalon & Filipino/a American History Month

October is Filipino/a American History Month! Duke University Press author Dawn Bohulano Mabalon celebrates this history in her recent book, Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (2013). Mabalon is Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University. In her book she traces the growth of Stockton, California's Filipina/o American community, the birth and eventual destruction of the neighborhood of Little Manila, and recent efforts to remember and preserve it.

Dawn at the Stockton Is Magnificent Festival

 In the early twentieth century—not long after 1898, when the United States claimed the Philippines as an American colony—Filipinas/os became a vital part of the agricultural economy of California's fertile San Joaquin Delta. In downtown Stockton, they created Little Manila, a vibrant community of hotels, pool halls, dance halls, restaurants, grocery stores, churches, union halls, and barbershops. Little Manila was home to the largest community of Filipinas/os outside of the Philippines until the neighborhood was decimated by urban redevelopment in the 1960s. Mabalon draws on oral histories, newspapers, photographs, personal archives, and her own family's history in Stockton. She reveals how Filipina/o immigrants created a community and ethnic culture shaped by their identities as colonial subjects of the United States, their racialization in Stockton as brown people, and their collective experiences in the fields and in the Little Manila neighborhood. In the process, Mabalon places Filipinas/os at the center of the development of California agriculture and the urban West.

Dawn, at the Filipino American International Book Festival, says: "Talking about my dad's compadre Claro Candelario, on right, who was the real-life inspiration for the 'Claro' character in Carlos Bulosan's AMERICA IS IN THE HEART."

For some insights into the history of Filipino Americans in California, check out Stephen Magagnini’s Q&A with Mabalon in The Sacramento Bee. Christopher Patterson offers a review in the International Examiner, the oldest and largest nonprofit, pan-Asian American publication in the Pacific Northwest. Patterson also interviews Mabalon on the podcast New Books in Asian American Studies.

 

Dawn at the Asian Art Museum

 

This has been a busy month for Mabalon, who has participated in some exciting events concerning the book and Filipino/a American History Month. Mabalon signed copies at the Stockton Is Magnificent Festival on October 5. The San Francisco Public Library hosted the second, bi-annual Filipino American International Book Festival from October 18-20 where Mabalon was part of a panel about Carlos Bulosan, one of the most revered pioneers of Fil-Am literature.

But it’s not too late to meet Mabalon and participate in Filipino/a American History Month! Today The Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley is hosting a talk with Mabalon. This Saturday, October 26, Mabalon will join the Stockton community for a dedication ceremony honoring Stockton World War II veteran and Escrima master, Manong Leo Giron, who is having a street named after him.

Hope you can make it! And be sure to pick up a copy of Little Manila Is in the Heart or read an excerpt here.