How I Celebrated Filipino American History Month (FAHM)
I discovered the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) in 2021 while researching my immigrant roots. FANHS passed a resolution declaring October as Filipino American History Month (FAHM) in 1992 to commemorate the first recorded presence of Filipinos in the continental United States, which occurred on October 18, 1587. “Luzones Indios” came ashore from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Esperanza and landed on Morro Bay, California. In 2009, the U.S. Congress declared October as FAHM, and in 2015, President Obama celebrated the first FAHM at the White House.
FANHS San Diego
I first met Dr. Judy Patacsil during FAHM 2023, for a screening of Out of the Boondocks, a KPBS series by Jay Maniquis and Rio Villa. Judy chairs the FANHS San Diego and coordinates the LEAD program at the San Diego Miramar College Ethnic Studies. She is a key player in developing the Filipinos of South Bay (FOSBE) exhibit in the Chula Vista Public Library and the book Filipinos in San Diego (Images of America). She is the daughter of a Manong who enlisted in World War II and brought her mother to the U.S. as a War Bride. I can’t wait for her to write that story.
Meeting Dr. Kevin Nadal
What an honor to hear Dr. Kevin Nadal speak on Filipino American history. In an hour, he embodied the work of hundreds of Filipino writers, historians, activists, and artists in the seminal Sage Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies. He invited contributors to speak on the topics they wrote.
Dr. Kevin Nadal said that the encyclopedia is by no means complete. Our history is dynamic and grows with time.
If you cannot afford the $300 price tag, please request your local library to purchase the book.
Boston Filipino American Book Club (BFAB)
Love and Other Rituals by Monica Macansantos
It was a delight to discover a fellow Baguio Girl, Monica Macansantos. Her book, Love and Other Rituals, was BFAB’s book selection for October. In this hybrid meeting, the Bostonians ate Filipino food while those who joined online salivated.
The first story of this collection drew me in, for it was set at the Baguio Cemetery, separated only by a ravine from the village where I grew up. Her website includes a section honoring her father, who is a poet.
Jen Soriano and Jason Magabo Perez
San Diego Public Library Event, Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM)
I took a day off when I heard that Jen Soriano would be in town on a Monday afternoon. I read Nervous in 2023 and listened to the audiobook more recently. I was fascinated with her work as a journalist covering Macli-ing Dulag and the fight for the Chico River in the Cordillera Mountains where I grew up. The cover of Nervous looks like a brain alit with neural impulses, but it could also be interpreted as a tree with roots or a map of a river and its tributaries.
Jen writes about pain and healing, trauma and action. In her book, water is not only a metaphor but an actuality. During the event, she described her experience with the rebirth of the Pasig River. It runs through the heart of Manila, and once was vital to the city’s transportation, water source, and trade. It deteriorated with trash and was declared a biologically dead river in the 1990s.
I had seen it only once in the late 1980s when I traveled to Manila. I was confused at the stench emanating from what seemed to be a slow-moving asphalt road. The river was so thick with trash that it inched along.
Efforts to rehabilitate the Pasig River started in 1999 and continue to this day. Like the river, the body can also heal from trauma.
It was a treat to hear Jason Magabo Perez read his poems. It was serendipitous for him to have selected verses from his book.
I ask about what falls away
Jason Magabo Perez, San Diego Poet Laureate (Published with permission)
I ask about what falls away.
I ask about where water sings.
Here is surplus of sun, ocean
of excess, remaindered song.
Whose hands wash this sky?
Who drains this sun against worry?
Whose mighty ache makes history?
This is where water drains,
where gardens grow against
worry, against the crisis of capital,
& capital knows nothing but the
veil hiding hand from profit. Here
is leftover rice. & the wild imaginary
of hunger. Here is a canal in
the crook of the earth. & here is
where water sings. & this, this
is water singing us elsewhere.
Searching for Kapwa
I was sad to miss the San Diego Film Festival in the south county, but I was able to see a Filipino film this month. Larry Lariosa and Terry Marcotte from Oakland screened their movie Searching for Kapwa at the San Diego Miramar College.
The film is striking in its beauty and musical composition (piano and native instruments written or performed by Larry). Larry visited the Philippines as a child and returned thirty-six years later in his quest for kapwa, a Filipino value of identity and belonging. He struggled to understand the pull of his parents’ native land and his home in America. “The Philippines is like a relationship, I went there when I was ready.”
This documentary covers a broad swath of Filipino immigrant history in the United States with oral interviews with the director’s parents, friends, and historians. He also interviewed Gayle Romasanta, the force behind Larry the Musical.
It’s a wrap with the month’s last FAHM Activity, an author talk by Mia Alvar. I was fascinated with her comment that while real life inspires her, her characters become unrecognizable on the printed page. As a fiction writer, she needs that distance, and the freedom to embellish and add layers.
What I read during FAHM
Love Can’t Feed You by Cherry Lou Sy. Read a good review here by Booknerdkat.
Rizal Without the Overcoat by Ambeth Ocampo. Yes, Rizal ate tuyo (dried fish) and can still be a hero.
Enduring What Cannot Be Endured: Memoir of a Woman Medical Aide in the Philippines in World War II by Dorothy Dore Dowlen. A riveting story of a teenager in Mindanao during WWII, even if she was unaware of the Philippine-American War’s toll on the Filipinos.
I'm a member of the Monterey Bay Area FANHS, which unfortunately suffered the loss of its last two leaders, who passed away. We are still recovering. But the last FANHS conference I attended was a few years ago in San Diego (earlier than 2021). Those events are always fun, and incredibly informative -- great networking, too. Definitely plenty of Kapwa to go around!
What a way to celebrate FAHM!