Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic and archival research, the author delves into the ways Filipinos in Hawai'i have balanced their pursuit of upward mobility and mainstream acceptance with a desire to keep their Filipino identity.
Trade Review"
Building Filipino Hawai'i is a much-needed work on contemporary Filipino lives in the islands, in the fifty years since the resumption of significant emigration from the Philippines. Consistently argued and astutely theoretically framed. . . .
Building Filipino Hawai'i promises to be the principal text on not only Filipinos, but also the contemporary experiences of ethnic and immigrant minorities in Hawai'i in the political context of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement."--
Pacific Historical Review"An outstanding addition to a growing field of studies focused on Filipina/o American community building and identity formation."--
Western Historical Quarterly "Labrador provides many necessary interventions to studies of Filipinos in the United States and helps further the reconceptualization of what it means to be Filipino throughout the Philippine diaspora and the ongoing production of global transnationalism."--
The Journal of American History "Labrador provides an engaging and thoughtful study of Filipinos in Hawai'i, demonstrating how they have struggled to define and/or redefine their identity in the diaspora, by moving from the margins of Hawaii's society to becoming an integral part of it, while also maintaining their sense of Filipinoness."--Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., author of
Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego"Hawai'i is often held up as a model of liberal multiculturalism, a site in which a truly postracial order has been achieved. Labrador, however, demonstrates how the racial order in Hawai'i continues to be hierarchized, is premised on settler colonialism, and rests on a classed anti-immigrant sensibility.
Building Filipino Hawai'i is an important read."--Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, author of
Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World
