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Little Manila Is in the Heart
Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California | Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
4 posts | 1 reading
In the early twentieth centurynot long after 1898, when the United States claimed the Philippines as an American colonyFilipinas/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. Narrating a history spanning much of the twentieth century, Dawn Bohulano Mabalon traces the growth of Stockton's Filipina/o American community, the birth and eventual destruction of Little Manila, and recent efforts to remember and preserve it. 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.
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suzisteffen
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Fascinating part of human nature & Filipinx #history in the US is how racism bonded groups that were at odds before.
“Even the most educated immigrants worked in the California fields or as domestic servants. The racialization, exploitation, and degradation they experienced in the fields brought these Ilocana/o, Visayan, and Tagalog immigrants together, allowing them to transcend and challenge differences of region, class, and language ... ⬇️

suzisteffen ... and view their experiences collectively and themselves as being part of a larger racial or ethnic community.” 5y
13 likes2 comments
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suzisteffen
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“The Crosstown Freeway cut through the heart of Little Manila, and by 1972, only two struggling blocks remained. ... The Crosstown Freeway wiped out two blocks of Little Manila in the 1960s, displacing thousands of Filipino/a residents and destroying dozens of businesses, residential hotels and community institutions.”

Jeebus, “urban planning” sure managed to, you know, accidentally destroy a lot of communities of color. 🤔🙄😡 #history

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suzisteffen
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OK, this is a really long quote, but here's the beginning (more in the comments, including why I'm putting it here) #history #AAPIHM
“The most groundbreaking recent works on the urban West have focused on interethnic and interracial relations and the interplay between communities and urban space. These works remind us that peoples of color in the West did not live in a vacuum, hermetically sealed off from one another in segregated communities.

suzisteffen “In fact, the works show how working-class people and people of color struggled to live and get along together, challenged racism and exploitation, created new ethnic cultures and identities, and made the most of their often meager resources in their urban working-class communities. ⬇️ 5y
suzisteffen “Matt Garcia‘s book on Mexican labor and community formation in Los Angeles, Scott Kurashige‘s groundbreaking work on blacks and Japanese in Los Angeles, Mark Wild‘s book on multiethnic communities in Los Angeles, and Allison Varzally‘s study on interracial marriage all attempt to understand how different groups interacted with one another in California, and how these interactions forged new identities and communities.“

YAY?! MORE BOOKS TO READ!
5y
11 likes2 comments
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suzisteffen
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It is #AAPIHM, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and I am pumped to start reading this history of the Filipinx community in Stockton, California. (I know that Filipinx ppl have been in the US since long before it was the US, bc of Spanish colonialism and slavery and sailing ships, but I think this is more recent history.) #History #California #Filipinx

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