Filipinos

“Filipino” refers to those who claim ethnonational ties to the Philippines. At the same time that the term assumes such an affiliation, its invocation problematizes this connection. The term itself cannot be said to be autochthonous to the archipelago, as it is the namesake of Prince Felipe II of Asturias of the 16th century. While certainly not exceptional to many accounts of places and nations that share a colonial past, scholars in Latino studies might think, along with scholars in Filipino studies, what it might mean to articulate an Asian identity, culture, and history via a name inherited from colonial Spanish. Indeed, the Filipino alphabet does not even have an “F”—“Filipino” may hail as much into existence as it displaces from colonial memory. Contemporary and historical migration patterns of Filipinos similarly speak to such displacements. By some accounts, more than ten million Filipino citizens live outside of the national and geographic boundaries of the Philippines; hence its diaspora is not singular but multifarious and expansive. As some of these texts certainly attest, human labor is the country’s most profitable export. The study of Filipinos and the Philippines, moreover, finds its place in studies of Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. In other words, even as “Filipinos” presumes a certain geographical fixity, it also generates a host of queries that incisively call into question this assumption and the politics it holds. In particular, how does one articulate an ever-shifting diaspora? Under what conditions was the “Filipino” made possible, and what did its invocation foreclose and provoke? Who did it include then, and what might it exclude now? The literature included here focuses on the study of Filipinos not in any attempt to produce objective knowledge about a single group of people, but rather treats Filipinos as an entry point for interrogating the terms by which Filipinos are known and understood. For instance, literature on migration calls into question not only the telos of immigration to point to the necessary multidirectionality of Filipino movement, but also points to the state itself as developing into an entity that must manage a citizenry that lives elsewhere. Filipino literature in Spanish, moreover, necessitates a study of the transpacific that attends to competing and overlapping empires. This bibliography also aims to enumerate to works of cultural and literary production (beyond just secondary academic sources) that we feel would be most relevant to scholars in Latinx/a/o studies and Latin Americanists who are interested in looking at Spain’s lone colony in Asia. Nevertheless, the list of literary and cultural sources here is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but is rather a point of departure. For instance, listing works in Spanish by Filipino authors, while historically relevant, is certainly not completely (or at all) representative of “Filipino literature,” particularly because Spanish is not widely spoken in the Philippines today.

Introduction

This chapter explains the book’s origins. Visits to Chicago’s Mexican churches suggested a complex, multiethnic history that required learning about Chicago’s eastern European immigrants. Mexican immigrants and their children shared memories of the communities they encountered, reshaped, and made anew in Chicago. The ability to carry out Catholic devotions and to join parishes proved essential for most Mexicans and the communities that they built in the United States. The chapter considers relevant scholarship in Latino studies, which lacks attention to religion. US Catholic history, meanwhile, sorely needs more work on Latino communities and religious life. This book underlines religion’s critical role in urban adjustment and racial politics while recasting the Eurocentric assumptions of immigration history narratives.

Latino Studies, Latino/a/X futures: Provocations toward a prospectus

Is there a future for Latino/a/X Studies? This question – alternately anxious or ambitious – seems to have been haunting the field for many years. If it can be affirmed with reasonable confidence that the answer to this question is yes, the relative assuredness of the future of Latino Studies as an institutionalized area of academic inquiry may nonetheless be a sign of our domestication. After all, Latino/a/X Studies is a field that has emerged as the site of a potentially subversive and inherently insurgent form of knowledge. This field was always intrinsically an intrusion into the hegemonic and disciplinary organization of knowledge within the university. The more that our collective yet diverse critical project has been assigned its “proper” place, albeit still a diminutive one, within the university, the more that its critical purchase is necessarily at risk of being rendered safe for the dominant epistemic and political projects that govern higher education and its reproduction. Therefore, it seems judicious and productive to posit the question of the future of Latino/a/X Studies as a problem. Scholarship in our field has always been most compelling and relevant when it can illuminate something about the historically specific relationalities that situate Latino/a/Xs at the veritable center of larger processes of social and political formation and transformation, rather than retreating into culturalist insularity and parochialism. Arguably, this has never been so evident as in our present moment of danger during the Trump presidency.

Always in Translation

For outsiders, the languages of Latino literature are English, Spanish, and code-switching between the two languages. What is more, code-switching is considered a symptom of not knowing either language well. At the same time, Latinos themselves feel anxiety toward perceived deficiencies in both languages. This essay argues that Latino literature offers a complex use of language that can be appreciated through the lens of translation. This essay explores the forms of translation present in Latino literature suggesting that Spanish and English always exist in the presence and under the influence of each other. Discussions of Felipe Alfau, Junot Díaz, and Urayoán Noel highlight the centrality of translation issues in Latino writing ranging from creative output and expression to the making of subsequent versions of literary texts. Overall, considerations of translation in Latino studies can lead to a more complex understanding of the work of translators and multilingual writing in general.

Bridges to Cuba and Latina/Latino Studies

This essay focuses on the complex relationship between Cuban studies and Latina/Latino studies. A full engagement between the two scholarly endeavors is often difficult because of the ongoing efforts at reconciliation among the Cuban people. While more fluidity now exists, there are continuing divisions between Cubans of the island and the diaspora. So long as Cuba continues to be a site of obsessive fascination both to Cuban Americans and to non-Cuban promoters of Cuban identity and culture in the United States, it is challenging for scholars in Cuban studies to address connections with the intersectional approaches at the heart of Latina/Latino studies. Drawing on a personal approach and the author’s own experiences as a scholar, writer, and activist for cultural exchanges with Cuba, this entry explores the generational changes that have taken place in the search for bridges to and from Cuba and how this search for identity and belonging contributes idiosyncratic but important nuances to the field of Latina/Latino studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies

At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Latino minority, America’s biggest and fastest growing, is at a crossroads. Is assimilation taking place in comparable ways to previous immigrant groups? Are the links to the countries of origin being redefined in the age of contested globalism? How are Latinos changing America and how is America changing Latinos? The Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies reflects on these questions, offering a wide-ranging exploration of the Latino experience in the United States. Twenty-five essays by leading and emerging scholars discuss and reconsider a variety of key themes and issues, including the Chicano Movement, gender and race relations, the changes in demographics, the tension between rural and urban communities, immigration, the legacy of colonialism, language identity and the controversy surrounding Spanglish, and meditations on popular culture and the lasting power of literature.

Queer Citizenship

This chapter sutures the pre- and post-civil rights movements—a divide that operates as a historical schism for Latino Studies. Analyzing José Antonio Villarreal’s novel Pocho (1959, which many have hailed as the first Chicano novel), this chapter argues that the novel is better understood not as an origin point but rather as a node within a longer genealogy of Latino culture. This chapter focuses on sexuality, homoeroticism, and homophobia, depictions that are at odds with some of the stated objectives of the Chicano movement’s foundational documents, but that situate the novel within earlier discussions of American democratic values. Read alongside early Chicano movement manifestos and correspondence, the chapter calls for a more historically expansive understanding of the emergence and legacy of the Chicano movement.