Filipinos In Rural Hawaii

Filipino immigrants and their descendants who have lived in Hawaiʻi’s plantation communities are the subjects of this thoughtful and social analysis. Here is an inside look at various facets of Filipino rural life—working conditions, courtship pattern, living patterns, living standards, celebrations, and even “chicken fighting.” Over the last couple of decades, the plantation towns of Hawaiʻi have been dying. Fewer workers are needed as land is converted to other uses and as labor-efficient production techniques are developed. The displacement of people whose lives have been centered on the functional apparatus of the plantations is particularly distressing. As Hawaiʻi copes with the human problems, it is important to understand the history, social behavior, and values of Filipino plantation workers, some of whom now face substantial hardship. The author and his co-researchers studied three plantation towns in depth and examined in varying detail the lives of Filipino plantation residents on the islands of Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, and Hawaiʻi. In the course of collecting data, they taped and transcribed a number of conversations, some of which are included here. These voices add a lively counterpoint to the data and discussion. As time and events overcome the caretakers of the ethnic cultures of Hawai'i's plantations, the rural lifestyles of these communities may be forgotten. Books such as this will help to preserve their flavor and texture. Social scientists, scholars and students of ethnic studies, community leaders, and even the people described herein will find this a useful and informative study.

In his preface, Danilo E. Ponce describes this book as an "unblinking look at Filipino history in Hawaii." Written from a Filipino viewpoint, the book commemorates seventy five years of collective existence of this ethnic group in the Aloha State. It examines Filipino experience in Hawaii in the context of Philippine history and culture. This is not a simple book, for its subject is complex. For example, there were three waves of Filipino immigration to Hawaii — each wave bringing people of differing socio-economic, educational, and geopolitical backgrounds. It would be misleading to speak of one homogeneous group called "Filipinos" being affected at any given time. Implicit in Out of This Struggle is the human drama that underlies events. Hawaii's need for labor promised the Filipinos the possibility of bettering their economic status, but plantation wages proved so low that entire families needed to work to live, limiting their access to education. Out of this frustration came their active and telling role in the organization of the IL WU and the labor strife of the 1920s. As Hawaii's Filipinos look to the future beyond 1981, they find in their community many and varied elements-proof of vitality, of a community trying to identify issues, examine events, and understand itself. Out of This Struggle will contribute to that understanding. This book is one of the projects of the Filipino 75th Anniversary Commemoration Commission, which was created by the 1977 Hawaii State Legislature, through Enabling Act 181, to oversee the year-long celebration of the arrival of the first Filipinos in Hawaii in 1906. The idea of the Commission itself came from a group called the Hawaii Filipino-American Community Foundation, which, as early as 1976, had thought of the need to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Filipino immigration to Hawaii not only through ceremony, but more appropriately, through more permanent means. One of these means was to be a book which would give its readers some understanding of what the past 75 years have meant for the Filipinos in Hawaii. At the same time, 'the members of the Foundation felt that such a book would adequately mirror the changes that have taken place in the Filipino community, as well as lay to rest the prevalent view that the old stereotypes still apply. The members of the Education (Printed) Committee of the Commission, whose task was to oversee the production of this book, are, fittingly, also members of the Foundation.

First person narratives by Filipino Americans reveal the range of their experiences--before and after immigration.

Drawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic and archival research, Roderick Labrador 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. In particular, Labrador speaks to the processes of identity making and the politics of representation among immigrant communities striving to resist marginalization in a globalized, transnational era. Critiquing the popular image of Hawai'i as a postracial paradise, he reveals how Filipino immigrants talk about their relationships to the place(s) they left and the place(s) where they've settled, and how these discourses shape their identities. He also shows how the struggle for community empowerment, identity territorialization, and the process of placing and boundary making continue to affect how minority groups construct the stories they tell about themselves, to themselves and others.