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Book Review
| Dorothy B. Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919–1941, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003. pp. xviii + 302. US $21.95 paper.
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| This important new study focuses on workers from the Philippines (Filipina/os, in the author's gender-neutral term) who migrated to Seattle, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Fujita-Rony seeks to extend the methodology originally pioneered by Virginia Yans-McLaughlin and Edna Bonacich, which considers not just the experiences of migrants on arrival, but also the larger transnational economic and political context in which these migrants have moved from one continent to another. By writing about Filipina/os in particular, Fujita-Rony can situate the transnational context of this group within American colonialism in the Philippines and the 'colonial metropole' of Seattle, a major magnet for this Asian American group. |
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Fujita-Rony's history is part labour immigration under capitalism, but also Asian American social history from a different perspective. The Chinese and Japanese experiences in the United States have long dominated the field, with the consequence that isolated community enclaves (eg Chinatowns) based in urban settings have become the main model thought to apply to Asian Americans. However, the Filipina/o experience in the United States in the interwar period involved an 'expansive' community that was not so isolated. Filipino men, who made up the majority of the migrants, frequently married Native American women in the Northwest and Alaska. The Filipina/o community did not have their own exclusive neighbourhood, but instead had close ties to Seattle's Chinatown, which was a centre of Asian American living and activity. Filipina/os who had been educated in the American colonial educational system in the Philippines felt comfortable in Seattle's educational system, especially at the University of Washington (a public institution) where their needs were often addressed in a positive way by administrators and teachers there, in contrast to widespread discrimination common towards all Asian Americans in the broader 'white' American community. Filipina/os faced severe job discrimination, even when they had a university education. But unlike Chinese or Japanese migrants, Filipina/os generally were fluent in English (as a consequence of American colonialism and the Americanised education system established in the Philippines); could freely enter the United States as colonial nationals (at least until Congress barred most immigration from their islands by 1934); and were not as stigmatised racially. |
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Fujita-Rony also seeks to present a more complex history of these workers by bringing in women, family, and community, both in the public and private spheres. She takes the story beyond urban Seattle by detailing how this city became both an important port of entry but also recruiting location for jobs in the Alaska canneries and Washington, Oregon, and California agriculture. Filipinos organised unions in response to conditions in these workplaces, but also had a wide variety of social and community organisations that served their ethnic groups' needs and interests. We learn about Filipino labour contractors and businessmen, not just workers, and we discover the resulting tensions within the community. |
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Extensive use of oral histories runs throughout the book, with some interviews done by community-based organisations and others conducted by the author herself. Local published sources also add to the description and context of the many accounts related. The book has an excellent bibliography, but the work could have been even stronger had there been more on the Philippines side of the history. We get excellent accounts of locales from which the Filipina/os came, particularly Ilocos in northwest Luzon. More might have been related, however, on the politics of the Philippines during this era, especially the anti-colonial movement for independence, and the impact this political uncertainty had on economy, workers, and migration. Similarly, the section highlighting unions and unionisation among Filipina/os in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest might have had more on politics. Fujita-Rony uses the term 'politics' for union activity without distinguishing clearly between economic and political organisations. However, this problem of not fully discussing politics — whether in the Philippines or the Pacific Northwest — may actually be due to the book's relative brevity (210 pages of actual text) and the need for further research and analysis on what may be a different angle on this very significant group of Asian Americans. Nevertheless, this book tells their story in terms of migration, work, and social life, and it adds significantly to our knowledge of Asian American workers. |
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| Flinders University |
DAVID PALMER | |
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