Tiffany Mendoza, Jessa Delos Reyes, Stephanie Ancheta, Jeannel Poyaoan and Katrina Liwanag were amazing co-researchers in a study about Filipino language access in San Francisco. A team of undergraduate, graduate and recent alums, we co-authored a paper about the key role Filipino community-based organizations (CBO) play to help Filipinos/as in San Francisco.

Recently, our work was featured in SFSU news and I’m still so lucky to have had amazing collaborators in these amazing Pinay sociologists!

https://news.sfsu.edu/bold-thinkers/study-reveals-strength-filipino-community-ties-san-francisco

I’ll be in Montreal in January to talk about The Labor of Care and the possibilities for building migrant worker power with the theories and stories in it!

Such an amazing honor also accompanied by the book landing in the 2018 McGill Reads Holiday Book List! Can’t wait to come back to Montreal!

Fact: writing and getting a book published is hard work.

But on the flip side of publication, promoting the book and getting to go on book tour has been so exciting! It has been such a privilege to (1) tell my community’s stories in so many different places all over the U.S. and (2) engage with brilliant students, faculty, scholars, colleagues, and activists about the work.

After the publication of The Labor of Care in March, I’ve been to over 10 universities in the U.S. At times upon the invitation of Filipino student groups who organize forums and events for their members to learn about my work. Other times, I’m invited by past students or colleagues who are amazing at figuring out resources and time to lift up me and my work. All in all, I am often humbled and then so ecstatic to be traveling to talk about the lives of Filipina migrants and their transnational families.

As we close out 2018, this post is to thank you all for supporting The Labor of Care, and my scholarship. From buying the book, organizing events, participating in panels, making space, attending the talks, taking me out to eat afterwards, and taking photos (pics or it didn’t happen). I’m so thankful for all of you; for being on this journey with me. It has been my deepest honor to do this work and share it with the world.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Rocky Rivera, SF-native, Oakland-based Filipina American rapper, activist, & mother. Her newest effort entitled “Rocky’s Revenge” came out last week while I was traveling with my family so I put off listening the the album until I was home in the Bay, perhaps taking a drive to the very SF streets that raised her. All symbolic-like. So I waited until I got back. Almost a week after people have been posting, sharing and copping the album. I feel behind.

But, I wanted to honor her work in that way so leave me alone in my symbolism and lateness.

Anyway, I dropped my kids off yesterday and drove my mom-car around the Excelsior and the Mission with it on full blast. And boy did she take me on a ride.

The work was beautiful. Honest and vulnerable. Painful and creative. The textures and tempo of the songs across the album was fascinating. Hooking you into the next track like a page turner. Her cadence and wordplay was on point and as always, the imagery in her concepts and stories were so sharp.

The first song titled after the album was a helluva introduction to Rocky’s newest musical effort. My favorite lines traced lineage of maternal and matriarchal magic connecting a mystical past through the violence of patriarchy and misogyny (past and present) all the way to the Pinay futurity where Rocky claims, “I’m Mother Nature so respect me/You all my sons.” I loved this track because it was infused with a militant maternalism that invoked images of womb, baby carrying, the mystic power of womanhood and motherhood. In this iteration of her artistry, I could hella relate to Rocky as a mother, realizing the universe existing in my many states and potentialities. She echoed what I’ve felt in my bones.

Across the album, Rocky gives me the right mix of gangsta, mama, militancy, Filipiniana and Bay. She sounds authentically Bay Area-bred with roots in the Philippines, music reflective of our Filipino American struggles. It’s a special and unique experience: being raised Filipino in the Bay Area. Wherever I’ve lived in the US, Bay Area Filipinos often find one another and stick together. Often because I think there’s something about it that only applies to us. Rocky sounds like that feeling. She sounds like how it feels to be home in the Bay, be with ya peoples.

It brings me to my favorite song: it has to be the penultimate track “Like You”, an emotional tribute to the late great Bay Area legend, The Jacka. When I first met Rocky, I remember connecting on the Bay Area rap tip. We were in college and because I was raised in the FAR East Bay, I felt a bit out of place in terms of music and FilAm culture in SF. We listened to the likes of RBL Posse, Andre Nickatina and The Jacka where I came from. And Rocky knew exactly who I was talkimbout. She not only listened to Jacka’s music but interviewed him for her journalistic endeavors and befriended him–no, be-familied him. When Jacka passed away from gun violence, I was heart broken so listening to this track, I really felt Rocky as she laid bare the shattered pieces of her heart. J.O.A.L. Or Mr. Vargas to his students, rapper and righteous Westmoor high teacher, noted that the opening line, “I’ll probably never feel the same about the Bay again,” was Rocky’s reflection about losing a beloved friend but it could also be about how the Bay has transformed with gentrification, racialized capitalism, and so much more. As someone who has experienced loss more recently, Rocky’s tribute to Jacka gave me the opportunity to stay in my pain and feel it shamelessly. In this way, her track transcended their relationship, inviting us listeners to take part in grief: hers and our own.

I’m no music journalist. Just a sociologist and a fan of Rocky’s. But if you’re out there reading this blog: do yourself a favor, buy Rocky Rivera’s album. Better yet go to her album release party on Thursday.

“Larry was Filipino like me, Mama?” asked Aya. “Yes he is, Aya,” I answered.

Today, I brought a little Filipino American history lesson in my backpack to teach preschoolers. I didn’t know if they’d get it. Or if they’d like the story. But, I tried. With the help of “Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong”, published out of the Stockton-based publishing house Bridge + Delta, the first nonfiction illustrated children’s book about Filipino American history and the first book ever written about Larry Itliong, I learned so much about the capacity of children (including my own daughter, Aya) to understand the plight of farmworkers, past and present.

Manong Larry, the oft forgotten United Farm Workers (UFW) cofounder, migrated to the United States, worked in the fields of the Central Valley of California and devoted his life to fight for a farmworkers union. In the above photos, I engaged in a project of watercolors and a coloring page of Larry Itliong’s portrait out of the book as a way to tell the story Manong Larry. What were the conditions under which he led the Delano Grape Strike, united across racial divides in the fields and created national attention to the plight of farmers in the Central Valley? I asked the 3-4 year olds who were painting Manong Larry’s portrait, what they thought farmworkers would need to be healthy and strong. They replied with: “rest”, “food for energy”, “sleep”, and “snacks”. Although, the demands of the Delano Grape Strike was much more complex, much of what the strike was about was the issues of lack of rest and poor working conditions, low wages or the inability of farmworkers to support themselves.

Penned by late San Francisco State University professor and historian, Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, with Gayle Romasanta and illustrated by Andre Sibayan, this book is a exemplary case of FAHM as it is about, authored and illustrated by Filipino Americans. And as I’ve written in a past post, an exciting opportunity to reveal to younger generations of Filipino Americans that they belong to a proud lineage of trailblazers, risk-takers and rabble rousers.

Through this book, and simple coloring pages like these, families could possibly talk about Larry’s leadership in his community and his courageous cross-cultural partnership with Mexican farmworkers to achieve equity. (Here’s a quick video about Manong Larry and why his story is a part of the American story.) During this Filipino American History Month, with this exciting book soon to be released, we all have another tool in our shelves to ensure that young people, of all backgrounds, can be part of the positive change that Manong Larry was a part of building.

An awesome bonus of this FAHM lesson was the conversations I had with other Filipino American parents and grandparents about who Larry Itliong was and why they never heard of him. It was great to hear that we were all learning together with our kids.