Filipino American History Month was first recognized by Congress in 2009. Filipino Americans are the 3rd largest ethnic group in California, with a large population in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles. From personal essays to fiction and non-fiction centered on the Filipino-American experience, we have a wide array of books and ebooks available to celebrate this month!
Click on any book cover below to locate or request the book from our catalog!
Dear America by THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER "This riveting, courageous memoir ought to be mandatory reading for every American." --Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow "l cried reading this book, realizing more fully what my parents endured." --Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins "This book couldn't be more timely and more necessary." --Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of What Is the What and The Monk of Mokha Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called "the most famous undocumented immigrant in America," tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms. "This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book--at its core--is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can't. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home. After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom." --Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America
In the Country by In these nine globe-trotting tales, Mia Alvar gives voice to the women and men of the Philippines and its diaspora. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar's stories explore the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home--and marks the arrival of a formidable new voice in literature.
Trick Mirror by NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "From The New Yorker's beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television."--Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times * "A whip-smart, challenging book."--Zadie Smith * "Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time."--Vulture FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE'S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Time * Chicago Tribune * The Washington Post * NPR * Variety * Esquire * Vox * Elle * Glamour * GQ * Good Housekeeping * The Paris Review * Paste * Town & Country * BookPage * Kirkus Reviews * BookRiot * Shelf Awareness Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine's journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino's sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY
Filipinos in Stockton by The first Filipino settlers arrived in Stockton, California, around 1898, and through most of the 20th century, this city was home to the largest community of Filipinos outside the Philippines. Because countless Filipinos worked in, passed through, and settled here, it became the crossroads of Filipino America. Yet immigrants were greeted with signs that read "Positively No Filipinos Allowed" and were segregated to a four-block area centered on Lafayette and El Dorado Streets, which they called "Little Manila." In the 1970s, redevelopment and the Crosstown Freeway decimated the Little Manila neighborhood. Despite these barriers, Filipino Americans have created a vibrant ethnic community and a rich cultural legacy. Filipino immigrants and their descendants have shaped the history, culture, and economy of the San Joaquin Delta area.
The Latinos of Asia by Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what "color" you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos' "color"--their sense of connection with other racial groups--changes depending on their social context. The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans' racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.
The Vanished Birds by A "highly imaginative and utterly exhilarating" (Thrillist) debut that is "the best of what science fiction can be: a thought-provoking, heartrending story about the choices that define our lives" (Kirkus Reviews, Best Debut Fiction and Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year). FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TORDOTCOM AND KIRKUS REVIEWS A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever. I expected many things from this trip. I did not expect a family. A ship captain, unfettered from time. A mute child, burdened with unimaginable power. A millennia-old woman, haunted by lifetimes of mistakes. In this captivating debut of connection across space and time, these outsiders will find in each other the things they lack: a place of love and belonging. A safe haven. A new beginning. But the past hungers for them, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart. Praise for The Vanished Birds "This is the most impressive debut of 2020."--Locus "This extraordinary science fiction epic, which delves deep into the perils of failing to learn from one's mistakes, is perfect for fans of big ideas and intimate reflections."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A lyrical and moving narrative of space travel, found families, and lost loves set against an evocative space-opera background."--Booklist (starred review) "The Vanished Birds finds an intimate heartbeat of longing in a saga of galactic progress and its crushing fallout. . . . A novel of vast scope that yet makes time for compassion, wonder, and poetry."--Indra Das, author of The Devourers
American Son by A powerful novel about ethnically fluid California, and the corrosive relationship between two Filipino brothers. Told with a hard-edged purity that brings to mind Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, American Son is the story of two Filipino brothers adrift in contemporary California. The older brother, Tomas, fashions himself into a Mexican gangster and breeds pricey attack dogs, which he trains in German and sells to Hollywood celebrities. The narrator is younger brother Gabe, who tries to avoid the tar pit of Tomas's waywardness, yet moves ever closer to embracing it. Their mother, who moved to America to escape the caste system of Manila and is now divorced from their American father, struggles to keep her sons in line while working two dead-end jobs. When Gabe runs away, he brings shame and unforeseen consequences to the family. Full of the ache of being caught in a violent and alienating world, American Son is a debut novel that captures the underbelly of the modern immigrant experience. A Los Angeles Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, and a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Finalist
Filipinos in Los Angeles by The year 2006 marked the centennial of Filipino migration to the United States, when 15 migrant workers called sakadas arrived in Hawaii to work on the islands' sugar plantations. Today the largest concentration of Filipinos outside of the Philippines exists in Southern California. In the 1920s, the first substantial wave of newcomers settled in downtown Los Angeles, eventually migrating to areas just northwest of downtown, a district now designated by the city as Historic Filipinotown. The majority of early Filipino settlers were males who found employment in service-oriented industries, including work as janitors, dishwashers, and houseboys. Filipino Americans now contribute to all aspects of life and culture and live in virtually every Los Angeles neighborhood and suburb, including Eagle Rock, Cerritos, Glendale, Carson, and West Covina.
Letters to a Young Brown Girl by Barbara Jane Reyes answers the questions of Filipino American girls and young women of color with bold affirmations of hard-won empathy, fierce intelligence, and a fine-tuned B.S. detector. The Brown Girl of these poems is fed up with being shushed, with being constantly told how foreign and unattractive and unwanted she is. She's flipping tables and throwing chairs. She's raising her voice. She's keeping a sharp focus on the violences committed against her every day, and she's writing through the depths of her "otherness" to find beauty and even grace amidst her rage. Simultaneously looking into the mirror and out into the world, Reyes exposes the sensitive nerve-endings of life under patriarchy as a visible immigrant woman of color as she reaches towards her unflinching center.
Patron Saints of Nothing by A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST "Brilliant, honest, and equal parts heartbreaking and soul-healing." --Laurie Halse Anderson, author of SHOUT "A singular voice in the world of literature." --Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder. Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.
Arsenic and Adobo by In the small town of Shady Palms, Illinois, Lila Macapagal and her relatives run Tita Rosie's Kitchen, serve delicious Flipino dishes, and solve crimes on the side.
Filipinotown: Voices from Los Angeles by We're in the 1930s and 40s, Downtown L.A. We're with the Filipino "boys," hanging out on Bunker Hill. John Fante (Chapter 15 - McWilliams) has a rented room in one of the old Victorian houses there, and it's just a few blocks to the Chinese and Filipino restaurants on Temple and Figueroa. He's friends with William Saroyan (Chapter 14) and Carlos Bulosan (Chapters 3 4, 9, and 12 - Carter and Bonnivier). An Italian, an Armenian, and a Filipino. All great writers, all outcasts, the three of them eating chicken adobo, white rice, and pancit noodles. Lots of garlic. Highballs in smoke-filled bars. Across the street to the pool hall. Heavy betting. Royalty checks to spend in a weekend. The "boys" from the Islands were also found near Roseland (Chapter 25 - Bejarano) and other taxi dance halls near the rooms they rented around First and Main in "Little Manila" which overlapped "Little Tokyo." In 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order #9066, approving the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, alleging that they threatened national security. In protest, a young Mexican man named Lazo (Chapter 17 - Rasmussen), from Belmont High School (not far from Bunker Hill), accompanied his friends to Manzanar. He stayed for about two years, and would no doubt have stayed to the very end but was drafted out of Manzanar into military service and was soon fighting in the Philippines. (More than 80,000 of the 200,000 Filipinos in the Islands whom President Roosevelt ordered into active duty died during the war. (Chapter 8 - Gaulke, de la Cruz, Bonnivier)). In the 30s and 40s in California (and elsewhere) Filipinos could not own property, have a business, or marry non-Filipinos, even though the ratio of Filipino men to Filipino women was about 15:1. At this time the only labor union open to Filipinos was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Chapter 18 - Grace & Bonnivier). Chauffeurs, houseboys, cooks, field workers, dishwashers as political activists? Well, they might get fired or even killed, or they might have run-ins with the FBI (Chapter 9 - Hirabayashi and Alquizola). The 50s brought peace and at least the possibility of prosperity to the people who lived along Temple Street (Chapter 25 - Bejarno). Then followed the turbulent 60s and early 70s during which time immigration laws opened up, and new waves of well-educated professional Filipinos arrived (Chapter 30 - Cablayan). Some came to stay (Chapter 28 - Geaga-Rosenthal). For decades, Filipinos had shared their lives with Mexicans and other people of color, working in the fields or living in inner city neighborhoods. The formation of a union for farmworkers (Chapters 3 - Bulosan; 9 - Hirabayashi and Alquizola; 38 - Silva), was initiated by Itliong and Vera Cruz, and then championed by Chavez. It's now the 1980s-1990s, and we see "the boys" who came here in the early 1900s have either passed on or are old men. They have become our revered and sometimes overly-romanticized elders (Chapter 36 - Brainard). 21st Century: The two youngest contributors to our collection (aged 17 and 23) meet at our writing workshop at the Echo Park Library. It turns out they are from the same pueblo, San Juan, in Mexico. 2014: Our oldest contributor is Henrietta Zarovsky. She is Jewish-German-Russian and was 13 years old when her family moved to Bunker Hill in 1935 (Chapter 16), a few blocks away from the Central Library where Fante and Bulosan were busy making literary history.
The Son of Good Fortune by A Recommended Book From: USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle * The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The Millions FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD From award-winning author Lysley Tenorio, comes a big hearted debut novel following an undocumented Filipino son as he navigates his relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the place he calls home Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town's seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima's lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel's tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. "We are 'TNT'--tago ng tago," she told him, "hiding and hiding." Excel is undocumented--and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life. Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies--and existing outside the normal constructs of American society--Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider? Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their country--and to each other.
I Was Their American Dream by One part Mari Andrew, one part Marjane Satrapi, I Was Their American Dream- A Graphic Memoir is a triumphant tale of self-discovery, a celebration of a family's rich heritage, and a love letter to American immigrant freedom. Malaka Gharib's illustrations, infused with teenage antics and earnest questions about identity and culture, provide thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised . Malaka's upbringing will look familiar to anyone who grew up in the pre-internet era, but her particular story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigates her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. I Was Their American Dream is at once a journal of growing up and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children.
Filipinos in Hollywood by The memoirs of Filipinos in Hollywood span more than 80 years, dating back to the early 1920s when the first wave of immigrants, who were mostly males, arrived and settled in Los Angeles. Despite the obstacles and hardships of discrimination, these early Filipino settlers had high hopes and dreams for the future. Many sought employment in Hollywood, only to be marginalized into service-related fields, becoming waiters, busboys, dishwashers, cooks, houseboys, janitors, and chauffeurs. They worked at popular restaurants, homes of the rich and famous, movie and television studios, clubs, and diners. For decades, Filipinos were the least recognized and least documented Asians in Hollywood. But many emerged from the shadows to become highly recognized talents, some occupying positions in the entertainment industry that makes Hollywood what it is today--the world's capital of entertainment and glamour.