Immigration Blues (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Filipino Literature in English

The first Filipino literature published in English in the United States was in the early 1930s, a decade before Santos's arrival in the country. The writer who made this breakthrough was José Garcia Villa (1914 – 1997), whose poems and stories were published by Scribner's in 1933 as Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others. Villa lived in the United States, and his short stories, which were highly praised by critics, were included in Best American Short Stories of 1932 and Best American Short Stories of 1933. Despite the success of his fiction, however, during the 1930s Villa decided to write only lyric poetry. His Selected Poems and New was published in 1958. Although scholars acknowledge the merits of his pioneering work, Villa is little read today.

In the 1940s, poet and short-story writer Carlos Bulosan (1913 – 1956) came to the forefront of Filipino writers. Like Santos, Bulosan chronicled the lives of Filipino immigrants in the United States. His stories appeared mainly in magazines such as the New Yorker. His book of satirical, humorous poems, The Laughter of My Father, was published in 1944 by Harcourt, Brace and was warmly received by readers. It was followed by the autobiographical America Is in the Heart (1946), which remains an influential work today.

Also in the 1940s, Filipino immigrant N. V. M. Gonzalez (1915 – 1999) began publishing short stories, some of which appear in book form in Children of the Ash-Covered Loam (1954) and Selected Stories (1964). Gonzalez also wrote novels, including The Winds of April (1940), Seven Hills Away (1947), and A Season of Grace (1956). Like Santos, Gonzalez portrays the lives of Filipinos in the United States, although Gonzalez writes mainly of graduate students and other young or middle-aged people who visit but do not remain in the United States.

In the late 1950s, Linda Ty-Casper (1931 – ) began publishing. Her novel The Peninsulars (1964) is about the influence of Spanish colonization on the Philippines in the mid-eighteenth century. Ty-Casper has since published a total of ten novels and three short-story collections.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Santos wrote some of his best work, but it was published mainly in the Philippines. It was not until 1979 that Santos's collection Scent of Apples was published in the United States.

Much Filipino work published in the United States deals with the problem of Filipino identity. Filipinos are a people with a colonial past, having been ruled by Spain for 300 years, followed by half a century of American rule. Filipinos who immigrated to the United States had to face issues of exile, isolation, and racism. They had to forge an identity for themselves that could bridge the gap between their cultural and racial heritage as Filipinos and their new status as Filipino Americans, living in a culture very different from their own.

The Filipino Experience in America

The first wave of Filipino immigration to the United States occurred between 1906 and 1934, when Filipinos were recruited to California as agricultural workers. Alipio and his friend Carlito in "Immigration Blues" probably arrived in California during this period, although no details are given of their occupations. Filipinos also immigrated to Hawaii, where they worked on sugarcane plantations, and in the 1920s many immigrated to the Pacific Northwest. Beginning in 1934, however, the Tydings-McDuffie Act severely limited Filipino immigration to the United States.

Many Filipino Americans served in the American armed forces during World War II. Although "Immigration Blues" does not mention it, the fact that Alipio received his U.S. citizenship after the end of World War II suggests that he may have fought in the U.S. Army, although it is possible he would have been too old to serve.

A new wave of Filipino immigration to the United States began after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which loosened restrictions on immigration from Asia. Between 1965 and 1984, 664,938 Filipinos entered the country (in "Immigration Blues," this is the period during which both Mrs. Zafra and Monica secure their immigration status by marrying American citizens). The rate of immigration increased in part because of political and economic uncertainty in the Philippines. This wave of immigration is sometimes called the "brain drain," because it consisted mainly of professionals, including doctors and lawyers.

Filipino Americans have at all periods faced discrimination because of their national origins. Many have been confined to low-status, low-in-come jobs. In Santos's story "The Day the Dancers Came," which is published in Scent of Apples, a Filipino immigrant becomes an American citizen in 1945 and joins the workforce. This is his experience:

To a new citizen, work meant many places and many ways: factories and hotels, waiter and cook. A timeless drifting; once he tended a rose garden and took care of a hundred-year-old veteran of a border war. As a menial in a hospital in Cook County, all day he handled filth and gore.

In the early days of Filipino immigration to California, Filipinos were sometimes banned from hotels, restaurants, and swimming pools. In 1926 antimiscegenation laws were passed in California that banned Filipinos from marrying white women. This kind of prejudice is apparent in some of Santos's stories. In "Ash Wednesday," for example (published in You Lovely People), a Boston family turns their daughter Muriel out of the house when she decides to marry a Filipino.

Santos refers to the early Filipino experience in America in his essay, "Pilipino Old Timers: Fact and Fiction":

Prior to World War II and as late as the 1950s, the Pilipino immigrant was unwanted wherever he went, in the big and the small cities of the United States. As Pilipinos came in increasing numbers, they caused mounting resentment, particularly on the Pacific Coast where riots against them flared, which gave rise to violence and accusations.

Compare & Contrast

• 1970s: According to the 1980 census, there are 774,652 Filipinos living in the United States. This constitutes 0.3 percent of the total population.
  Today: According to the 2000 census, Filipino Americans number 1.9 million. This is up from 1.4 million in 1990. The largest Filipino population is in California, at 918,678. Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Washington also have substantial Filipino populations. In Washington, the number of Filipinos has increased by 50 percent since 1990.
• 1970s: Filipino immigration to the United States increases due to the Immigration Act of 1965, which loosened restrictions on immigration from Asia. Once in the country, Filipinos are allowed, like immigrants from other countries, to bring their immediate family to join them, subject to visa approvals.
  Today: Since the 1970s, the time necessary for approval of a visa application for a brother or sister has grown much longer. The process can literally take decades. Some Filipinos who immigrated during the 1980s are, therefore, still waiting for the immigration of their families from the Philippines to the United States to be completed.
• 1970s: With Filipino American writers such as Santos and Linda Ty-Casper publishing their work in the United States, Filipino American writing begins to make its way into the mainstream of American literature.
  Today: A new generation of Filipino Americans is making its mark on literature, in a variety of literary forms and genres. Authors include Jessica Hagedorn (whose novel Dogeaters [1990] was nominated for the National Book Award), Ninotchka Rosca, Epifanio San Juan, and Michelle Skinner.