The Mindanao Forum Vol. XIX, No. 1 N.G.

BALGOA, et al June 2016

The Filipinos In America in Filipino

Fiction: Finding Spaces of Negotiation
of Identity

NELIA G. BALGOA
ROCELLI PETRIERCCI O.LIM

Abstract

This research analyzes the identity construction and negotiation of Filipino

migrants as reflected in selected fiction written by Filipino writers who migrated
and have settled in America. Taking into consideration that the influx of Filipino
migration to America dramatically increased in the 1960’s, short stories that
were written from this decade to the present which best reflect the themes of
lived experiences, history and identity negotiation of Filipinos in America were
chosen for analysis. Using Homi Bhaba’s concepts of “third space” and Cultural
Studies as an approach, this paper argues that the negotiation of identity of
Filipino migrants in America can be observed within the domains of family,
friendship, romantic relationships and larger community as reflected in the
selected short stories. These spaces of identity negotiation allow “third space” to
emerge, blurring the lines between two ideological dichotomies or essentialized
notions of being Filipino or American. In the process of negotiation, a new
subject position thus emerges and this puts Filipino migration, as reflected in the
short stories into a new perspective. This new perspective reconceptualises and
widens the scope of the definition of Philippine Literature to include the
Philippine Migration Literature in which the themes of alienation, exile,
nostalgia and the longing of home of the main characters are generally reflected
and distinct in this emergent genre of writing.

Keywords: Philippine Literature, Philippine Migration literature,

identity, international migration

__________________
NELIA G. BALGOA
ROCELLI PETRIERCCI O. LIM

One of the defining features of globalization is human mobility and international

migration. As people move across borders and nation states, geographical boundaries have
also become blurred and slippery. This movement of people has not only impacted the
economic conditions of both the host and sending countries of these migrants but also how the

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cultural landscape has changed and been shaped because of the massive movement of people.
As such, concepts like transnationalism and displacement have emerged in area and cultural
studies in attempts to capture the ambivalence and complexities brought by international
migration.
This movement of people has become a significant precursor in the changes on the
basic social foundations of politics, economics, geography and culture. The impact of this
culture of migration is also very pronounced in literature and this is manifested on how the
lived experiences of the migrants have consequently been reflected and captured in the
literary works that have been created and published by writers who were able to realize the
significance of these narratives in understanding the complexities and issues brought by this
phenomenon. Receiving migrant countries, in particular, paid scholarly attention to the
development of this new genre of writing called migration literature. Peterson, for example,
writing from the German context calls this collective writing as migration literature which he
defines as “creative works that deal with the migration experience which include the
processes of integration and identity development (1). These themes, added Petersen, play key
roles in this nascent classification of literature. Writing from the context of Germany’s
migrant situation, and differentiating migration literature from migrant literature, Petersen
argues that the former can be too limiting because it emphasizes the life or biography of the
author in highlighting the migrants’ experiences in the creative work. This is also echoed and
reaffirmed by Pourjari and Vahidpour whose work contends that “inclusion of biographical
circumstances by migrant writer does not include his/her work in the category of migration of
literature (679). Rather, migration literature, as Petersen points out focuses a great deal on the
dynamics of the host society or receiving country; the migrants’ struggles with conflicting
cultures, identity issues, political implications and the exercise of agency while not
completely severing the ties with their country of origin (1).

Hybridity and the question of identity, as argued by Pourjari and Vahidpour are
most reflective of migration literature. Thematically, migration literature portrays characters
who try to cope with migration in different ways (678). This reaction varies from the
experience of uncertainty of the displaced characters as “destructive, agonizing and painful to
the experience of migration as “productive, fascinating and appealing” both of which work
towards the same end of “rewriting their identities in order to evoke their impure and
heterogeneous character (Frank 50).
This conflicting identity confronted by the migrants was explored and analyzed
further by Homi Bhaba who claims that migration literature reflects a transnational
characteristic which “blurs the boundaries between nation states” and therefore “create in-
between spaces that go beyond existing binaries and makes a bridge between the home and
the world. This condition of “unhomeliness” can be called as hybridity which involves the

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dissolution of fixed identities and the assertion of hybridization of cultures which can be
considered as counter-models to exclusive national or ethnic identities. In line with this,
displacement takes a literal form (36). The migrant brings with him his/her culture of origin
into a new cultural landscape, creating a clash of ideals and values. The relationship between
the host society and the migrant is marked by incommensurable differences in culture. Bhaba
argues that “it is very difficult to try to fit together different forms of culture and to pretend
that they can easily coexist” (Rutherford 15).
This vacillation is what Homi Bhaba calls, which is the core concept of hybridity, as
the third space. He defines it as an in-between space, a space for negotiation which allows
new subject positions to emerge. Negotiation can be defined as an ongoing contestation and
bargaining of meaning when an individual constructs his/her identity socially. This is not only
about individual autonomy or the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make
their own free choices but rather being flexible to the more pressing demands of the host
society in order to survive and adapt. This leads then to the development of multiple identities
of the migrants (Bao 5).
The development of this kind of genre of writing can also be attributed to Philippine
Literature. The Philippines, as one of the major migrant sending countries in the world, is
highly susceptible to the impact of international migration. Writings on migration often reflect
how the migrants’ ‘experiences in the home country are often translated into his works, and
how they are especially used as devices that aim to contrast their experiences with their host
countries with their experiences in the homeland. The continuous transformation of culture
and identity of the Filipino migrants, as articulated by the Filipino authors finds reflection in
the works that they have created.
America, as a receiving country, has always been an area of contention when it
comes to migration studies for most scholars because of its long and to a certain extent
complicated relationship with the Philippines. America has always been viewed by Filipinos
as the “land of promise”, a by-product of a long and deep-seated colonization of the country.
A change in US legislation provided a wider gateway for massive migration; the Immigration
and Naturalization Act of 1965 was a catalyst for the increase of migration which allowed the
first migrants to petition for their families to settle abroad, consequently making the Filipino
community the fastest growing Asian group in the United States. Predictably, creative works
to capture and articulate the continuous transformation of culture and identity of the Filipinos
while living in America and keeping ties with the Philippines were published. Bienvenido
Santos’ “Scent of Apples”, vividly captures the feelings of nostalgia and longing for
something lost of Fabio, a Filipino migrant whom the narrator met in a speaking engagement
in America. Fabio represents an exilic migrant, who longs for the past yet unable to go home
and disengage himself from the confines of America. Rocio G. Davis also explores the
identity formation through another novel of Santos, and refers to Santos as an important link
in the chain of Filipino immigrants who write about the plight of their countrymen in
America. In the novels What the Hell for You Left Your Heart In San Francisco and The
Filipino Immigrant Dream, the characters deal with moments of conflict and ambiguity

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regarding their outlook on their home country and America, all the while pointing out the
different points of view of different types of Filipino migrants- the old timers who long for the
homeland , the ambitious Filipinos who eagerly assimilate into the American culture, and the
second generation for whom America was the birthplace who vacillate between two cultures,
often creating tension between their Philippine-raised parents (23). These themes and
characteristics need to be studied in order to validate and establish the implications of the
effects of international migration to Philippine Literature in general and to the
characterization of Philippine Migration in particular.
This paper therefore is an attempt to analyze nine selected short stories in English
written by Filipinos in America on how the main characters, who are Filipino migrants, reflect
Bhaba’s“third space” and negotiate their identities. It explores the instances in the stories
when the central characters negotiate their identity and what conflicts give rise to these
negotiations. In the process, it will characterize and show the emergence of a new genre of
writing called Philippine Migration Literature.
Methodology

Nine short stories written in English by Filipino writers who are in, or have been to
America were analyzed in this study. These stories have settings in America and were
published either in America or in the Philippines during the 1960s until the present. The year
1960 is specified to provide a limit for the researcher’s story selection. It was in the 1960s
where more lenient immigration laws in the United States allowed more Filipinos to migrate,
thus the subsequent years would observe more creations of literary works reflecting the
migration experience. The stories were not selected with the idea that they each represent an
era, but rather they were chosen for their inclusion of notable moments of identity negotiation.
History may play a role in the background of the stories but its role is largely determined by
the context, which varies with every stories. The stories selected for analysis are as follows:

1. Flip Gothic by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (1997)

2. Hill Sky, Longing by Linda Ty-Casper (1990)
3. Rice by Oscar Penaranda (2004)
4. The Blossoming of Bongbong by Jessica Hagedorn (1990)
5. My Family/My Gang by Lilia V. Villanueva (1997)
6. Paperback Dreams and Other Realities by Eulalio Yerro Ibarra (1997)
7. Silence by Marianne Villanueva (1999)
8. Immigration Blues by Bienvenido Santos (1979)
9. The Balikbayan by Melissa R. Aranzamendez (1997)

The use of the concept of “third space” in the analysis of the selected short stories
will enable the researcher to prove how identity can be socially constructed and subjected to
the continuous play of power, history and culture, and in this study, all these three defining
factors refer to the forces of international migration in which the Filipinos are active

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participants. In this sense, identity is a production which is never complete, always in process,
it is “becoming” and not just “being. The social constructionist view of identity contends that
identity can be constructed through negotiation and bargaining of meanings. Negotiation
occurs because in the process of translation, the concept of multiple identities emerges. As a
result, a new hybrid identity is formed from the intermingling of cultural elements from the
dominant culture and the migrants’ culture. Because culture is socially learned and
transmitted, it is along special areas or spaces where identities are constructed.
The themes of third space and negotiation of identity become more valid and
apparent when examined through the lens of Cultural Studies theory which, according to Hall,
is an approach to study literature which seeks to analyze the processes of culture and identity
formation with the focus of migration and cultural displacement. In the field of Cultural
Studies, literature is a reflection of reality and experience and at the same time a product of
culture. In this study, the selected literary texts reflect how Filipino migrants, continuously
waver between two “spaces”; seemingly alternately accepting the first space but not forgetting
the second space, continuously in flux which necessitates negotiation in order to survive.
Using textual analysis to extract the themes of third space and negotiation
of identity, this study will consider elements such as language and style, symbols and other
elements of fiction and the migration experiences of the texts. The following were used as
guide questions in analyzing the texts:
1. What are the instances in the stories when the central characters negotiate
identity?
2. What conflicts give rise to these negotiations?
3. How do the stories manifest third space?

The Domains of Analysis

Four social domains will be considered in the study of third space and negotiation of
identity in this study. Filipino migrants’ identity can be constructed along the area of family.
Families provide the foundation for an individual’s social development. Filipinos highly value
the presence of their families which are the source of values and beliefs. The family of the
migrant can serve as a critical buffer against acculturative stress in adapting two cultures or
might create barriers to acculturation (Britto and Amer 140). Migration to the US is typically
a “family affair”, thus exploring the family context becomes increasingly important for
understanding identity (Rumbaut 398).
In the same way, identity can be reconstructed along the area of friendships.
According to Gudykunst and Mody, individuals with strong sense of their ethnic identity tend
to perceive other people from different ethnic background with greater social distance and less
trust and receptivity. They claim that it is more likely for individuals to actively interact with
others of different ethnic background if they are insecure about their identity. Intercultural
friendships allow for the exchange of cultural elements which the migrant may negotiate
whether by rejecting or accepting influence over their identity (56).

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Romantic relationships or dating can also be a site for identity negotiation and
construction. It is where personal intimacies can be plucked out, revealing cultural conflicts
between partners. In romantic relationships, as with any other personal relationship, values
and beliefs are shared. Marriages, especially, demand compromise in which culture to adapt,
revealing the identity practices of migrants in their involvements with both their country of
origin and host society.
Lastly, Filipino migrants’ identity can be constructed with regard to their relationship
with their community. Community widens the space of the migrants; this would include the
political and social forces that shape a migrant’s identity. A number of Filipino communities
have developed throughout the United States. These communities allow and provide the
negotiation, and in the process, transformation of migrants’ identities. Balgoa states that these
communities become concrete spaces for Filipino migrants to reinvent themselves and allow
moments of third space to occur (253).

Analysis

My Family, Not My Family: My Home, Not My Home

Three short stories reflect the ambivalence that the main characters experience, in
dealing with conflicting cultures, as highly influenced by family relations. The “in-
betweeness” of the characters can be attributed to the feeling of exile, which, according to
Rushdie is not an infertile territory because reality and identity are highly affected by time,
distance and geographical perspectives (91). In the three stories, the struggles of the character
of finding which spaces to fit come in the form of symbols, that signal the entry to the
uncertainty. The teenager, Mindy, for example, one of the main characters of the story Flip
Gothic by Cecilia Brainard, manifests her rebelliousness when she changed her manner of
dressing – black clothes, black lipstick, dyed hair. The first generation Filipino migrant
parents associated this change to being influenced by the American ways and when she dyed
her hair purple, the Filipino grandmother became utterly convinced that Mindy was a lost soul
and when she said “You (Mindy’s parents) have given her everything. Every material thing
perhaps, but not a good sense of herself”, the readers were convinced that this is indeed a
story about losing/regaining one’s identity.
The same can be said of Dima in the story Hills, Sky, Longing by Linda T. Casper
who berates herself for not raising her children “Filipino” enough. The story is non-linear, as
if to emphasize the random thoughts that Dima remembers of her children and husband and
her life in the Philippines. “Filipino” thoughts pervade the story—the mango trees, the
longing for the taste of Batangas coffee, the sight of her children standing at the seawall over
Manila Bay. Her name, perhaps, is a true marker of her otherness: “Like John, the children
laugh when people say, “Dima, Dimalanta? What kind of name is that?” The American
surroundings seem to antagonize her further, and the more she becomes conscious of this
reality, the further she is pulled back to her origins and reclaim her identity.

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This is also echoed in the story “Rice” by Oscar Penaranda which is about a story of
an unnamed boy whose family moved to America when he was nine and would reminisce of
mornings in the Philippines. He would contrast this to his mornings in San Francisco, where
his family have lived for five years, and sensual images on sight and smell and are indicative
of the season. The father, ironically, would insist on him eating jelly, jam and fresh milk for
breakfast and a sandwich for lunch. The sandwich, for both the father and the young
protagonist symbolize the “Americanness”, and for the father to insist on this is to insist being
an American in America. The boy would outwit his father, and would hide the forbidden rice
and some left overs of adobo, paksiw and toyo and packed these himself for lunch. Food
becomes more than a food for the young boy but instead becomes a sign and space of
displacement for him.
Twice displaced marks the uncertainty of the characters’ attempts to grasp the
meaning of their identity. Mindy felt displaced in America and when she went to the
Philippines to stay with the Filipino side of the family, she felt that sense of displacement
again. She regards her Filipino relatives as “backward, ignorant” and she is viewed in return
as “rebellious, undisciplined, wild”. The sixty- year old Dima must have sensed this too but
vacillates between accepting or rejecting this truth as she tries to make a home out of America
for herself and for her children. Her “what ifs is an indication of this:

Why did she not read Lara and Edit the rhymes she
learned as a child, Leron, Leron Sinta, Sitsiritsit
Alibangbang? She wants to remember them standing
at the seawall over Manila Bay as she stood as a child.

The young boy who abhors the sandwich and who has an almost obsessive penchant for rice
is twice displaced in his own home. The first one is from the food that he is forced to eat and
the second is through his father that represents all the “Americanness” that he hates.
Rejection of the sandwich is rejection of America just as rejection of the father is rejection of
America. Thus, in the stories, the family is a great source of confusion and ambivalence for
the main characters. Paradoxically, the one which creates the confusion can also be the
source of stability. And stability, albeit temporary and very fragile, can come in the form of
negotiation and bargaining within the family. Not because the characters have choices, but
because they realize it is futile to identify what they are struggling against and what they
have become. The boy for example, just accepted that he is different “He noticed gradually
that when he was with friends his age, he felt old. He felt this way for a long time too’. The
mother implores the father to let the boy be and let him eat rice. The negotiation is provided
for by the mother. Dima, on the other hand, also cannot find a place for her displaced
identity, consequently feeling “like a fugitive, someone with a different face, speech and
dream”. Mindy, changes her name to Arminda as she became more familiar with the Filipino
culture, her last final act to declare her “Filipinoness”. But still, her Americanness is not lost,
easily discernible by others as is she still regarded by her relatives as that “girl from

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America”. But the difference is silent, unnamed and perhaps to a certain extent should not be
named and not to name it is negotiation and bargaining of identity and meanings. Identities,
in the ambivalence of migration, become active when it is dormant.
The stories are driven by memories evoked by the homeland especially in the case of
Dima and the young boy. The urban/rural dichotomy becomes marker for their concept of
home. America is the urban jungle as described by the stories while the Philippines is the
idyllic, peaceful rural landscape. Like the “peregrine flying without wings”, Dima attempts
to search for a “landing site” where she can create a new home in the host country through
memories of the homeland—old memories that can be continuously felt but can never be
actualized again. Such is the negotiation.
Mindy’s decision to reclaim her Filipino identity, on the other hand, reflects the
complex reality of second-generation Filipino migrants in America who have never known
their roots but at the same time express a desire to be familiar with their native culture in the
search for their identity. But the native is always out of reach precisely because she has
never experienced it before. Her search becomes more real but not necessarily absolute
because the ambivalence of her identity was not totally eliminated. Thus spaces of
negotiation are characterized by nostalgia, of home that is not home in the real sense. The
three characters represent the significance of the family in the particular migration
experience of the Filipino individual in evoking these feelings – from the feelings of in-
betweeness in a teenager, the pathos and nostalgia of a wife and mother and the longing for
the comforts of food and home in a young boy. They are different but the same.

Who Am I with Friends? : Straddling the In-between Space”

Displacement is more pronounced in the short stories The Blossoming of Bongbong and My
Family/My Gang. Bongbong, the main character of the first story, is a young man from an
upper-class Filipino family, leaves Manila “because Manila is slowly driving him mad” and
moves to San Francisco. The story is largely symbolic and the events are often indecipherable
and disjointed, characterized by Bongbong’s vision. Thus, this gradual fall of insanity largely
becomes a representation of the main character’s rootlessness and displacement. First, he
complains of the contradictions that abound in the Philippines. This can be a symbol for the
already fluid nature of identity. When he finds himself standing in an intersection and having
visions of the Philippines, “ A Chinese woman with blond hair with a map of the Philippines
between her legs, Frisquito (his friend) assassinating the president of the Philippines who
happened to be his wife in drag who happened to be a concert pianist” his identity becomes
disjointed and fragmented.
It is in friendship though where Bongbong feels the conflict. And it is his interactions
with the others around him where he feels he needs to negotiate and bargain the meaning of
himself. His self-affirmation must be fed by friends, especially the women. Because his
sexuality is highly questionable, as reflected in the wariness of his sister towards him, what
friends think of him becomes highly pivotal for his identity. To Chairmaine, who is his live in

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partner, he is an unattainable sexual prospect; to Colelia, the lesbian lover of Charmaine, he is

a threat. To others, he is weird, different. There seems to be a thin line that defines madness
and the search for identity in Bongbong; but when he said, “I look into the mirror and I do not
know what is there”, the search for identity becomes more emphatic and absolute. And
America has done this to him. Insanity becomes synonymous with the search for identity. But
it is the search which is absolute; the identity still remains fluid. Nothing is holding him in
place, perpetuating the instability of his identity, forever in flux. In the end, the symbol
becomes complete—he does not sign his name in the last letter to his friend Frisquito because
he has forgotten it. He finally forgets who he is in a literal and figurative sense. With myriad
of differing and uncertain views upon his position, Bongbong remains lost in his attempt at
identification. Thus, he remains within the third space with no defining resolution upon his
identity.
Onofria, in the story My Family/My Gang, exposes one largely untold aspect of the
Filipino migration experience-the gang life of Filipino American community since the 1990s.
How these gangs exist in American society can be traced back to issues such as racial
discrimination, otherness and the absence of parental guidance. According to Posadas (1999),
Filipino youths form gang for mutual assistance and support. The social support derived from
the gang substitutes for the lack of stable home life. As migrants in America, Filipino parents
struggle to build careers and earn a living, thus leaving them with neither the time nor energy
to stabilize the home environment, especially in areas where their children’s stability is
concerned. This situation is reflective of Onofria’s inclusion into a Filipino gang.
The title speaks a lot for the story. The slashed or hyphenated identity sums up a
hybrid identity for the migrants just as the family/gang speaks for the ambivalence in
determining which space becomes more influential in shaping her identity. But she feels the
difference between the two spaces because the gang is where she says she feels more
powerful as opposed to the circumstances at home where she feels both oppressed – her
mother’s constant reprimands and yelling, drive Onofria to move away from her family—
they’re not home all day so no way they knew how we’re growing up”, my parents, they
worked so hard, both of them, that they finally could afford a house in the suburbs and they
are proud of this.”. The parents are living the American dream and they wanted their daughter
to do the same.
Like Mindy in the story Flip Gothic, she becomes unruly, rebellious and from the
perspective of the parents, they have become too “American”. When a black girl taunts her
and makes fun of her name, she reacts violently by pulling out the girl’s tongue. The other
members of the gang, who are all Filipinos see her “potential” and convinced her to join the
gang. The gang, by definition, is also too “American”, and Onofria, unconsciously moves
from a family which is “American” to a space which is still “American”. The gang has
become the family and its members are Filipinos yet have become “Americans”. Onofria’s
feelings and identity are straddled in between; negotiation has to be made. It can be said
therefore that Onofria’s identity formation develops within this realm of friendship and
kinship from this space. The gang is where her identity is reinvented—Onofria’s third space.

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Her life is the antithesis of the American dream that her parents dream for her yet it is in this
space where she feels at home but as the case maybe, not totally, not absolutely. For the space
of the gang itself is also fluid and all the members caught in between in spaces that their
parents carved from them and the spaces that they have not yet found. The members, after all,
are also in negotiation and for now, this is home for Onofria.
Indeed, as seen in both stories, friendship contributes a great deal in how individuals
transform themselves and their identities. These stories offer different perspectives on how
friendships can become spaces where the identity of the migrant is negotiated – one through a
symbolic madness and the other through the pressures of being part of a gang.

Love as A Site of Negotiation: Two Displacements

Ritchie, the main character and narrator of the story The Paperback Dreams and Other
Realities epitomizes a Filipino whose sole aspiration in life is to go to America in pursuit of
greener pastures. A self-confessed homosexual, went to America on a business visa with his
American partner, Brian. His first lover, however, was Mitchell, a blue eyed American from
Chicago whom he met in a bar in Olongapo and who initiated him to the finer things in life.
The relationship lasted for three days; Mitchell left without a word and trace. This
abandonment becomes his impetus to migrate to America and his life has evolved into an
eternal chasing of the “phantoms of that long, lost love.” In America, Ritchie was able to live
the Filipinos’ American dream: financial success, big houses, fast car, and thriving
businesses. Added to this is this freedom to show and exercise his homosexuality and his
search for identity and place is how to be a Filipino gay in America. He finds it doubly hard
because according to him “not only because we have to fight for our place in the American
dream, but also in the gay American dream.” Life for the Filipino homosexual in America
subsisted along the fringes of society, still an underground subculture despite being a liberal
society. Being an immigrant contributes to this sense of seclusion. The Filipino migrant, like
Ritchie has again become twice discriminated, and more importantly twice displaced.
Unlike Ritchie, the displacement for Teresa in the story Silence is more confined in a
smaller, intimate space. Silence can symbolize a lot of things in this story: oppression of a
husband in a marriage and oppression of Teresa in a workplace. Teresa’s silence too is
symbolic of her acceptance of the naturalness of everything. She is a Filipino woman in
America and she needs to be submissive. It is in her journal where she can speak her thoughts
and she lets this journal speak for her. Silence, after all can never be muted forever.
Richie found solace in another American, Brian. They set up a business together,
selling “bagoong”, the Filipino fish paste to other Filipino migrants. With economic affluence
comes the social influence in the Filipino community. He mothered and nurtured other
Filipinos but when they found out that he had the dreaded AIDS, these Filipinos deserted him,
and he felt that the life that he had dreamt all his life was cut short. But it was Mitchell’s voice
that he keeps hearing: “But at the back of my mind, a voice kept saying, stay, for your dreams,
here they come.” The American dream, as he lived through Mitchell, grounds him, while his

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Filipino community, because of his disease unsettles and displaces him. Such is the
ambivalence.
Love for her husband, who is an American, keeps Teresa tied to a miserable
marriage. The author’s use of minimal conversations and short sentences perfectly captures
the tension within Teresa which starts right at the beginning. The oppression is palpable and
obvious. There is also a clear view of the contrasting, cultural attitudes inside the home and
outside of it. Inside their household, her husband dominates. In the outside, for Teresa,
women seem to take control; the hot tempered Vietnamese lady, the Korean laundromat
owner and the Indian Clothing store proprietress all find her silence odd. According to the
Indian, Teresa was “too quiet to be a Filipina. The Indian could well have told her instead that
she was too quiet to be a woman in America. But if Ritchie finds grounds in her phantom
American lover, Teresa grounded herself by listening to her aunt Lydia, the Filipino woman
in America who said to her “Don’t let your husband push you around. Don’t be too good.”
Consequently, her mother who came to visit her urged her to defend herself. Thus, submission
and goodness is equated with being Filipino while being loud, assertive is to be an American
in America. The processes of how she straddles between two contrasting cultural attitudes on
the position of the wife, her negotiation of the two to come to a decision of her marriage, is
Teresa’s experience of third space. Thus, when she wrote in her journal the word
SEPARATION and lets her husband see it, instead of verbally articulating it, Teresa comes on
her own. Quiet but not silenced anymore; silent and still but not muted. Such is the symbolic
negotiation.
What can be surmised from these stories is that identity is as fluid as the human
emotions that shape it. Love and romance, or a lack thereof, can change people. The migrants
in these stories, whether American-born or first generation, experience the third space as they
negotiate their identity along two cultures that have different notions of love, marriage and
courtship. Yet, whatever decision they make and no matter how far they adhere to or stray
from either culture, an identity negotiated along romance is not lost but transformed.

The Filipino Migrants in the Community: Negotiating State Policies and

Stereotypes

Political and state policies limit or widens the space of migrants. Bargaining and
negotiating of identity becomes imperative when migrants are confronted by state policies.
Such is the case of the two Filipino women who approached a Filipino “o.t.” , the old timers:
old Filipino men who with an American citizenship, men who are often lonely and nostalgic
for the Philippines. Monica, one of the two women, had an expired tourist visa and Antonieta,
her sister-in-law suggested the most practical solution: marry an “o.t.”. Thus, is the premise of
the story of Alipio, an “o.t.” who was approached by these women. With much delicacy,
Antonieta was able to steer the conversation to Seniang, Alipio’s late wife whom the readers
learn also married Alipio for the same reason.

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Nostalgia for the idealized home back in the Philippines pervades the story. The
conversational anecdote that preludes the story reveals how these old timers in America feel
loneliness and longing for the Islands. “The walls, they cover with Philippine things. They are
always showing albums to you. Some of them even got the map of the Philippine embroidered
somewhere.” Alipio is undoubtedly one of these old timers. Simply by hearing the sound of
the waves makes him reminisce. “Across the water is the Philippines, I always say Seniang,
we’re not far from home.” His loneliness is apparent. Thus, when he invited the women to
come again and visit him, it is an indirect admission that he agrees to the marriage. It is the
nostalgia and the loneliness that make him agree. He is powerless and powerful at the same
time. His choices have become limited because of old age and vulnerability when it comes to
relationship, yet his legal status has given him power to ground and stabilize Monica –a
wandering Filipina who is desperate to marry for fear of ridicule and rejection if ever she goes
back to the Philippines. Both are lost, in a figurative sense, but they have found each other, in
a literal sense, making the negotiation necessary. Alipio negotiates his legal status of being
“American” for fear of loneliness while Monica negotiates her values as a Filipino woman,
entering into a loveless marriage that would legalize her status. The policies are redefined and
in the process, identities are negotiated.
Myrna’s story in The Balikbayan represents a most common profile of a Filipino
migrant to America. Myrna is a private teacher back in the Philippines but works as a
domestic worker in America. For three years she has saved and waited with much anticipation
her homecoming to the Philippines. Like a true bloodied balikbayan or returnee, she shops for
souvenirs: the quintessential American chocolates and other goods for all the relatives in the
Philippines. She hesitates with the Doc Martens; it was just too expensive for her, equivalent
to a two-day overtime. Nonetheless, she buys it and suffers the condescending manner of the
salesgirl. Myrna is a representation of a typical migrant in America: devalued, commodified
( she is a poster girl for what makes a great househelp of her American employer) and in the
process displaced. Back in the Philippines, she is a symbol of success, a far cry from her
situation in America. Amidst the issues that surround Myrna’s presence in America, it is
apparent that she is unhappy- every morning she has to persuade herself to work. With her
balikbayan trip fast approaching, she is unsure of how to present herself to her family of
whom she is the breadwinner. Thus, she comforts herself with the thoughts of having a lauded
welcome at the airport by her family who she imagines would be impressed by her
Americanized ways. In either spaces and in either communities, she bargains her social status.
The perceptions of the two communities cannot be ignored as she makes sense of her identity.
Devalued as a professional because of her being a Filipino and valued as a commodity
precisely because she is a Filipino in America, Myrna is in a third space and to straddle this is
to negotiate her identity.
The analyses above explicate how Filipino migrants in America find their third
spaces and in the process negotiate their identity. These moments become evident when the
migrants experience conflicts in how they deal with their family, their romantic relationships,
the community and friendships. It is in these domains spaces where ambivalence,

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uncertainties and nostalgia can be plucked out and studied and where Filipino migrants
exhibit the ever changing nature of identity.
Who are then the Filipinos in America as reflected in these short stories? They are
the men and women who long for the idealized home, who are in between two cultures, who
attempt to reclaim the past no matter how painful it can be and who feel the pain and
happiness of straddling two worlds. The same can be said of the other migrants in the world
and such, the Filipino migrant is universal when it comes to these experiences.

Conclusions

This study echoes the observation of Campomanes (1992) when he writes: “I see an
obsessive search for identity that marks Philippine literature in the colonial language.” Suffice
to say, Filipino identity has always been a cause for debate due to the hodgepodge of foreign
influences through colonization in the past and globalization at present. Consequently, that
search for identity is brought to new heights in migration.
In this study, the concept third space has been observed as one of the experiences
that characterize migration. Third space as defined by Homi Bhabha is the in-between space,
a space for negotiation where new subject positions emerge. It is in the third space where the
migrant’s identity is negotiated. The specific migration experience that was studied is that of
Filipinos in America as reflected in the selected literature. The migrant Filipino characters in
these stories have been seen to exhibit the third space. Because identity is socially
constructed, human relations play key roles in shaping identity. Family, friendships, romantic
relationships and relationship with the community are deemed to hold the most sway over the
formation of the migrant’s identity. Thus, this study undertook the task of finding the third
space within these social areas.
This study has observed and analyzed a body of writing that shows the experiences
of Filipino migrants in America, embodying the clash of two essentialized cultures. In the
Cultural Studies approach, literature is a reflection of the culture of a specific group of people.
The stories that were studied in this paper thusly reflect the cultural differences between the
migrant and America, and the negotiation between the two which transpires within the
migrant in the search for identity.
The simultaneous task of this paper is to characterize the selected short stories,
samples of writing by Filipinos in America, by its shared themes of exile, hybridity,
alienation, otherness, and displacement—themes that interweave and are embedded within the
third space experience. This body of writing, produced by the dynamics of migration and the
social forces of globalization, can now be called Philippine Migration literature.
Aside from its purpose of contributing to the exploratory discourse of migration
literature, it also seeks to contribute a supplementary perspective in the discourse of
Philippine literature written by Filipinos in America by way of its focus of the third space in
the migration experience of Filipinos. In a way, the study also finds itself to be a response to

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Campomanes and Gonzalez’s (1997) call for “a literature of self-appraisal” for the emerging
trends and voices in contemporary Philippine literature.

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