Mina Roces' favorite books on Filipino migration from the perspective of migrants themselves

I recommend this book because it is a no-holds-barred narrative of what it is like to be a male agricultural laborer in 1920s racially segregated America.

It is a gritty tale of how a mostly male migrant population survived racial discrimination and economic hardship, living in the labor camps and working for a dollar a day. It shows how these men found ways to cope and acquire dignity even while experiencing loneliness since it was difficult to find brides (due to anti-miscegenation laws). From dressing up in $100 tailor-made suits and smoking cigars to paying ten cents a dance at taxi dance halls to gambling, prostitution, and labor activism, it tells the story of the first generation of migrant laborers in the United States.

The author died of tuberculosis in 1956.

I recommend this book because it is a rare diary of a 12-14-year-old young girl living in the sugar plantations of Hawaii in the 1920s. As one of the few females in the predominantly Filipino male population in racially segregated America, which had anti-miscegenation laws, she confides that she has many suitors of men in their 20s.

She wrote: ‘Gosh, and I am only 12 years old—and already somebody is telling me about love’ (p. 45). I was surprised to read Angela discovers her mother had a lover, although this attests to women’s power because they are a minority. But I was horrified to read Angela’s very detailed account of the domestic violence her father inflicts on her mother when he catches the lovers.

This is an autobiography of Peter Jamero, who is a second generation Filipino American capturing what life was like growing up in a Filipino American farmworkers camp in California in the 1940s.

I was particularly struck by his comment “before I went to school my world consisted of Filipinos. Everyone else was a foreigner “ (p. 19) since he did not speak English until he went to grade school. I was moved when he said: “I looked at my image in the mirror and tried to wash my brown color away. But no matter how hard I scrubbed, the color was still there.” (p. 91).

He joins the US Navy and the Civil Rights Movement. I interviewed him in 2012, and he passed away in 2024 at the age of 94.

The standing men are the Filipino undocumented migrants to Japan who work as construction workers on a day-to-day basis. They stand on the Kotobuki sidewalk hoping to get selected by a sacho to get a job for the day. 

The book is an in-depth look at their lives—how the men who are considered the underclass in the host country struggle, find love (some of them have second families in Japan), experience leisure, and fulfill masculine ideals of breadwinner in a foreign country.

It is a rare glimpse at the life of an undocumented migrant. This book can be read with Rey Ventura’s Underground in Japan (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992).

This book is a collection of many life stories of Filipino migrant domestic workers, mostly in Singapore. Since the authors of the accounts use pseudonyms, they are all insightful revelations of how these women cope with the issues of loneliness and separation from families.

The most interesting revelation is that some of these women have affairs (which they call ‘one day stands’ since they only have a day off and not the whole 24 hours) with South Asian men. I was surprised by this radical act—radical because Filipino constructions of the feminine idealise the ‘chaste wife’, and while men’s infidelity is tolerated in the homeland, women’s infidelity is not.

Finally, the book also testifies to these migrants’ strength, hard work, courage, and survival skills.