Kuya Book 01 – Coming Full Circle by Leny Strobel / Overview & Thoughts

New project! This is the first experiment of exploring books on the podcast. I’ll be giving an overview Leny Strobel’s Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino Americans. This is a pivotal book in FilAm literature and it has a lot of wisdom and lessons within it. It’s an informal overview, with specific quotes thrown in to highlight the main takeaways.

Coming Full Circle is a project of decolonization based off interviews with post-1965 Filipino Americans . Through a process that Strobel calls “fishing for knowledge” through books and interviews, she organizes themes of decolonization under the categories of Naming, Reflection, and Action. This framework is greatly influenced by Paulo Friere and his idea that oppressed peoples need to name the source of their oppression before they can enact change upon it. 11 generative themes of decolonization are presented, alongside a literature review of relevant material and research.

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Subscribe on iTunesSubscribe on YouTubeListen on Spotify Listed below are direct quotes from the book. Please support by buying a copy!

Chapter 1

Fishing: A Filipino Woman’s Way of Constructing Knowledge

• “When I arrived in the U.S. in 1983 I didn’t know that it would be the end of the “little brown sister” era of my life. Like many Filipinos who have imbibed Hollywood images of the “good life,” I had dreamt of coming to live in the white man’s land. My assumptions about America were shaped by a colonial education that glorified everything white and American. I mastered English, the medium of this education, while the two Filipino languages I spoke, Tagalog and Pampango, and their accents were quickly traded in, hoping that I may win the master’s approval.”

“What is the relationship between imperialism and missionary work? Didn’t missionaries bring their own western cultural baggage to the people they “ministered” to?

“Freire (1970) wrote that by preaching sin and hell, churches appeal to the fatalistic and frightened consciousness of the oppressed. The promise of heaven becomes a relief for their existential fatigue. ”

“The conspiracy of silence amongst the oppressed, for fear of being blamed if we ever admitted failure or discrimination in America – the land of opportunity, continues to be perpetuated to this day as many immigrant Filipinos in the U.S. continue to regale their loved ones in the Philippines with stories of success and affluence while keeping quiet about their lack of sense of belonging and marginalization in this country.”

“individual self-actualization is not enough if it does not translate into action. Facing the fear and shame of oppression requires that we build communities of resistance” (referencing Thich Nhat Hanh in bell hooks, 1993)

“I must look deep within the collective memory of our cultural strength and indigenous imagination for the answers.”

“The healing of the self means the healing of the family”

“Kabilang na rito ang ibang Pilipino na hindi pa nakakaahon sa kanilang isipang kolonyal, na patuloy pa ring naniniwala na ang kanilang kultura ay hamak at walang pag-asang umunlad at magbago”

“Sometimes, it is other Filipinos who challenge this identity, especially those who have not yet escaped their colonized consciousness, and therefore continue to believe that Filipinos come from an impoverished culture, without hope or progress or change”

“May the sun split my body into halves and may my womenfolk heap their hatred on me should I ever be a friend of the Castillian!” – said the tribal king of Macabebe to Legazpi, the Spanish governor, hundreds of years ago”

“For a long time, I suffered from cultural amnesia. I was unconscious about my cultural identity. I thought I belonged to a tribe called “little brown sisters” ruled by the “big white masters.” The masters gave me their tongue, their ideas, their music, art forms, and their religion. They said the world I come from was dark, full of evil spirits, and they had brought the light with them to chase the ghosts away. With this light, they also chased away my memories. They said they had a divine right to conquer us and make us more human by cleaning up our slate and write new thoughts on it. And so without memories, I forgot who I was. I became a good colonial child. I became well-mannered, genteel, and civilized”

“ I sang about snow and cornfields and chestnuts roasting on the open fire without ever having seen snow, cornfields, or chestnuts.”

“To return home is to return to the ancient, to our anitos and our ancestors, to folklore and oral traditions which contain the indigeneous wisdom of my people”

“They say we are a people who lived in a convent for 300 years and 50 years in Hollywood. Perhaps on the outside, it seems so. But underneath this veneer, the ancient spirits never died, the anitos never slept. We are a people that has managed to survive the harsh consequences of our enslavement. Perhaps we owe it to the strength of our indigenous imagination, which even in its repression manages to show its colorful side from time to time.”

“How can the colonizer give that which he doesn’t have? He is not free. He is not whole. For if he was, then he would not have needed to destroy others who were not like him”

“This is what decolonization taught me: the present is all I have. Yes, I understand the past, I have grieved over it, forgave it, and this moment, the present – is a gift from the past. It is perfect just as it is. There is nothing I could do about yesterday and nothing I can do about tomorrow. Today is all I have.”

“Yet no sooner have I declared this love for my Filipino self that I am once again criticized for being nostalgic or romantic about a past that can never be returned to/recovered/reclaimed. I am accused of essentializing my ethnic identity and I am told that in the postmodern global era, the definition of culture and ethnic identity are empty spaces incapable of holding up to any notion of authenticity. I am told that when I talk about the healing of traumatic memory, of reclaiming the Filipino cultural self that was repressed and denied, that I am appealing to some framework that pathologizes the very identity that I want to liberate”

Chapter 2

A historical overview and study.

“Through the critical analysis of historical events, in this case, the colonization of the Philippines, and the interconnectedness of these events to the lived experience and their personal and social consequences to Filipino Americans, a framework emerges that could serve as a model for de-centering colonial mentality.”

“Community empowerment and political empowerment are critically linked in strengthening Filipino American identity. Decolonization, as consciousness-raising, facilitates empowerment at the personal level”

“Filipino Americans must be able to identify their source of agency, which lies in their recovery of indigenous knowledge and finding therein symbolic meaning that will be useful for decolonization. These Filipino indigenous knowledge and cultural values, which were repressed and submerged under colonization, need to be reclaimed, re-imagined, or re-created in order to recover a strong sense of Filipino identity.” (to emerge from the culture of silence)

“This study, ultimately, is about reconciliation and healing. It is about coming full circle, and finding a home and a voice of one’s own”

“The classical assimilation model of immigration history is no longer sufficient to understand Filipino immigration”

“the educational system, together with American popular culture, was instrumental in forming a generation of middle-class, urban, and educated Filipinos whose values were very much influenced by the colonial educational system and American popular culture”

“The mostly single Filipino male population was subjected to discrimination and were labeled as “immoral and a threat to society” because they were dating and marrying white women. This false and generalized representation of the Filipino male as “immoral and a threat to society,”

“After the Philippine American War, many of the American soldiers who used to sing “educate them with a Krag” (the standard army rifle of that day) assumed the role of teachers. William Howard Taft believed that the best way to “pacify” the Filipino was to “ educate” him”

“The Americanization of educational institutions in the Philippines produced the local elite and alienated the masses”

“Nemesio Prudente, calls the educational system “irrelevant because of its colonial nature which serves neocolonial interest and does not coordinate with the economy and manpower requirements of the Philippines”

“The educational institutions during this period became an instrument of instilling the idea that American ideas, culture, and educational system were superior to the cultural and educational legacies of Spanish colonization and the indigenous Filipino culture”

“One could also read Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro (1933) and draw parallels between the Filipino experience and African American educational experience at an earlier period.”

“When oppressed people learn to unravel and discover the ‘whys’ in th