In the early twentieth century - not long after
1898, when the United States claimed the Philippines as
an American colony - Filipinas/os became a vital part of
the agricultural economy of California's fertile San
Joaquin Delta. In downtown Stockton, they created Little
Manila, a vibrant community of hotels, pool halls, dance
halls, restaurants, grocery stores, churches, union
halls, and barbershops. Little Manila was home to the
largest community of Filipinas/os outside of the
Philippines until the neighborhood was decimated by
urban redevelopment in the 1960s. Narrating a history
spanning much of the twentieth century, Dawn Bohulano
Mabalon traces the growth of Stockton's Filipina/o
American community, the birth and eventual destruction
of Little Manila, and recent efforts to remember and
preserve it. Mabalon draws on oral histories,
newspapers, photographs, personal archives, and her own
family's history in Stockton. She reveals how Filipina/o
immigrants created a community and ethnic culture shaped
by their identities as colonial subjects of the United
States, their racialization in Stockton as brown people,
and their collective experiences in the fields and in
the Little Manila neighborhood. In the process, Mabalon
places Filipinas/os at the center of the development of
California agriculture and the urban West.
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