Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles's Little Manila: Working-Class Filipinos and Popular Culture, 1920s-1950s

by Linda España-Maram

In this new work, Linda España-Maram analyzes the politics of popular culture in the lives of Filipino laborers in Los Angeles's Little Manila, from the 1920s to the 1940s. The Filipinos' participation in leisure activities, including the thrills of Chinatown's gambling dens, boxing matches, and the sensual pleasures of dancing with white women in taxi dance halls sent legislators, reformers, and police forces scurrying to contain public displays of Filipino virility. But as España-Maram argues, Filipino workers, by flaunting "improper" behavior, established niches of autonomy where they could defy racist attitudes and shape an immigrant identity based on youth, ethnicity, and notions of heterosexual masculinity within the confines of a working class.

España-Maram takes this history one step further by examining the relationships among Filipinos and other Angelenos of color, including the Chinese, Mexican Americans, and African Americans. Drawing on oral histories and previously untapped archival records, España-Maram provides an innovative and engaging perspective on Filipino immigrant experiences.

Genres: Grad School, History, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2006

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contends that Filipino Americans engaged popular culture and spaces of recreation from the 1920s to 1940s to carve out spaces of autonomy to proclaim their masculine identities. The book focuses on Los Angeles Urban areas rather than the rural focus of other works on Filipino Americans. It looks at gambling houses, boxing, and taxi hall dances rather than the work place, unions, or ethnic organizations seeing these recreational spheres as places where the multi-faceted identities of Filipinos could be forged. These sites are also analyzed as places of interethnic tensions. Gambling is interrogated for its role as an alternative economy. Boxing was seen as a sphere where working class and middle class Filipinos could mingle. The final chapters examine Filipino zoot suiters in the context of World War II, and Filipino army regiments who served in the Phillipines. The book is well researched.
I would recommend it for those interested in Filipino American experiences, and the uses of public space for identity formation.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another little gem. I'm so glad I picked it up. You're probably wondering why I'm reading all of this Filipino American histories? Well, I'm writing a paper right now on American Son and America is in the Heart. It's obviously no coinkidink that Roley chose to call his book "American" Son and it provides a strange homage and re-writing on the Filipino American migrant story.

In any case, so I'm reading these background histories and it's fascinating to find out so much about Filipino Americans. For instance, this book reveals how there were a number of Filipino American scholars working out of USC during the 1930s and that Filipino Americans living in Los Angeles had to establish interethnic ties in order to more fully engage spaces of "masculinity" such as Chinatown gambling "dens" among other such spaces.

[Cindi Leiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book if you are interested in the working-class Filipinos. I got interested in it because I had never considered their place in the history of the United States. I found the information here to be quite interesting. Enough to inform me of their various situations. Took awhile to read because it is very fact heavy and nonfiction is always a slower read for me.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely informative and interesting. I've been off and on researching the lives of manongs in California from the 1920s-1940s for various projects, and this was a perfect addition to my readings of novels and stories from or about the period and studies that focus more on the political/economic side of things. I'm interested in the leisure and personal lives of manongs, so this filled in exactly what I was missing in my research.