Towards Filipino Self-Determination
by E. San Juan, Jr.
SUNY Press
Copyright 2009

Granted formal independence in 1946, the Philippines serves as a battleground between the neoliberal project of capitalist globalization and the enduring aspiration of Filipinos for national self-determination. More than ten million Filipino workers—over one-tenth of the country’s total population—work as contract workers in all parts of the world. How did this “model” colony of the United States devolve into an impoverished, war-torn neocolonial hinterland, a provider of cheap labor and raw materials for the rest of the world? By focusing on the work of significant Filipino intellectuals and activists, including Carlos Bulosan and Philip Vera Cruz, as well as the issues of gender and language for workers in the United States, San Juan provides a historical-materialist reading of social practices, discourses, and institutions that explain the contradictions characterizing Filipino life in both the United States and in the Philippines.

(Excerpt from Publisher's Release)

OOV Bookshelf 2009

DECEMBER 2009 FEATURE Filipino Pride by Dale Dennis David, Julie Tañada, Edna Co, Lucio Pitlo III, Ones Cuyco, Lloyd Bautista, Rudy Brul Ating Kalagayan: The Social and Economic Profile of U.S. Filipinios by Peter Chua The Day the Dancers Stayed: Performing in the Filipino/American Diaspora by Theodore Gonzalves Nota Bene Eiswein by Eileen R. Tabios Footnotes To Algebra: Uncollected Poems 1995-2009 by Eileen R. Tabios Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults edited by Cecilia Brainard Towards Filipino Self-Determination by E. San Juan, Jr. AUGUST 2009 FEATURE Butete: The Story of a Remarkable Fish / The Song of Tampopo by Asela Hazel Z. Gundaya Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose Carillo America's Second-Class Veterans by Rick Rocamora and Rene P. Ciria-Cruz Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman The Long Lost Startle Poems by Joel Toledo