Reviews for “Vanishing Filipino Americans: The Bridge Generation”
“I was truly touched and could relate when some respondents recalled painful discrimination experienced as children and teenagers. Bridge Generation members were caught between two worlds – the America of our birth and the memories of the Philippines our parents left behind. We often did not feel accepted in either one – so we created our own Filipino American world.
Yes, even young Pinays and Pinoys from Seattle spoke “z” or “g” languages and danced “off beat” to music our parents could not understand. We reached out to all brown peers without asking which dialect their parents spoke because we needed each other. We were an invisible group to most Americans and often overlooked by relatively new immigrants from the Philippines. With the passage of time – our numbers are fast disappearing. Your book will finally allow our unique stories to be told and shared.”
– Dorothy Cordova, Executive Director
Filipino American National Historical Society
“Peter Jamero’s Vanishing Filipino Americans: The Bridge Generation is a scholarly but accessible book detailing the often hardscrabble lives of those children – born before World War II – of the famed ‘manong generation.’ Jamero relies not just on secondary sources, but also on interviews of the surviving Bridge members – and their words in particular, as well as the author’s clear narrative, help paint a vivid picture of lives lived on the farms near Stockton and Vallejo and in the segregated neighborhoods of San Francisco, Seattle and what were then the other centers of Pinoy life. Jamero deserves credit for writing an excellent book. It is a valuable addition to the belated and still evolving process of recording the true depth, the full richness and vibrancy, of Filipino American history.”
– Peter Bacho, author of Cebu and Dark Blue Suit
“It is a wonderful resource for so many audiences—individuals interested in personal history, scholars in American Studies, historians, social scientists, policy analysts, and Filipino Americans themselves.
On a conceptual level it illuminates a critical cohort of Filipinos Americans—the children of the pioneers. A crucial intellectual omission in Filipino American Studies is acknowledging and documenting the existence, growth, and success of the bridge generation. Without this second generation, the Filipino American population would have been dormant; the fields of Asian American Studies and Filipino American Studies would not exist.
Another important conceptual point made in understanding the later socio-economic well-being of Filipino Americans, compared to other racial and ethnic minority groups, is this population’s much lower starting socio-economic status and structural delay in family formation.
On a methodological level, detailed information is provided on specific individuals which is more difficult as this cohort ages and becomes more geographically dispersed. The narrative cites historical and social science literature as appropriate.
For scholars and policy analysts interested in comparative analysis, this book provides data for institutional and cultural similarities and differences of the Filipino American bridge generation with other ethnic Americans. As importantly it respects and demonstrates the multiple ways of integrating various heritages.
For the bridge generation and their descendants, this book is part of the growing literature to understand racial and ethnic minorities who were born and grew up in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, considered second class citizens, yet achieved against the odds with institutional and community support. The baby boomers and post 1964 immigrants are indebted to them.
Thank you for this thoughtful and long needed eye-witness account, Pete.”
– Juanita Tamayo Lott, author of
Asian Americans: From Racial Category to Multiple Identities and Common
Destiny: Filipino American Generations