Pinay Power. Archived Feature. Philippine News.

Archive Feature File. Philippine News.

FilAm women make case for greater equality
Allen Gaborro, Mar 01, 2006
TITLE: “Pinay Power”: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience”
EDITED BY: Melinda L. de Jesus
PUBLISHER: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2005)(New York, London)
PAGES: 402
NONFICTION PAPERBACK (collection of essays)

The term “Feminism” denotes an idea or movement that promotes women’s rights and resists the political, social, and economic domination of the male gender. One of the postcolonial offshoots of the Feminist vision is “Peminism” which, according to Arizona State University Professor Melinda L. de Jesus, “demarcates the space for Filipina American struggles against the cultural nationalist, patriarchical narratives that seek to squash our collective voice in the name of ‘ethnic solidarity.’”

De Jesus writes this in the introduction of “Pinay Power: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience,” an audacious collection of “peminist” cultural criticism essays that enlightens and empowers Filipina American women as they make their case for greater respect, enfranchisement, and equality.

It is not an easy battle that these intrepid Filipina American women wage, for the historical forces of racism, colonialism, and patriarchy are intractably arrayed against them. But the rearticulation of the Filipina American identity is a fight they are determined to carry on until the fulfillment of their ideals. Failure is not an option for these “peminists” for they have come too far in their quest to talk truth to power, to prove to the society-at-large that there is much more to Filipina Americans than the gratuitous representations that have been ascribed to them.

De Jesus deserves credit for her skillful editing of “Pinay Power.” It must have been a labor of love for De Jesus to manage such a dynamic, diverse, even unwieldy compilation of Filipina American essays. We can imagine the pre-published manuscript of these pieces thrashing uncontrollably in the editor’s hands, refusing to be tied down to any singular focus. But De Jesus has the fortune of having a consistent, predetermined objective that coalesces the essays into a feasible totality. That objective is an attitudinal revolution that will alter the biased perceptions that people have had of Filipina Americans.

Professor Leny Mendoza Strobel of Sonoma State University leads off the “Pinay Power” collection—coming after De Jesus’s introduction—with “A Personal Story: On Becoming a Split Filipina Subject.” Strobel’s essay delivers a message of decolonization for both Filipinas and Filipinos alike. She writes that Filipino(a)s’ “colonized consciousness” has led them like a Pied Piper towards wanting to be like their American masters. In the shadow of that benighted consciousness, being Filipino was simply “not good enough.”

Strobel hopes to turn this colonial perspective on its head by utilizing the process of “indigenization.” That is, to bring Filipinos’ cultural heritage out of obscurity and into the vanguard of their being and experience. As part of the indigenization process, Filipinos will discern the “psychological colonization/marginalization” they have been subjected to. This in turn will enable them to remake their identity in a more nativistic and autonomous framework.

University of Southern Mississippi Professor Linda M. Pierce weighs in with “Not Just My Closet: Exposing Familial, Cultural, and Imperial Skeletons.” Pierce’s work tracks Strobel’s along an unmistakable thread of decolonization. But Pierce draws our attention specifically to Filipina American or Pinays, synonymous terms that mean “being postcolonial—after colonization, but certainly not over colonization.” Pierce writes that Pinays have an unbreakable bond with decolonization, which entails “a constant awareness of ‘Philippine-ness’ in America” and an “awareness of systems of colonial imperialism.” She reminds us however, that many Pinays remained shackled by their colonial mentalities, as evidenced by a prevalent belief among them that “marrying up” is the same as “marrying white.”

In multimedia artist Perla Paredes Daly’s essay, “Creating NewFilipina.com and the Rise of CyberPinays,” she explores the Filipina “cybermyth,” the myth that covers how Filipinas are fictionalized “through commodification, commercialism, and chauvinism” on the Internet in the Western world. Daly is referring to how Filipinas are reified by Western men and profiteers as bar girls, objects of sexual pleasure, and brides of the mail-order variety. Daly’s “Bagong Pinay” or “new Filipina” website is designed to confront this unholy alliance between the Internet and Western males’ insatiable libidos and their Orientalistic sexual fantasizations. By challenging Filipina online stereotypes, “Bagong Pinay” can help build a “composite representation of a multidimensional Filipina image as opposed to the one-dimensional, Filipina cybermyth.”

Melinda L. de Jesus falls back on two emblematic figures to distinguish between the patronizing, “suffering, submissive” image of the Filipina and the prominent, pre-colonial status of Filipina power and authority. De Jesus, together with the other contributors to “Pinay Power,” are attempting to uproot the Filipina from the reserved, ineffectual “Maria Clara” colonial ideal and replant her in the position of the influential “Babaylan,” a female leader and healer/priestess who was widely-deferred to in pre-Hispanic communities.

“Pinay Power” is a valuable addition to what is an expanding assortment of “peministic” works. The book, with its mix of iconoclastic intellectualism and journalistic immediacy, speaks volumes about what it means to be a Filipina, and what Filipina women must overcome in order to claim across-the-board parity with their male counterparts.

ALLEN GABORRO

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