
New Books in Asian American Studies Dawn B. Mabalon, “Little Manila is in the Heart” (Duke UP, 2013)
Read most any account of early Filipino America, and you’re likely to hear a story of roaming migrant bachelors who rarely settled. Yet if this was always the case, then how did third and forth generation Filipino/a Americans appear in the United States? In her sharply focused and elegantly written new book, Little Manila is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (Duke University Press, 2013), Dawn B. Mabalon narrates a fifty year history of the Filipina/o settlement in Stockton, California’s Little Manila, the largest Filipino/a settlement in its time. In focusing on the Filipina women and the role of religion, family, and community, Mabalon’s study offers new and diverse conceptions of the early Filipino/a migrant. Her book reveals a space where sedentary Filipina/os started families, churches, unions and businesses, and where migratory Filipina/os came to relax, meet old friends, dance and gamble. Acting as a center of gravity for the emerging immigrant community, Stockton’s Little Manila, over the decades, became the capitol of Filipina/o America.
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