he Postcolonial Meets the “Ethnic” United States

The study of Filipino American literature offers a place for the frames of
postcolonial discourse and the literary efforts of the “hypenated” or
“ethnic” American to converge. This intersection offers a challenge to the
putative need to separate these endeavors on the basis of the United
States’s seemingly shaky status as a colonial power (prior to the
American occupation, the Philippines spent three centuries under
Spanish rule). American annexation of the Philippines occurred after two
separate wars: the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Filipino-
American War (1899-1902). U.S colonial rule of the archipelago was
loosened during the Commonwealth Period of 1935-1946, a period after
which the Philippines gained its independence. In addition to that, the
issues of colonization become complicated in light of the fact that the
Philippines experienced decades of enforced “free trade” with the United
States up to and even after this independence. Such a fact raises all sorts
of useful questions about the effects of neocolonialism, and also the
latent “colonialism” of alienation and discrimination experienced by
some immigrants (see Transnationalism and Globalism, Representation).