by Gina K. Velasco
University of Illinois Press, 2020
eISBN: 978-0-252-05235-4 | Cloth: 978-0-252-04347-5 | Paper: 978-0-252-08537-6
Library of Congress Classification HQ1757.V43 2020
Dewey Decimal Classification 305.409599

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Contemporary popular culture stereotypes Filipina women as sex workers, domestic laborers, mail order brides, and caregivers. These figures embody the gendered and sexual politics of representing the Philippine nation in the Filipina/o diaspora. Gina K. Velasco explores the tensions within Filipina/o American cultural production between feminist and queer critiques of the nation and popular nationalism as a form of resistance to neoimperialism and globalization.
 
Using a queer diasporic analysis, Velasco examines the politics of nationalism within Filipina/o American cultural production  to consider an essential question: can a queer and feminist imagining of the diaspora reconcile with gendered tropes of the Philippine nation? Integrating a transnational feminist analysis of globalized gendered labor with a consideration of queer cultural politics, Velasco envisions forms of feminist and queer diasporic belonging, while simultaneously foregrounding nationalist movements as vital instruments of struggle.