Alison Marshall is a wise ethnographer. She is keenly aware of her own positionality as both non-Filipino and a researcher interacting with her participants. She opens the book with a scene from Philippine Heritage Week in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in which the honorary consul general to the Philippines exhorts attendees not to reduce Filipino culture to food and dances. Marshall positions her book as a response to this challenge, and she delivers. She observes that literature from religious studies is frequently not in dialogue with academic literature on ethnicity and race, while literature on Filipino history is frequently not engaged with religion. Marshall reflects on conversations with her own colleagues in religious studies who said that she would have nothing to study, because Filipinos are “just Christians” (13). Marshall is self-aware, and she knows that what appears mundane to some reveals just as much about the beholder as the object of their gaze.
Similarly, Marshall is able to reflect on nuances of representation. Some Filipino-Canadians, she observes, are willing to settle for being labeled by stereotypes for various reasons: some are concerned with protecting the immigration process for relatives, some are concerned with fitting in and the ethos of pakikisama, sociability (17). By contrast, others actively seek to change the image of Filipino-Canadians. Marshall also pays attention to society’s attitudes toward this community, writing, for example, that Filipino food is often popular because it is not too “foreign” for Canadians (18). The author makes excellent use of her personal interviews in gathering this kind of information about esoteric and exoteric perceptions of Filipino-Canadians.
Chapter 1 offers an overview of religion in both the Philippines and among Filipino-Canadians in Manitoba. The vast majority of Marshall’s interviewees are Christian, with nearly a 4:1 ration of Catholics to Protestants (10-11). Marshall carefully notes who has remained in the same faith for their whole lives versus who has converted or changed forms of Christianity. Her findings align with those of other scholars of diaspora studies, in that where religion may be taken for granted in the home country, its significance often changes after immigration as a means of fellowship (24). Marshall observes that the history of colonialism in the Philippines has affected the way in which Filipinos adjust to Canadian life, but she attributes the resilience of her interviewees to a connection with “something larger than themselves,” through ancestors and the homeland in the Philippines. It is bayanihan, or community spirit, which is the main thematic thread running through the book (7).
Chapter 2 discusses the history of Filipino migration to Canada, specifically focusing on the province of Manitoba. Marshall notes that discrimination against Filipinos has taken on different guises over time (75). When the Philippines were taken over by the U.S. at the turn of the century, the first wave of Filipino migrants, mostly men, came to North America to fill laborer jobs. “Asians” were broadly stereotyped as being non-Christian, though the Philippines had been predominantly Catholic for hundreds of years (55). Anti-Asian immigration, including an outright ban on Asian immigrants in 1923, kept numbers of Filipino immigrants both low and predominantly male in Canada (62). Due to limited career opportunities, Filipinos were also stereotyped as being ideal servants, a theme that crops up throughout the book.
Chapters 3 and 4 delve into specific Manitoban cities: Winnipeg and Brandon. While Marshall weaves her ethnographic interviews throughout the book, in these two chapters, she focuses on specific individuals to portray the diversity of Filipino-Canadians. Some of Marshall’s interviewees professed belief in anting-anting, or religious objects; for example, one disillusioned collaborator asked, “Where were [God’s blessings] when the Japanese were in the Philippines?” (104). Physical objects including anting-anting or statues of Santo Niño (the child Jesus) can serve as physical ties to life in the Philippines as well as spiritual tools.
In chapter 5, Marshall argues convincingly that “Food feeds the bayanihan spirit that binds the community” (116). She describes restaurants especially as recreating the familiarity of home spaces in the Philippines. Religious symbols and statues of Santo Niño were displayed to indicate segurista (the assurance of God) in the venues where Marshall carried out her fieldwork (114-115). She notes that images of the Buddha are sometimes placed in establishments owned by Catholics toward this end.
Chapter 6 addresses Filipino-Canadian Protestants. Marshall notes that Christianity is part of the colonialist legacy in the Philippines which has aided Filipino assimilation in Canada. As with her Catholic collaborators, Marshall finds that the experience of being Protestant and Filipino differs markedly depending on population size. Winnipeg, for example, has a population so large that Filipino-Canadians are able to form sub-communities based on dialect and hometown.
Chapter 7 discusses Filipino-Canadian social organizations. These may be formed around occupation, faith, or regions of origin in the Philippines. Several groups, including a religious movement, are inspired by Dr. José Rizal, a symbol for Filipinos in diaspora. Rizal was a Western-educated doctor who advocated for rights of Filipinos under Spanish colonial rule. His murder by the Spanish inspired a revolution. Most of the social organizations discussed by Marshall in this chapter are male-only, though there have been some women’s auxiliary groups founded in the last fifty years or so (156).
Chapter 8 is about clergy in the churches Marshall studied, but she also alludes more broadly to the function of religion for Filipino-Canadians by including an interviewee who is nonreligious. The author uses this chapter to discuss how the context of life in Canada changes religious practice from the Philippines. Community structures, schedules, and technology are all different from life in the Philippines, affecting how people connect with one another.
Chapter 9 addresses smaller Filipino communities scattered throughout Manitoba beyond major urban centers, focusing on Neepawa. Here, informal, but regular, gatherings are sites for bayanihan, including efforts to welcome new immigrants. Marshall observes that racism is more visible here, since the Filipino-Canadian community is small, including gossip about them from outsiders and racist graffiti. As a result, the Filipino community is close-knit and self-protective.
One criticism I would make of this work is that I wish there were a deeper discussion of gender in religious practices. Why, for example, are organizations such as the Knights of Rizal predominantly male? Do these organizations fill a social role that could not otherwise be achieved for men in Filipino-Canadian communities? Similarly, Marshall shows the gendered aspects of religious ritual, such as home altar spaces being built by women, but she does not elaborate further. I believe there are further dimensions to the religious practices described by Marshall that could be deepened through gender-studies literature.
This book is very much in keeping with what folklorists will recognize as the study of religion in everyday life, including syncretism and culturally specific traditions. In addition to scholars of vernacular religion, I would recommend this book to any who study Southeast Asian cultural communities, diasporic communities (especially in Canada), material culture (especially of a religious nature), and theories of heritage and ethnicity.
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[Review length: 1162 words • Review posted on April 19, 2019]