Bayan Scholars Reflect on History & Heritage

October is Filipino American History Month, a commemoration instituted in 1991 by the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) to preserve, disseminate, and celebrate the history of Filipinos and Filipinas in the United States. To mark the event, we spent time in our English class considering what we know about our experiences in the USA. 

To get started, we used our writer’s notebook to generate and organize our ideas. The following questions focused our thinking:

• What do you think you know about Filipina/Filipino American history? How did you acquire that knowledge? 
• What's the difference between "history" and "heritage"?

Agbayani Village + CSU Bakersfield Trip

December 7th and 8th, Bayan Scholars Learning Community took a Cultural Immersion and Transfer University Exposure tour. The trip provided cultural insight and increased awareness and transfer possibilities outside of our local universities.

Reclaiming History: Filipino American History Month

October is Filipino American History Month, established in on 1987 by the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS). To commemorate this month, Bayan Scholars attended a film screening of Marissa Aroy’s documentary Delano Manongs that features the often hidden history of FIlipino farm workers and their contribution to the Farm Workers movement. 

Local high school counselor Reynilla Calderon-Magbuhat presented her history workshop “Know History, Know Self”. Both events were co-sponsored by Southwestern College's Filipino Student Organization Pagkakaisa, Bayan Student Organization, and Southwestern College’s Office of Student Equity Programs and Services. 

We also read several chapters from Filipino American Psychology, a text book by Professor Kevin Nadal. We paid special attention to those sections pertaining to cultural values and to how history can condition identity. 

For practically every scholar in Bayan, this month was they spent so much time in an academic setting focused on Filipino experiences. Indeed, it was most Bayan Scholars’ initial exposure to Filipino American history and culture as topic worthy scholarly attention.

This blog collects a sampling of several Bayan scholars’ reflections below, their first time considering Filipino American history. These young adults are only now being introduced to the legacy and heritage of Filipinos in American. We invite you to read these entries with that in mind. And we welcome your comment below should you wish.

To enlarge individual entries, hover your cursor over the upper right hand corner of the post. Then click on “enlarge”.