Filipinx feminism and activism, revisited and expanded in ‘Closer to Liberation’

The first time these friends read a piece in which a Filipina American scholar was outlining a framework of feminism and sisterhood from their cultural point of view and experience was a powerful moment. It was 1995 and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales laid out this concept of something she’d termed “pinayism,” combining the for Filipina women and feminism. In the years since, however, the two friends who had connected so strongly to that piece wondered where the follow-up writings were expanding on this thinking.

“That piece was incredibly pivotal and formative for many of us who identify with that form of feminism, who engage in that type of scholarship and community work from our particular identities,” said Amanda Solomon Amorao, one of the co-editors of “Closer to Liberation: Pin[a/x]y Activism in Theory and Practice,” which she edited with DJ Kuttin Kandi and Jen Soriano. (Free s of the editors’ introduction will be available later tonight at professorasa.com.) “Melinda de Jesus, who’s also an incredible professor and pioneer in pinayism, she had published her anthology, ‘Pinay Power’ in the early 2000s when I was a graduate student. Since then, that’s like 15 years, there wasn’t really any extended return or discussion about that framework, about what does Filipina American feminism look like today, given all of these significant, historical changes, both in the United States and in the Philippines.”

So, she and DJ Kuttin Kandi brought in Soriano and called on a number of collaborators to contribute to this latest anthology on Filipinx feminist thought and work. Solomon Amorao and DJ Kuttin Kandi will be part of a reading and discussion of the book from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Shiley Special Events Suite at the Central Library in downtown San Diego.

Solomon Amorao is an associate professor at UC San Diego and director of the university’s Dimensions of Culture program at Thurgood Marshall College, and director of Asian America and Pacific Islander studies. DJ Kuttin Kandi (Candice Custodio-Tan) is executive director of Asian Solidarity Collective, a social justice organization working toward the collective liberation of all communities, and a retired hip-hop DJ, activist, organizer, writer, and artist who’s also an inductee to the 2024 San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame. They took some time to talk about pinayism, their own experiences and identities in relationship to this framework, and how they’d like to see pinay activism evolve. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )

Q: The description of the book mentions revisiting the “pinayism” framework, credited to Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Melinda de Jesus, scholars and activists in ethnic studies and feminist studies. What is “pinayism”?

Kandi: It’s always been intersectional. I think those are the ways in which we’ve always seen pinayism, at least. Back in 1995, when Allyson first wrote [about her theoretical framework on the sisterhood of Filipina/x people, coining the term “pinayism”], it was powerful how she explained it, of our identity and Filipina sisterhood. Then, you bring it to present day and her concept is drawn out even more, which is really beautiful. She does a whole breakdown of solidarity and sisterhood, and what that means; she talks about self-love, struggle, survival, self-determination, and strength. For us, when we break down pinayism, it brings it to the very core of our framework, which is our different identities and their relationship to power, but also our understanding of not just our intersections, but how we talk about solidarity. How do we move with transformation, as well as for movement? We know everything is nonlinear, so we’re constantly growing and we have the ability to sharpen our lenses so that we’re constantly growing and able to transform. There’s a chapter talking about pinayist transformative movements and what does that really mean? It means that we have an openness, the ability and willingness to transform because it’s fluid. Pinayism, from its beginning since it’s been named, has been fluid and it’s always transforming. That means that we, as a people, are constantly transforming, so we must be open to critical connections, as well, acknowledging the importance of making connections and relationships. Part of our deep transformation is being able to connect with people and relationship build.

In general, pinayism is rooted with pinay/Filipino woman, but it’s more than that. Then, Allyson talks about it in her original formulation talks about how pinayism equals pain, plus growth. Then, she talks about the experiences of pinay—the racism, sexism, classism, all of the “isms.” She mentions the pain of what divides us leading to our growth, and in bringing that all together builds a practice of kinship, but if must be revolutionary and expansive. So, beyond representation and visibility, it’s about justice.

Solomon Amorao: When you think of pinayism, it’s really, how do Filipina Americans practice feminism? How are we thinking about empowering Filipina Americans against these multiple intersecting systems of dominance and oppression? What does it look like to particularly resist White supremacy, racism, misogyny, heteronormativity, homophobia, capitalism? How do those really big systems affect Filipinas in the United States, specifically? Then, how do we resist those systems and imagine differently?

So, pinayism, first of all, owes a deep debt to Black feminism, it owes a deep debt to third-world feminism and anti-colonial feminism that come out of, for example, Latin America, that come out of the writing of South Asian feminists. I would say that pinayism has this dual concern and they’re entwined — it’s to really name, undo, and resist domestic racism, domestic misogyny, domestic extractive capitalism, but always within a transnational and diasporic lens. To be Filipina, to be Filipino in the United States, is to really (to use a well-worn metaphor, but it’s well-worn because I think it has resonance) straddle two worlds. It’s to straddle the world of the Philippines and the United States, and those two worlds are deeply connected because of a long history of colonialism and imperialism. So, to practice pinayism is, again, to really think about these intersecting systems of power that shape our daily lives, and how do we resist those intersecting systems of power, both in our local home—in the diaspora, in the United States — but also, always, with an eye toward the Philippines and the larger global context of imperialism and colonialism and capitalism that we see operating today.

Q: Can you briefly talk about what pinay activism is in theory and in practice?

Kandi: In theory, it means many things. It means we must develop solidarity; we’ve got to reject capitalism, anti-imperialism, empire building, reject anti-Black racism, and more than that be about pro-Black liberation. I think we have to challenge ourselves and it demands that we constantly recognize the ways in which our own identities are determined by racism, classism, sexism, and are further systems of marginalization. For a lot of us, we’ve learned a lot of our work wouldn’t have been possible without learning from Black feminism. I think we’ve learned a lot of our own feminism from other women of color, as well. We’ve learned a lot of that, in of decolonization from Indigenous communities, as well. So, we understand that we must honor other communities in learning how to dismantle our own anti-Black racism. I think we are understanding that even as we are our own Filipinx peoples, we are also part of a larger Asian identity, as well, and understanding that we can’t just be about ending anti-Asian racism; we can’t do that if we don’t end oppression against, anti-Black racism, as well.

There’s so many ways that [pinay activism] shows up. The way Filipinx folks show up for each other is our community care, from self-care to collective care, to the way we take care of each other in our communities. Seeing people who have traveled from the Philippines who had to leave home to find a new home because of forced migration, or because of many things that have forced them to leave their home and come to the States or to other countries. Overseas workers who are working in other countries and providing for other families while they still have family back home in the Philippines, you see that time and again, and they’re still taking care of their families. That’s collective care.

Then, you see labor rights in the Philippines, you see that here in the States, in being involved in that work and seeing people who are challenging themselves. There’s a chapter in the book around understanding settler colonialism and being settler colonialists in Hawaii. There’s also understanding how change is constant, and talking about radical imagination, as well. Talking about abolition and how we can dream about abolition. There are so many ways that people in the book have furthered their understanding of what activism looks like today.

Solomon Amorao: When we were talking about that, in theory, we wanted to really open up space for those who are scholars of feminist frameworks, scholars of critical race theory, and how that intersects with feminism, anti-colonial and decolonial feminism, transnational feminism. So, when we said exploring pinay activism in theory, we were really trying to open the space for those who are trying to articulate an intellectual framework of pinayism, particularly those who are tracing the genealogy of pinayism to Black feminist thought, to Marxist thought, to cultural studies, for example, and who were really just trying to explain or explore a system of social analysis. How are people talking about what a feminist framework, particularly grounded in the Filipino American experience, looks like?

Then, of course, in practice is the flip side of that and really thinking about people who are developing their political analysis, political consciousness, understanding of these larger social systems from the ground up because they’re in communities literally doing mutual aid work, really doing work that’s resisting gentrification, for example, misogyny, domestic violence. To do that work, of course, they already need a larger understanding of these systems that they’re resisting and proposing alternatives to.

Q: Are you comfortable sharing a bit about your own lived experience and history, and how that contributes to an intersectional feminist framework, particularly as it relates to the work you discuss in “Closer to Liberation”?

Kandi: In the book, there’s a chapter that I wrote (“Out on the Line for Each Other”) and it really talks a lot about the power of vulnerability and radical love. I talked about my friendships with organizers in the community, particularly with a very close friend of mine in San Diego who really inspired me and who I’m very close to. Then, other organizers, Black feminists who have shown up for me. One, who’s a Black editor, really empowered me to talk about my life story. Before that, I never talked about my personal life, ever. If it wasn’t for her, I probably would have never shared my personal life. She wanted to do a story about when I had my heart disease in 2012. She was so gentle about it, she was so encouraging about it, and she said, “Kandi, I want to write this story for you. Do you feel OK sharing your story">Leroy Moore, who’s a Black and disabled activist. It was really hard for me to even claim a disability at the time, so I had my own internalized ableism and because of Leroy, I was able to get more comfortable with really claiming my disabilities and claiming and having an understanding of what I was going through and naming that. I was more encouraged and talking about it out loud, and that chapter was really important because it taught me so much about the power of vulnerability, radical love, and the power of building solidarity with folks. I also talked about desirability in that chapter, as well; I talk about my friendships in hip hop, how I learned about hip hop feminism with my friends. I talk about my earlier experiences, how being Filipino alone won’t save me and how solidarity is so important because my Filipina identity alone won’t save me.

Solomon Amorao: A lot of my motivation to enter graduate school is because I deeply felt the impact of these intersecting systems, particularly as an eldest daughter of a Filipino immigrant family. Why did my mother and my father choose to leave the Philippines? Why did they choose to leave their family and come to the United States in the ‘70s? The reasons why are because of these larger, intersecting systems of colonialism and capitalism and racism. At that time, Ferdinand Marcos was a dictator, really. I mean, he was president of the Philippines, but he was being propped up by anti-communist interests in the United States and really creating conditions that were severely constraining civil liberties and the growth of opportunity for, at that time, my parents’ families (who were middle class) and for economic opportunities. This is the sort of classic immigrant story. Both of my parents left the Philippines, but they left it in a very particularly Filipino way—they were petitioned by siblings who enlisted in the U.S. military. That is a very particular Philippine condition because of direct U.S. control of the Philippines for about 50 years, 1898 to 1946. Filipinos were the only “foreign” folks who where able to the U.S. military, were actively recruited, and my parents had family who were in the U.S. miliary, and they had family who were also heavily recruited as nurses because the United States had imposed English language learning in the Philippines, so Filipino nurses needed to know English. There was a lack of nurses at that time in the medical industry, so Filipinos were very specifically brought to the United States to fill a very particular type of labor necessary to the development of the economy at the time. So, all of those conditions shape the reason my parents themselves emigrated, shaped the reason they valued English language and school above all because those were literally the avenues that allowed them to leave the Philippines.

They landed in the Bay Area and had the of their extended family network to start their own business, and we thrived because we lived in a predominantly Filipino enclave in Sacramento, so everything around me was really engaged with the complexities of being a Filipino immigrant family in the United States. My parents were very proud of where they came from, but they weren’t dumb; they understood that being Brown and not speaking English perfectly were strikes against them in the United States. They over labored to make sure that I had a “good education” and, unfortunately, there was so much left unsaid about the trauma of leaving their homeland and the trauma of trying to build a business for themselves in the U.S., in the post-Civil Rights period. That was really unspoken in our home and really took a toll on mental health. By the time that I was graduating college, I had learned the statistic from the CDC in 2004, I believe, of a study they did in San Diego County, that said Filipino American girls had the largest rate of suicidal ideation and a lot of those reasons were because of the pressures of assimilation and what we now can name as intergenerational trauma of the diaspora of migration. So, I decided to come to San Diego because of my chance to work with scholars at UC San Diego who specialized in Asian American studies, Asian American literature, but also because I really identified with the San Diego Filipino American community. I really understood the complexity of this community, and all of the work I do is about giving space to explore the contradictions of our experience, the contradictions of our community, and really, the possibilities of our community to really affect change in these social systems that we’ve found ourselves in.

Q: How would you, personally, like to see pinay activism evolve?

Kandi: In the same way that I dreamed about this book—I want others to keep on writing, telling their stories. I want activism to keep growing right now, whether it’s on the ground and in movement building. I think more connecting and relationship building needs to happen where we figure out more transformative justice and restoration is possible. Conflicts happen all the time, it’s not just in our Filipino communities, it’s everywhere. In the activist world alone, there are conflicts all the time and because we know that opponents out there are very strategized, we, in our activist world, need to be just as strategized, if not more. We have to come together and really build a tight community and be there together, cohesive, and well-strategized. And, more than just that, really love on one another. So, for us to continue loving one another. I want us to continue taking care of one another, finding grace for one another, and figuring out ways where we can heal from the pain and the conflict and all of the ways we’ve been wounded from our past. I know that doesn’t come easily, as someone who’s been wounded a lot. I think there’s been a lot of things that have happened in my past, trauma, so how can we figure out how we can heal from them? I think it’s really important, so my dream is that we find ways to take care of one another so we can heal from that, so that we can continue showing up together because the opposition is definitely continuing to come for us.

Solomon Amorao: Some of the things that we were trying to push, in of exploring further in the anthology, are really thinking and interrogating how pinayism can be trans inclusive, how pinay feminism can really center further destabilizing gender binaries. The idea of a pinay sisterhood is very empowering for many pinays, I know that’s what initially attracted me to Allyson’s first essay and to pinayism, generally; but we also need to make sure that that sense of sisterhood, literally, is not C-I-S-terhood, it’s not exclusive of nonbinary folks, genderqueer folks, trans folks. That we really be thoughtful about, again, our construction of community and who you’re including and excluding. So, Kandi, Jen, and I had long conversations. It was very important to us that we include pieces that really push our definition of pinayism, our definition of what pinay even is. The other thing that we were really centered on, as well, was to think about how pinayism is not just anti-racist, but pro-Black; so really thinking about both the debt of pinayism to Black feminism, and going beyond naming that debt and really thinking about how pinayist projects are pro-Black projects. Kandi has a fantastic chapter in the book, one of many chapters, and it’s her speech that she gave in the wake of, I think, Breonna Taylor’s death that really is thinking about what does it mean to be pinays engaging, again, in pro-Black work?

Another strand we really wanted to think about, and this is why we included Bernadette Gonzalez’s chapter is how are we as pinayists in solidarity, really in solidarity with decolonization, which means really interrogating the ways that we are participating in settler colonial societies. [Gonzalez’s chapter] was the specific example of Hawaii, but as we work on further editions of the book, I can’t help but think about how are we pushing a pinayist framework that’s in solidarity with Palestine, that really speaks about these really challenging questions and settler colonial societies, that is really rigorous in our ethics of liberation, in our ethics that land is life, and how can we push our politics even further so that we truly can all get closer to liberation? So, that’s where I would really love, specifically, our next edition of the anthology to go, but even just generally, the conversations that those who are interested in and who are practicing or studying Filipino American feminism, I’d love for us to have conversations along those lines.