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Bahay: 200 years of Filipino stories in Louisiana

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Bahay: 200 years of Filipino stories in Louisiana

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Content Bahay: 200 Years of Filipino Stories in Louisiana
By
Charisma Madarang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL
FOR COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
DECEMBER 2022
COPYRIGHT 2022 Charisma Madarang
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This story is dedicated to Rhonda Lee Richoux, Randy Gonzales, Chef Loy Madrigal,
Winston Ho, and the Filipino community in Louisiana. Thank you for sharing your stories
with pride and love. Thank you for embracing me into the community and continuing the
work of Marina Espina. I owe so much to you all. New Orleans and the wetlands of
Louisiana will always hold a place in my heart. I’ll be back soon.
Thank you Sandy Tolan for your invaluable guidance and constant encouragement to
pursue the core of every story. To Dr. Alissa Richardson, for showing me the necessity
of weaving history with the narratives of today. To Erika Hayasaki, for challenging me to
reimagine how a story can be told. To the entire USC family, for their support and
helping make the journey to Louisiana possible.
To my mother, Cynthia Lopez, for always standing by me and believing in my
storytelling. To my father, Claro Madarang, for inspiring me with his own rich adventures
in the motherland. To my stepfather, Frank Lopez, for filling my imagination with the
classics. To my stepmother, Hildegarde Madarang, for building a proud Filipino home.
And to my grandmother, Beatriz Canicula, who instilled a strong sense of family and
identity within the Madarang clan.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ii
Abstract............................................................................................................................iv
Chapter One: Filipino History Lost to Katrina...................................................................1
Chapter Two: The Legacy of St. Malo and the Manilamen...............................................3
Chapter Three: Filipinos Fight for Recognition in US History…………………..................7
Chapter Four: First Generation Filipinos in Louisiana……………………........................12
Chapter Five: Honoring Filipino Stories in Louisiana………….......................................15
Bibliography…………………….......................................................................................17
iii
ABSTRACT
Despite 4.2 million Filipinos living in the United States as of 2019—making them the
third-largest Asian origin group—Filipino American history reads like a footnote in U.S.
textbooks. Four hundred years of Spanish and U.S. colonization, and the accompanying
exclusion from government records, have undervalued and underrepresented the
Filipino contribution to the American narrative.
Many Filipinos in south Louisiana are third- to seventh-generation Filipino Americans
whose families settled there in the 19th century. However, few Americans know the
story of why Filipinos landed on the shores of what would be the United States and how
they weaved their own culture into the fabric of Louisiana. Understanding and
remembering this history is crucial to the Filipino identity – it reminds us that Filipinos
have been here a long time, that we are walking on a path worn by our ancestors, and
that we will continue to shape America’s future.
iv
Chapter One: Filipino History Lost to Katrina
“she talked about Filipinos as if recounting
a history that didn't include her…
we must account for this slippage”
- “Cultural Memory.”
Settling St. Malo: Poems from Filipino Louisiana,
Randy Gonzales.
In the summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina claimed 1,170 lives in Louisiana. The wrath of
the storm ripped off roofs and shattered windows. Winds lifted houses from their roots
and floods washed them away. When it was over, fragments of boats and dead animals
littered roads.
When the murky water receded, after more than a month of swirling and festering, what
remained was the hot heaviness of the late fall. Not a single bird graced the sky.
When librarian Marina Espina returned to New Orleans, all the familiar markers—the
trees laced in Spanish moss, sturdy brick houses and time-worn street signs—were
gone. As Espina searched the wreckage, she discovered a devastating loss: the flood
destroyed decades of her research on the vanishing history of Filipinos in Louisiana.
Espina dedicated her life to documenting the Filipino fishermen who settled in the
Louisiana marshlands in the 19th century. Known as the “Manilamen,” these fishermen
were among the earliest Asian immigrants in the United States. They built St. Malo, a
thriving village off the coast of St. Bernard shrouded by cypress swamps and largely
unknown to the greater New Orleans area. The beauty of the bayou was not unlike the
subtropical and plentiful beaches of the Philippines.
The Manilamen built wooden houses on stilts similar to the bamboo bahay kubo back
home to adapt to the wetland’s constant flooding and applied their skills as fishermen to
1
source fish and shrimp from the Louisiana shores, bolstering the booming seafood
industry in New Orleans.
Espina tracked down descendants of the Manilamen and made copies of birth
certificates, family portraits, and oral histories passed down by community elders.
“My life is being thrown away with every material thing,” she told Diverse as she was
forced to discard her research ruined by the flood waters.
The loss of Espina’s work echoed a profound change felt by the tight-knit Filipino
community in Louisiana. After Katrina, many Filipino American residents left St. Bernard
and the surrounding parishes. As each descendant abandoned their ruined homes and
landlines, making it difficult to track them, the stories of their Filipino ancestors—proof
that Filipinos helped build the great city of New Orleans—became harder to remember.
“She was so upset about all of her research being destroyed. All of her research was
gone. Years of research,” said Rhonda Lee Richoux, one of the Filipino descendents
interviewed by Espina.
Although storms have always threatened the Manilamen and their history, for just as
long, Filipinos have fought vigorously to make sure they are not forgotten in Louisiana’s
story.
Today, descendants like Richoux and the Filipino community are fighting to keep
Espina’s work and 200 years of Filipino stories in Louisiana alive.
2
Chapter Two: The Legacy of St. Malo and the Manilamen
"make sense of her at my father's school
her face as evidence of his whiteness
to counter brown on his birth certificate"
- “Cultural Memory.”
Settling St. Malo: Poems from Filipino Louisiana,
Randy Gonzales.
Despite 4.2 million Filipinos living in the United States as of 2019—making them the
third-largest Asian origin group—Filipino American history reads like a footnote in U.S.
textbooks. Four hundred years of Spanish and U.S. colonization, and the accompanying
exclusion from government records, have undervalued and underrepresented the
Filipino contribution to the American narrative. The Rescission Act of 1946 denied
recognition and benefits for World War II Filipino veterans, for example. The
contributions of Larry Itliong to the Farmworker Movement takes a backseat to Cesar
Chavez. Moreover, the labor of nearly 150,000 Filipino nurses—in U.S. hospitals,
clinics, and nursing homes—as recent as the 2020 pandemic, go largely unsung.
“Asian Americans don't fit the traditional narrative of American history—the settler
colonist narrative,” said Winston Ho, an independent historian who specializes in Asian
American history in Louisiana. “We really need to change the way that we understand
American history. It's always the ‘great man’ history of the French Canadian explorer
who came to Louisiana and founded New Orleans by himself with his own bare hands.
The Filipinos, their contribution to the building of the city is just as important as the
French or Spanish.”
Many Filipinos in south Louisiana are third- to seventh-generation Filipino Americans
whose families settled there in the 19th century. However, few Americans know the
story of why Filipinos landed on the shores of what would be the United States and how
they weaved their own culture into the fabric of Louisiana.
3
Randy Gonzales, a fourth generation Filipino-American and an English professor in
Asian American Studies at the University of Louisiana, said that the fishing industry of
Louisiana drew Filipino men looking for work. Gonzales’ great-grandfather arrived in the
U.S in 1908. “My great-grandfather was a messman when he was in the Navy. And then
he worked on ships out of New Orleans as well,” said Gonzales, who grew up in New
Orleans. “It can be argued that they (the Manilamen at St. Malo) developed the fishing
industry in that area. And it was by bringing so much labor to the area, and this
willingness to live out in the marsh near the fish, near the source of the seafood.”
In “Filipinos in Louisiana'' (one of her last published works before Katrina destroyed her
continuing research), Espina wrote that when Spain occupied Louisiana, a trade route
from the Philippines to Mexico was established and the first galleon left the shores of
Cebu on June 1, 1565. Indigenous Filiipinos were exploited by the Spanish as a "source
of free or cheap labor" and forced to become coerced laborers in the galleon trade.
According to the oral history she gathered, to escape Spanish oppression, the seamen
“jumped ship” in Mexico and traveled east towards the gulf ports, crossing into
Louisiana and drifting down to the bayou or the Gulf Coast. “As early as 1765,” Espina
wrote, “Filipinos Iived along the southeastern coast of Louisiana,” which became "a
haven for the fugitive Filipino seamen.” As they established communities on the water,
the men that lived there became known as the “Manilamen,” after the Philippine’s
capital city. The fishing settlement grew and expanded to Barataria Bay, including
Manila Village, the largest of these communities.
“You know, Filipinos are not new to the continent. They've been here a long time,” said
Richoux, who is a sixth-generation Filipino. She traced her family’s history to one of the
many fishermen who immigrated to Louisiana from Manila in the early 1800s.
In the "Crossing East Archive" podcast, Isabel Gedoria Welch, who lived to be 88 years
old, recalled growing up in the bayou. Her father, who was from Manila, came to
California around 1920. After traveling to Alaska, Utah, and Texas, he headed to
Louisiana when he heard there was a Filipino community in St. Malo. While working as
4
a shrimper, he settled his family in Manila Village. “I was born and raised in Manila
Village," said Welch, her voice sparkling with a thick Southern accent. “I dearly loved
it… That was a part of my life I enjoyed… Imagine, going to sleep on a boat and waking
and playing on a boat. You could jump into the water anytime you wanted to and swim.”
Documents about the settlements are hard to come by. Many of the artifacts, photos
and drawings have been lost or destroyed over time—not just after Katrina. “There is a
lot of orientalizing of the marsh. There's a lot of exoticizing of the wetlands,” said
Gonzales. He said this helps explain why you won’t find the story of St. Malo in
books—the Manilamen were seen as outsiders to the dominant “civilized” culture of
New Orleans and their stories were perceived as less valuable to the greater narrative
of Louisiana history. “So stories don't get told, and then later historians have a harder
time collecting the information because they're not documented as much… Having a
paper trail helps us tell that history.”
An 1883 article in Harper’s Weekly is often regarded as the earliest surviving
documentation of St. Malo and its residents. Written by journalist Lafcadio Hearn, the
article manages to be both informative and racist. Hearn, who sought out St. Malo after
hearing rumors of the “amphibious existence” of a village in the remote marshes of
Louisiana, described the Filipino seaman of St. Malo as “strange, wild, picturesque”
whose “features are irregular without being actually repulsive.” He noted that there were
no women in the village, as many of the men’s wives and children lived in New Orleans.
Rooms are described as empty of furniture; instead, mattresses were filled with Spanish
moss “where the weary fishermen slumber at night among barrels of flour and folded
sails and smoked fish.”
“There's a funny story about a judge who went out to St. Malo and he goes, ‘The
Filipinos have trained the mosquitoes to bite white people. So we don't go out there,’”
Gonzales said, shaking his head. “It's just another way of saying that, ‘They're different
from us, they can live out there with those mosquitoes. We can’t.’ So it's always a kind
of othering, the people that live outside of the urban section… the uncivilized swamps.
And in this case, it was Filipinos.”
5
Hearn brought along J.O. Davidson, an illustrator, who sketched his interpretation of the
Manilmen men and their homes. Today these are the only known images of St. Malo.
While the names and roles of the men pictured are not included in the sketches,
Davidson captured the large shrimp platform—one of the major goods sold by St. Malo
shrimpers. He also depicted their wooden houses on stilts among the serene reeds, and
thin pirogues, which were small boats adopted from the Cajuns. In 1915, an unnamed
Category 4 hurricane devastated St. Malo, killing many of the residents, and forcing
them to move north as they left behind flooded homes.
Although storms are part of the natural rhythm of the marsh, the Manilamen built their
homes along the coast, which acts as the first line of defense against hurricanes. In
“The Ravaging Tide,” by Mike Tidwell, wetlands are credited for absorbing the brunt of a
hurricane’s impact before it reaches inland. “Coastal marshes, it turns out, provide more
than just critical habitat for birds and shrimp and crab,” wrote Tidwell. “Every 2.7 miles of
marsh absorbs a foot of a hurricane’s storm surge. The friction of those trillions of
blades of grass literally slows everything down, dispersing the energy of onrushing
water, stealing much of the hurricane’s punch.” And so, while the wetlands provided the
men of St. Malo with a rich and plentiful source of food and income, the region was also
incredibly precarious. Still, the Manilamen continued to rebuild St. Malo after every
storm, a dance of man and nature that continued for a century.
However, the storm of 1915 wiped out the last of the remaining homes and claimed 275
lives, finally forcing the community to abandon their sunken village and travel north. The
fishermen that stayed in South Louisiana traveled west towards Barataria Bay, in
Jefferson Parish, and built Manila Village, which stood until 1965 when Hurricane Betsy
submerged the village into the Gulf of Mexico. When Katrina delivered the final blow in
2005, many of the artifacts and documents saved from the settlements were lost to the
ocean.
6
Chapter Three: Filipinos Fight for Recognition in US History
"map those memories
on histories that include us
St. Malo
Manila Village
Filipino Colony Bar"
- “Cultural Memory.”
Settling St. Malo: Poems from Filipino Louisiana,
Randy Gonzales.
Gonzales remembered crabbing and fishing near the wetlands surrounding New
Orleans and St. Bernard as a kid with his father and brother. “ Sometimes my dad would
take off work just to go crabbing,” said Gonzales. “There's something about being on the
water where you feel like you have this almost world to yourself in this little space.” He
remembered that some days, he would go just for the company of his brother and
father, and lay back on the boat, watching the clouds gather over the coast and listen to
the soft wind of the bayou.
We took a seat beneath a metal canopy next to the Los Isleños Museum in St. Bernard,
a replica of a 19th century Creole cottage that houses a small collection of photos and
illustrations of the Manilamen. Across from the museum stood a large community hall
and smaller cottages encircled by shady oak and cypress trees. Within minutes of our
conversation, rain began to beat against the canopy and suddenly, we were stuck on
the tiny island.
“We just missed it,” said Gonzales, laughing as a wall of rain surrounded us.
Growing up, Gonzales was unaware of the family history buried beneath the waters
where he fished. His father, who died when Gonzales was 18, did not talk about his
Filipino upbringing, and Gonzales’ mother, who was Isleños, descendants of settlers
7
from the Canary Islands, and Cajun, rarely talked about that side of the family. Like
Richoux, who lost precious tapes of her grandmother during Katrina, physical evidence
of his ancestors’ history was lost over time. “I had a bunch of stories of hers on tape,
and they were destroyed in Hurricane Isaac,” said Richoux. Any physical traces of
Gonzales’ family history in Louisiana were buried deep in archives.
It was only after his father’s death that Gonzales learned about the racism his father
experienced at school in the segregated south. “My grandmother did tell me the story
about having to go to his school to prove that he was white,” recalled Gonzales. His
father’s birth certificate stated that he was “brown,” so his grandmother had to prove his
“whiteness.”
This was during the 1940s in the Jim Crow south, when schools were racially
segregated by law. “His friends told me after he died that people would call him like the
n-word and stuff like that. And then my mom talks about him getting in fights, because
people called him that,” said Gonzales. “I think in that sense, it made him, like a lot of
people, become almost racist himself. Because he had to prove how white he was. He
had to prove his whiteness in a black-white world, he had to prove his whiteness to fit
in.”
Yet Gonzales was determined to find out about his Filipino heritage. After decades of
research, he stumbled upon the diaries of Celina Padilla Hidalgo within the Historic New
Orleans Collection. Hidalgo grew up near Manila Village and her diary entries spanned
from 1941 to 1962. Her earliest diary, a small book with a red cover, offered a window
into her life from 1941 to 1945. As Gonzales flipped through the yellowed pages and
short entries, many no more than two sentences long, he noticed that Hidalgo regularly
visited the “Filipino Colony Bar” on 1107 St. Anthony in the Marigny, a Filipino
neighborhood in New Orleans. In one entry from 1942, Hidalgo writes in curly
handwriting: "We went to the Colony Bar. Everybody had a good time and there was a
big crowd. We got home late." Several other entries mention the Colony Bar,
celebrations, and late nights.
8
“ She's talking about bands playing… and they would have parties when the ships come
in,” said Gonzales. “Filipinos would come off the ships and join them and meet the
Filipino community at the bar.”
Curious to learn more, he shared the diary with his father’s cousin and pointed out an
entry about kids running around the bar. “That was probably us!” she told him with a
laugh. “I remember grandma yelling at us and telling us to get upstairs.”
The bar in Hidalgo’s diary was owned by his great-grandfather, Miguel Guillera. His
father, his siblings and cousins lived in the flat upstairs. Newspaper clippings in local
papers show that the establishment was a multifunctional space that also served as a
community center, dance hall, and local corner store for products shipped from the
Philippines. Stationary from the time has the Filipino Colony letterhead in plain
typewriter font and lists the building as a restaurant, bar and grocery, with “grocery”
crossed out. When asked how his great-grandfather got into the business, Gonzales
laughs. “He was a prohibition agent. After prohibition ended, he had all the connections
at that point, he knew all the liquor makers, he knew all the beer companies,” smiled
Gonzales. “So after it was legal, he opened the bar.”
The bar was also where the community came together to fight for Filipino independence
from the US in the 1940s and citizenship for immigrants. The aftermath of the
Watsonville Riots of 1930 in California–anti-immigration riots against Filipino farm
workers–sent shockwaves across the nation that reached the bayous of Louisiana. In
efforts to restrict Filipino immigration, the U.S proclaimed the Philippines independent in
1946, but failed on their promise to grant Filipino Americans citizenship. As a direct
result, Filipinos previously considered "non-citizen nationals," Filipinos who owed the
U.S. allegiance but were not given citizenship, became aliens in a country they had
helped build. “The Roosevelt administration made these promises that were not
checked,” said Ho. “They were no longer nationals and no longer eligible for citizenship
either.”
9
Although Filipinos in New Orleans enjoyed a relatively multicultural existence with
Cajuns, Native Americans, African Americans and Isleños, the proclamations sent a
wave of confusion among the Filipino community. Men who had immigrated to the U.S.
and raised families in New Orleans suddenly were told to return to the Philippines.
Gonzales’ great-grandfather was among them. In detailed naval records to the US Navy
and the US Government, Gonzales found letters Guillera wrote asking for his citizenship
papers. “He writes to the US Navy, saying, ‘Hey, this is who I am, I've worked for the
government for like, 18 years,’” said Gonzales. “‘I was in the navy. I worked for the post
office. I don't have any paperwork that says I'm a citizen, where is it?’ And they're like,
‘Well, I'm not sure. Filipinos really can't be citizens.’”
“All the Filipinos in New Orleans who weren't citizens didn't know what to do,” said
Gonzales. “And then they were working on the ships, and then they started putting laws
on the ships that you cannot hire too many foreign workers on your ships. And
suddenly, Filipinos were considered foreign when the year before they weren't. So
suddenly, Filipinos are losing their jobs.” Guillera and the local Filipino community
began letter campaigns to locate their legal paperwork.
In a typewritten letter addressed to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (United States
Navy) in August 21, 1940, Guillera wrote:
“...I had applied to Capt. J. A. Hoogewerff, U.S.N. Commanding Officer of the
U.S. Kansas for my U.S. Citizenship, But I never got it somehow, and of course I
am in doubt of my Citizenship right now and I am asking you Sir, if I can get my
paper through the Department. I have always believed and considered myself a
U.S. Citizen, as I was brought up here by the U.S. have became of age in the
U.S., neither my father nor I have sworn to any Alligiance to Spain, I have never
went back to the Islands since Sept. 1908, nor have gone out of the U.S. And I
have served the U.S. Civil Government 13 years through U.S. Civil Service
Examinations and Appointments beside the 6 years Naval Service.
I will appreciate very much and thank for your kind favors Sir, I am. [sic]
10
Yours Very Truly
Miguel Guillera”
Towards the end of his life, Gonzales said his great-grandfather, who fostered
community and economy within the Louisiana community, grew worried. “He died before
any of this was resolved, before he got citizenship,” said Gonzales.
11
Chapter Four: First Generation Filipinos in Louisiana
"understand
immigration
migration
labor
policy
segregation
marginalization
assimilation
as conceptions
of our erasure"
- “Cultural Memory.”
Settling St. Malo: Poems from Filipino Louisiana,
Randy Gonzales.
Today, the Filipino community in Louisiana is small but determined to reclaim their
history and remember the Manilamen, their wives, and their children. The Filipino Lions
Club, an organization made up of many first-generation Filipinos, is the backbone for
efforts to gain official government recognition.
“I think this community group is interested in the history not because they feel
connected to the Manilamen who came here, but they feel that they're walking on a
space that Filipinos were a long time ago,” said Gonzales. “They're not treading new
ground. They're just walking on a path that has been walked before and any discomfort
they feel, they can get through it.”
On an overcast afternoon in August, a welcome change to the heat, 30 members of the
Lions club and their families congregated in front of an orange food truck parked by the
St. Bernard museum. There were Filipinos from Cebu, Manila, California, and New York
coming together to celebrate the history of St. Malo with a Filipino feast. Chef Loy
Madrigal, the owner of the food truck, makes it his daily mission to share the story of St.
12
Malo with as many people as he can. At his restaurant in Algiers, the only Filipino
restaurant in New Orleans, he often shares the story of the Manilamen with new
patrons.
That day, as he handed out overflowing plates of steaming lechon (roasted pig), tender
pancit noodles, and sweet pork barbecue to members of the Lions Club, Madrigal
grinned “one plate, one story at a time.”
There was a feeling of belonging and excitement as members who hadn’t seen each
other in months swapped stories over lunch. Gonzales was there with his wife and dog,
who ran around the soft green marsh. Tita Lee, a woman I had met the day before at
Cebu, gave me a big hug. At that moment, 3,000 miles away from California, I felt like I
was right where I belonged.
While people talked about the Manilamen, there was a sense of nostalgia for the more
recent past, too. “My dad was a very gentle man, incredible sense of humor,” said
Howard Luna, a third generation Filipino and council member for St. Bernard with sharp
blue eyes. “If I picked up one trait from my dad, it's my sense of humor.”
Most of the conversations were about the present and the future, or about getting the
group together to support Jo Koy’s film, “Easter Sunday”—one of the first Filipino
American films to reach a national audience. In the distance, under the swaying moss of
a cypress tree, Gonzales walked over to a metal state marker with raised, white
lettering, welcoming all visitors with the memory of St. Malo. Under an image of
Louisiana and a pelican, the marker declared St. Malo as the "first permanent Filipino
settlement in the United States” in the 19th century. He rests his hands on posts. “This
is it,” he said with a small smile.
In 2016, after years of Filipino Americans fighting for the government to officially
recognize their history in Louisiana, the Philippine-Louisiana Historical Society gained
state approval to place a historical marker commemorating Manila Village in Lafitte.
13
Three years later, in 2019, another marker for St. Malo was approved and placed in
front of the Isleños Museum in St. Bernard.
Gonzales, who played a role in advocating support for the marker and wrote the
description of St. Malo, hoped he made his family proud. “I do think of making my
great-grandfather proud, doing what maybe my dad would have done if he had been
given the opportunity that I have,” said Gonzales. “This is something he would have
loved.”
14
Chapter Five: Honoring Filipino Stories in Louisiana
"restore what we can
from fragments
of cultural memory"
- “Cultural Memory.”
Settling St. Malo: Poems from Filipino Louisiana,
Randy Gonzales.
Rhonda Richoux clutched an umbrella as she climbed the steps of St. Vincent De Paul
Cemetery. The rain rushed down in sheets. By the time she reached the mausoleum,
her clothes were dripping with warm rain water. She was here to visit her ancestors,
something she would do regularly with her grandmother after stopping for beignets and
hot chocolate.
"Death was not the end for us," said Richoux, her big, green-brown eyes twinkling. "I go
there, it's very peaceful. To me, I go and talk to the ancestors and the relatives and tell
them how things are going."
In Espina’s book, Espina traced the oldest known Filipino family in Louisiana to
Richoux’s ancestors: Felipé Madriaga, a seaman from Ilocos, and Bridgett Nugent, an
Irish girl traveling with her parents and brother, who met on a ship bound for America in
the early 1800s. Madriaga and Nugent married and raised their daughters, Helen, Mary
Ellen and Elizabeth along the village. Elizabeth’s daughter, her great-grandmother Rosa
Lee, would give birth to Lillian Martinez, Richoux's beloved grandmother.
Richoux moved swiftly between the rows of tombs, cutting through the rain. Many of the
markers were in disrepair; some had fallen off and were replaced with plastic, framed
with thick globs of glue. As Richoux cut through the wall of rain, she pointed to family
members and friends, recalling stories of each one. “That was my Uncle Al's brother’s
family. They're from the Philippines.” She paused in front of a tomb. “Mathilda, she's one
15
of my favorite people and my ancestor. She had like 14 children and only five of them
survived in infanthood. She lived out in Manila Village on the water, and they died from
things like malaria and Sudden Infant Death [Syndrome].”
When Richoux remembered her grandmother, Martinez, her voice lifted as she held a
memory. It was Mardi Gras, and Richoux and her cousin Lenny arrived in St. Bernard to
watch the parade with their family. Soon, however, they realized that they had forgotten
to pick up their grandmother. After calling all day, Martinez picked up the phone at 8:00
pm and told them she hopped on a bus to the French quarter and danced with crowds
into the evening. “She wasn’t gonna miss a good time. She wasn’t gonna miss Mardi
Gras,” said Richoux.
As Richoux, Gonzales, Ho and other descendants, historians, and writers continue the
work of Espina, the fragments of Filipino history are not only restored but honored and
celebrated.
As rain fell around her, Richoux talked about a dream her cousin had. In the dream,
Richoux was sitting on a bench in the cemetery and sharing stories about how her
cousins, uncles, and aunts were doing. As she spoke, the spirits of her ancestors were
behind Richoux listening to everything she was saying.
“Their spirits are not in those tombs, but that’s our meeting place,” said Richoux. “That's
where we come together to stay connected. So I love that she had that dream. Because
the cemetery is a place of great peace for me. It's where I remember the stories.”
16
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19

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Asset Metadata

Creator Madarang, Charisma (author)

Core Title Bahay: 200 years of Filipino stories in Louisiana

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Specialized Journalism)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 12/07/2022

Defense Date 12/06/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American history,Asian American,Asian American history,filipino american,filipino history,Filipinos,immigration,Louisiana,manilamen,New Orleans,OAI-PMH Harvest,Philippines

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Tolan, Sandy (committee chair), Hayasaki, Erika (committee member), Richardson, Allissa (committee member)

Creator Email charisma.dawnm@gmail.com,madarang@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112617319

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Legacy Identifier etd-MadarangCh-11344

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

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