A FILIPINO WOMAN IN A M E R I C A : THE LIFE AND

W O R K OF E N C A R N A C I O N ALZONA

CATHERINE CENIZA CHOY

Philippine historian Encarnacion Alzona was a pioneering woman in multi-

ple ways. She was the first Filipino woman to earn a doctoral degree, to chair the
History Department of the University of the Philippines, to become a University
of the Philippines regent, and to receive the Philippine title of National Scientist.
In addition to these achievements, Alzona belonged to a pioneer generation of
Philippine women's historians as well as the first generation of Filipina academ-
ic intellectuals. She was the first scholar to comprehensively document Filipino
women's history, which culminated in her second book, The Filipino Woman:
Her Social, Economic, and Political Status, 1565-1933, first published in 1934
and revised in 1937.1
Alzona's scholarship continues to inform Philippine studies and Southeast
Asian Studies. The University of the Philippines published Encarnacion Alzona:
An Anthology in 1996. Maria Luisa T. Camagay, who compiled the several hun-
dred articles and speeches in the anthology, concluded her short biography of
Alzona by describing her as "a woman to be reckoned with, and a woman worth
emulating. Dr. Alzona is a great Filipino" (Camagay 14). In Southeast Asian
Studies, some of Alzona's major arguments in The Filipino Woman about the
equality of women and men and the high status of women in the pre-colonial
Philippines resonate in more recent scholarship. For example, in Feminism and
Nationalism in the Third World, Kumari Jayawardena writes that "the pre-Span-

1
The major difference between the first and the revised editions is that the revised edition includes
50 additional pages devoted to the struggle for women's suffrage in the Philippines. Filipino women
gained the right to vote in the Philippines in 1937.
GENRE XXXIX - FALL 2006 - 127-140. COPYRIGHT © 2007 BY THE UNIVER-
SITY OF OKLAHOMA. ALL RIGHTS OF REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM
RESERVED
128 GENRE

ish society and, in particular, the place of women in that society, are now seen
rather idyllically by the Filipinos. Women were said to be the equal of men"
(155).
Filipino American Studies scholarship, however, has paid little, if any,
attention to Alzona's life and work. On one level, this is striking given Alzona's
education in the U.S. and her writing about U.S. colonialism in the Philippines.2
Alzona earned two degrees from the U.S.-established University of the Philip-
pines. In the early 1920s, Alzona furthered her studies in the U.S. under the
auspices of a U.S.-colonial-government scholarship program. And, in the early
1930s, a fellowship from an American university facilitated Alzona's return
to the U.S. to conduct scholarly research that culminated in her writing of The
Filipino Woman. Furthermore, from the beginning of her prolific writing career,
Alzona featured the theme of the impact of Spanish and U.S. colonialism on
Philippine history, culture, and society—a theme that Filipino Americanists
have highlighted to distinguish Filipino American Studies from the panethnic
umbrella of Asian American Studies and to argue for the importance of studying
Filipino American history on its own terms.
A new wave of Asian American Studies scholarship has theorized why some
historical figures and literary works have mattered more to Asian Americanists
than others. First, as a student who stayed in the U.S. for temporary periods, but
then returned to settle permanently in the Philippines, Alzona's mobility does
not fit neatly in the traditional Asian American immigrant narrative. Josephine
Lee, Imogene Lim, and Yuko Matsukawa describe this narrative as follows:
"One type of crossing commonly pictured imagines the Asian Americans as an
immigrant who voyages from the old world (Asia) to the new (North America).
Such a depiction assumes an originary point and a final destination, a linear and
unidirectional trajectory, and a set of experiences defined by clear temporal and
national boundaries" (7-8). While Lee, Lim, and Matsukawa importantly note
that previous Asian American Studies scholarship has had a vested interest in
documenting the more permanent settlement of Asians in the U.S. in order to
emphasize the historiographical erasure of Asian Americans' long-term presence
in the U.S. and the denial of their Americanness, they also recognize that such
nation-bound, unidirectional narratives of migration discount the sojourner as
a "temporary (and therefore less valid) Asian American identity" (8). Previous

2
I discuss Encamacion Alzona's work briefly at the conclusion of the first chapter of Empire of.
Care.
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 129

Filipino American Studies scholarship has reflected these vested interests. While
U.S.-colonial-government sponsored Filipino students (known as pensionados)
are often mentioned as an early wave of Filipino migration to the U.S., most Fili-
pino American histories focus on the subsequent waves of migration of primarily
young, single, working class males who labored as plantation workers in Hawaii
and as migrant laborers in agricultural and canning industries in California and
the Pacific Northwest and many of whom stayed in the U.S. The most sustained
discussion of pensionados in Filipino American Studies focuses on those few
students who remained permanently in the U.S. and who Barbara Posadas and
Roland Guyotte have referred to as "unintentional immigrants."
Second, as a pioneering female student and as a member of an elite group of
U.S.-colonial-government-sponsored students, Alzona's life disrupts the central-
ity of Asian American male working-class lived experiences in Asian American
Studies scholarship. Sylvia Yanagisako critiques the ways that these central
themes have homogenized what counts as Asian American history: "The peda-
gogical practice of privileging a masculine working-class past in Asian Ameri-
can History courses molds a uniform ethnic, gender, and social-class conscious-
ness out of more divergent material realties. In one sweep, the experiences of
women, farmers (as opposed to farm laborers), and petty bourgeoisie are pushed
to the margins of the collective past" (Yanagisako 16).
Third, Alzona's written expressions of gratitude to the U.S. colonial govern-
ment and to individual white American supporters for her educational opportu-
nities in the U.S. (which appear in both editions of The Filipino Woman) risk
being hastily dismissed by Asian Americanists as assimilationist. Zhou Xiao-
jing critically observes that Asian American literary critics have constructed
a dichotomy of Asian American literature into literature that "assimilates or
protests against mainstream America" (8). She contends that "the dismissal of
Asian American authors' incorporation and reinvention of dominant literary
genres as 'assimilationist' not only ignores how writers have actively manipu-
lated and reinvented literary conventions but also casts dominant ideologies and
literary genres into fixed, totalizing, and invulnerable systems" (4- 5). Related to
this issue of genre is the form that Alzona chose to document the role of women
in Philippine life and history—a compilation of Filipino women's contributions
to Philippine politics, economy, and culture. Gerda Lerner criticized this form of
historical writing as an archaic form of writing women's history, labeling it as
the history of "women worthies" or "compensatory history" ("Placing Women
130 GENRE

in History" 5). According to Lerner, it is a style of writing that is "topically nar-

row, predominantly descriptive, and generally devoid of interpretation" ("New
Approaches" 53).
The purpose of this essay is two-fold: first, to historically contextualize the
life of this pioneering Filipina intellectual with a focus on the impact of the U.S.-
Philippine colonial relationship on Alzona's life and work. I argue that Alzona's
life history matters to Filipino American as well as Philippine history. In doing
so, I participate in some of the critical interventions in what Kent Ono has called
the "second phase" of Asian American Studies (Ono 1). Xiaojing describes
these changes in Asian American literary criticism as "a significant shift away
from the agendas and strategies of cultural nationalism and toward transnational
perspectives and diasporic positionings" (3). And Matsukawa, Lee, and Lim
call for a "re-collection" of early Asian American cultural history that "[brings]
back into focus that which has deliberately or unconsciously been overlooked"
(1). In recent years, Filipino American Studies scholarship has generated inno-
vative recollections of early Asian America. For example, Augusto Espiritu's
close readings of the life and work of Filipino American intellectuals Carlos P.
Romulo, Carlos Bulosan, Jose Garcia Villa, Bienvenido Santos, and N.V.M.
Gonzalez chart an important history of Filipino American intellectual tradition
that expands the boundaries of what counts as Filipino American history and
literature. And Dorothy Fujita-Rony analyzes her Filipino American pre-World
War II community history of Seattle in a transpacific framework in order to fea-
ture the historically significant role of women in this community, including the
experiences of Filipino women students. A focus on Alzona's life history reveals
that although Filipino women faced social barriers in the Philippines and the
U.S. to pursue professional advancement, women as well as men have an intel-
lectual history that should be acknowledged in Filipino American Studies.

Second, this essay poses the following questions about Alzona's writing in
The Filipino Woman: What were her views of U.S. colonialism in the Philip-
pines especially in relation to Filipino women? How did she appropriate myth
as well as history to depict Filipino women from pre-colonial to colonial times?
The Filipino Woman analyzed both the dominant presence of U.S. colonialism
in the Philippines and the "liberation" of Filipino women. Given this complex
historical context, her intellectual thought blurs the seemingly absolute divisions
between colonization and liberation, myth and history, U.S. and Philippine his-
tory, and resistance and accommodation.
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 131

I argue that The Filipino Woman should be read as a critique of U.S. colo-
nialism though couched in the acceptable language of the U.S. colonial time
period in which Alzona was writing.3 The contributions of Filipino women that
Alzona featured in the book should not be read as merely compensatory; rather,
they offer an alternative understanding of Philippine women and men from pre-
colonial times through the Spanish and U.S. colonial periods. Alzona's interpre-
tation of Filipino women's history challenged the U.S. colonial project, espe-
cially its racializing project, that classified Filipino women and men into types
of primitive and semi-civilized beings.4 The Filipino Woman paid tribute to the
gender equality that had characterized the Philippines before Spanish and U.S.
colonial rule. Nevertheless, a close reading of the book must entail a nuanced
analysis that acknowledges Alzona's close personal and intellectual ties to the
U.S. colonial regime, and her Orientalist views of other Asian women.

Born at the turn of the nineteenth century, Alzona lived through the transfer
of colonial rule in the Philippines from the Spanish to the Americans. She gradu-
ated from the U.S.-established University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of
Science in Education in 1917 and a Master of Arts in Education in 1918. After
earning degrees from the University of the Philippines, the U.S. colonial govern-
ment sponsored Alzona to study history abroad in the U.S. as a pensionada or
female government-supported student.5
As a pensionada, Alzona broke barriers in Filipino women's higher educa-
tion. After studying European and American history for a summer quarter at the
University of Chicago, she received a Master of Arts in History at Radcliffe Col-
lege in 1920 concentrating in modern European history and minoring in inter-
national law. Two years later, Alzona earned a Ph.D. in History from Columbia
University under the supervision of Professor J. H. Carlton Hayes.

3
I wish to acknowledge Hsuan L. Hsu's analysis of Yone Noguchi's writing in the introduction of
this special issue for illuminating this point to me.
4
For this point, I am indebted to Augusto Espiritu's analysis of the work of Filipino American intel-
lectuals and his insights regarding the ways that they criticized the U.S. colonial project, especially
its racializing functions.
5
An American-dominated Philippine Commission authorized the pensionado program through the
Pensionado Act (Act 854) in 1903. Through this program, the U.S. colonial government sponsored
Filipino students, known as pensionados, to study at colleges and universities in the United States.
Between 1903 and 1940, approximately 500 pensionados came to study in the United States under
the auspices of the program. Filipino women comprised a small minority of this elite group of stu-
dents.
132 GENRE

U.S. colonial administrators expected the pensionados to return to the Phil-

ippines and to assume leadership positions in U.S.-established institutions there.
And the majority of Filipino students including Alzona did return to the Philip-
pines, fulfilling U.S. colonial expectations. Upon her return, Alzona resumed
teaching history at the University of the Philippines. In 1932, she published her
first book, A History of Education in the Philippines. A History of Education
in the Philippines consists of two parts: education during the Spanish period,
1565-1896, and education during the American period, 1899-1930. The book
characterizes the relationship between Europe and the U.S., on the one hand, and
the Philippines on the other as a hierarchical one of instructor and pupil. Accord-
ing to Alzona, westernization of the Philippines began with Spanish colonization
and strengthened over time. She described Filipinos as receptive to westerniza-
tion, and particularly western education. Filipinos solidified their relationship
with the West by accepting baptism and Christianity, and by emulating educa-
tional movements in Europe. Alzona argued that Filipino intellectual leaders his-
torically advocated sending promising Filipino students abroad as "old Europe
and young America . . . had much to teach the Philippines" (173).
In A History of Education in the Philippines, Alzona described U.S. edu-
cational policy as benevolent, a word that harkened to U.S. President Wil-
liam McKinley's 1898 policy on "benevolent assimilation" in the Philippines.
According to this policy, the Americans came to the Philippines not as conquer-
ors, but as friends. This characterization of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines
as benevolent especially in the areas of Philippine education, public health, and
public infrastructure has greatly informed the ideology of American exception-
alism with the benevolence of American colonizers distinguishing them from
the brutality of European colonizers. Although Alzona's view has been shared
by other Philippine nationalist historians, more recent Philippine and Filipino
American Studies scholarship has strongly critiqued this interpretation and, by
contrast, highlighted the racism and violence of the American colonial project
exemplified in the brutality of the Philippine-American War.
However, it is important to understand the historical conditions and cultural
contexts that informed her writing style and choice of language. Given that the
Philippines was an official U.S. colony at the time of the writing and publica-
tion of A History of Education, Alzona's arguments in A History of Education
reflected an acute awareness of the educational opportunities afforded to her by
the U.S. colonial government. Her expressions of gratitude to individual Ameri-
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 133

can patrons and the U.S. colonial regime were also informed by the pre-Hispanic
Philippine cultural value of utang na loob (literally translated as a debt from the
inside), which historians have interpreted as a dynamic Philippine value that has
changed over time. As Augusto Espiritu emphasized in his history of Filipino
American intellectuals, "political patronage [both in the U.S. and Philippine
contexts] became a decisive determinant of Filipino and Filipino American
intellectual life, shaping among other things intellectuals' access to the means
of livelihood, social rewards, and funds for travel. . . . When [Filipino American
intellectuals] traveled to the U.S., American institutions such as the Rockefeller
and Guggenheim Foundations helped finance them. Perhaps more important was
the work of individual white American sponsors who recognized their talents
and provided them with financial support, friendship, letters of reference, and
introductions to networks that helped advance their careers" (3). Espiritu con-
tinued that Filipino intellectuals interpreted their relationship to their patrons—
individual and institutional ones—"in terms of lifelong debts of gratitude" (4).
It is also important to note that, in A History of Education, Alzona did
not express gratitude to the U.S. colonial regime blindly and unconditionally.
She argued that Filipinos had an advanced culture before western contact; that
they espoused democratic ideals before the arrival of the Americans; and that
the Philippine revolutionary government of 1896-1899, not the U.S. colonial
government, innovated the policy of mass education in the Philippines. Alzona
would further develop these critiques in her writing of The Filipino Woman. Yet
she continued to express gratitude to the U.S. colonial regime especially within
the very specific historical context of educational opportunities for Filipino
women.
In the early 1930s, American patronage continued to inform the context for
her scholarly research and writing. In 1933, Alzona became a Barbour fellow at
the University of Michigan. Established in 1928, the Barbour Fellowships for
Oriental Women enabled Asian women scholars to pursue research during a
year of academic leave. Alzona utilized her fellowship tenure at the University
of Michigan to complete a manuscript about the history of Filipino women. In
1934, she published this book entitled The Filipino Woman, Her Social, Eco-
nomic, and Political Status, 1565-1933 and, following the trend of other Filipino
American intellectuals, she dedicated it to the memory of an American patron,
Levi L. Barbour, a University of Michigan regent and major donor of the Bar-
bour Scholarships for Oriental Women. In the book, Alzona claimed that "the
134 GENRE

changes in Philippine life which were brought about by the inauguration of

American rule were as a whole favorable to women. . . . Filipino women enter-
tain a deep feeling of gratitude toward the Americans for the new educational
opportunities that their regime offers" (53-54).
Alzona specifically contextualized Filipino women's gratitude to the U.S.
government against the historical backdrop of women's education under the
Spanish regime. Before the U.S. annexation of the Philippines, the educational
system under Spain offered distinct and unequal opportunities for Filipinos
based on gender as well as class. The Spanish colonial government educated
Filipino girls at boarding schools, such as Colegio de Santa Potenciana, which
was founded in Manila in 1591. However, Alzona criticized these schools for
their non-academic curriculum:
The instruction in these boarding schools at the beginning consisted of the
teaching of Christian doctrine, reading, writing, and needlework. Arithme-
tic was sometimes taught, as in the Colegio de Santa Isabel which some-
times employed a male teacher to go there now and then to give the girls
arithmetic lessons. The Spanish language was also taught indifferently,
for the aim of these institutions was not to turn out learned women, but
devout, chaste wives and mothers (27-28).

Furthermore, the Spanish university in the Philippines, University of Santo

Tomas, excluded Filipino women from obtaining higher education. Under the
Spanish regime, the Superior Normal School for Women established in Manila
in 1892 offered the highest level of education for Filipino women. The Spanish
colonial government also discouraged Filipino women from studying abroad at
European universities, while it allowed elite Filipino men known as ilustrados
in the late nineteenth century to do so. The American regime offered new educa-
tional opportunities for Filipinos with comparatively less discrimination regard-
ing gender. In 1902, the Philippine Commission passed the Organic School
Act, which provided for free public elementary instruction. All institutions of
learning, including the University of the Philippines, were coeducational from
their inception. And, through the pensionado program, the American colonial
government sponsored the first Filipino women to study at colleges and univer-
sities abroad in the U.S. The Barbour scholarships and fellowships represented
yet another U.S.-established educational opportunity for Filipino women. Thus,
rather than dismissing Alzona's scholarly work as assimilationist, a more useful
way of reading The Filipino Woman for Asian Americanists is as a lens to view
U.S. patronage of Filipino women intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s and the
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 135

contrast between the Spanish and U.S. colonial regimes regarding gender and
education.
Although Alzona's writing in the The Filipino Woman suggests that she
imbibed the belief of the superiority of Western civilization, a pragmatic tone
about the advantages of Western civilization permeates her writing. Furthermore
The Filipino Woman consists of political commentary that can be read as opposi-
tional to U.S. colonialism, and in particular the racializing dimension of the U.S.
colonial project, which objectified and defined Filipinos as primitive and semi-
civilized types. Writing in the 1930s, Alzona asserted that Filipinos embraced
Westernization, but they did so strategically with the high aspirations of global
social justice and with strong attachment to Filipino traditions:
Now that Western civilization has penetrated practically every part of the
globe, the westernization of Filipino women is a decided advantage and
should not be regretted by any broadminded thinker. It has not lessened
their adherence to Filipino traditions, but it has broadened their outlook
and brought them into closer relation and understanding with the women
of other civilized peoples in the world. Thus they will be able to cooper-
ate more effectively with the women of other lands in the realization of a
common aspiration—a better world to live in, governed by the principles
of justice and goodwill (92).

By "not lessening their adherence to Filipino traditions," Alzona suggests that

Filipinos were never uncivilized types. Rather, as I will develop later in this
essay, one of Alzona's major arguments in The Filipino Woman was that civi-
lized ideas and practices had been with Filipinos all along.
The Filipino Woman can also be read as oppositional to both Western and
Filipino patriarchal beliefs that marginalized the role of Filipino women in poli-
tics, economy, and culture in both the present and past. Throughout The Filipino
Woman, Alzona identified individual Filipino women and their accomplishments
in a range of fields during the Spanish and U.S. colonial periods. For example,
during the Spanish colonial period, Filipino women such as Antonia Esquerra
and Rosa Prieto achieved the rank of Venerable, which represents the first step
to sainthood; Margarita Roxas de Ayala helped establish Colegio de la Con-
cordia; Filipina writers Leona Florentino, Florentina Arellano, Luisa Gonzaga
de Leon, Marta Jalandoni, and Rosa Sevilla de Lavero achieved distinction in
poetry, journalism, translation, drama, and literature respectively; artists Micaela
Rosales, Carmen Zaragoza, and Pelagia Mendoza received public acclaim for
their painting and sculpture; and Maria Gabriela Silang and Melchora Aquino
participated in the Filipino revolutionary struggle against Spanish colonial rule.
136 GENRE

Alzona also praised nameless Filipino women during the Spanish colonial peri-
od for their entrepreneurial activities; their work in agriculture and textiles; and
their artistry in embroidery, slippermaking, and jewelrymaking.
Alzona argued that the achievements of Filipino women enriched Philippine
social history under the U.S. colonial regime as well and she noted the names
of university women faculty and administrators, women founders of schools,
and, in the 1937 updated and revised edition, Filipina suffragettes. Although
Alzona excluded her name within the book, she was often writing about herself.
For example, at the time that she wrote The Filipino Woman, she was a profes-
sor of History at the University of the Philippines College of Liberal Arts. She
also mentions the role of the Philippine Association of University Women in
the women's suffrage movement, but excludes the fact that she was president of
this association in 1932. While this exclusion may speak to her own and societal
expectations about modesty, it also belies a belief that her own professional and
political work and those of her women colleagues mattered to all of Philippine
history. And, given that The Filipino Woman probably had an American as well
as Filipino audience, her work suggests that she believed it was important for
Americans as well as Filipinos to know this.
Perhaps Alzona's most interesting and innovative achievement in The
Filipino Woman was her argument that the pre-colonial Philippines possessed
a civilized culture before Western contact and that gender equality was a major
feature of Philippine traditional life. Alzona claimed that Filipino women had
historically enjoyed a significant degree of freedom in participating in industrial,
religious, and political activities that was derived from the traditional high posi-
tion of women in Filipino culture. Traditionally priestesses as well as priests
performed marriage ceremonies and ministered to the sick; the oldest daughter
succeeded the head of a barangay (a group of families that recognized a com-
mon head or chief) in the absence of a son; and women ruled some regions of the
Philippines. Furthermore, according to Alzona, traditional Filipino law protected
the rights of women by severely punishing the man caught violating a woman,
and by categorizing the mere insult of a woman of high rank a crime.
Alzona's writing of the presence of Filipino women leaders in the pre-colo-
nial Philippines naturalized women leadership in Philippine society. She referred
to two legendary women rulers, Queen Sima of a southern island in the Philip-
pines and Princess Urduja of what is now known as the province of Pangasinan.
Princess Urduja commanded an army of women and a body of women coun-
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 137

selors assisted in the administration of her realm. Alzona argued that an under-
standing of this Philippine political past was necessary to understand the Filipino
women's movement of the early twentieth century:
The modern Filipino women who are demanding civil and political rights
are in fact asking for no more than the restoration of their ancient rights
and freedom, of which they have been deprived by the introduction of
Spanish law by an alien ruler. The feminist movement in our country,
should therefore, be viewed in light of this important historical fact (20).

Similarly, her claims that, in the pre-colonial Philippines, prostitution and

venereal diseases were nonexistent; that literacy was common among women as
well as men; and that women were an important factor in economic life—"by no
means could they be classed with the 'clinging vines,' who were wholly depen-
dent upon the men"—cast the so called modern, liberated Filipino woman of the
early twentieth century in a different light (19). Alzona's history suggested that
perhaps what was a seemingly new outgrowth of U.S. colonial policies—such as
educational achievements by Filipino women—was not so new after all.
As a professional historian whose books utilized European-style historical
practices of linear narratives, source citations, and calendrical dates, Alzona
claimed that her studies were objective and impartial. She asserted that she
documented her interpretations with facts derived from literary sources and
prefaced any controversy that may arise from her use of legend and myth with
the following: "Even if further historical research should disprove the existence
of such ancient kingdoms ruled by women, nevertheless one should not ignore
their significance, that to the imagination of the ancient Filipinos women could
be good rulers" (17).
In an innovative essay on Cherokee and Creek uses of myth and history in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Claudio Saunt observes how the opposi-
tional categories of myth and history—with myth representing what Europeans
perceived to be stories of foolishness and idolatry, and history signifying the
voice of reason—had evolved further with Europeans utilizing the opposition "to
justify their colonization of the world" (675). However, nineteenth century Euro-
pean romantics as well as the first generation of Creek and Cherokee Western-
trained historians bestowed different meanings to myth and history. Saunt argues
that Romantic poets and philosophers referred to myths to signify timeless and
transcendent stories that captured "the spirit of a people" and "the essence of
their culture," and that first generation Creek and Cherokee historians strategi-
138 GENRE

cally utilized this conceptualization of myth in conjunction with European-style

historical practices to claim Indian sovereignty and land title (682).
Like these first generation Creek and Cherokee historians, Alzona strategi-
cally utilized Philippine myth by invoking it to claim the existence of gender
equality as well as the high position of women in Filipino culture. Alzona wrote:
The ancient Filipinos were apparently aware of the equality of man and
woman, for even in their legend about the origin of man this idea could
be discerned. They believed that a large bird alighted on a huge bamboo
and pecked at it so persistently that it was split open, and out of it emerged
a man and a woman who had never seen each other before, for they had
lived in different joints of the bamboo. Upon beholding each other, the
man bowed low before the woman, signifying the respect that man should
pay to woman (18-19).

She then noted the differences between this Filipino creation story and the
western Biblical creation story in order to suggest that traditional Filipino cul-
ture was superior to Western ones. After summarizing the Filipino creation story
about the bird and the bamboo tree, she asked:
Is not this legend very unlike the widely accepted Christian story of the
creation of woman out of a rib of man, a story which is frequently cited
to give an air of plausibility to the fallacious contention that woman is
inferior to man by the very act of creation and therefore should be sub-
ject to man's authority? In a large measure the Biblical story of creation
is responsible for the subjection of women for centuries throughout the
Christian world as the laws of civilized countries alone reveal. Our Fili-
pino legend at least traces the origin of man and woman to a common
source, a bamboo, and thus places them on the same footing (19).

In reconstructing a glorious Filipino past, this strategic use of myth and

history called for Filipino national pride and a place for the Philippines among
the world's nation-states. Yet it also had its social costs. In reading nation and
nationalism back into the past, Alzona's history emphasized that these ancient
Filipino traditions distinguished Filipinos from other "Orientals": "[Filipino
women were] unlike the women of other oriental countries [as] they were never
confined to a life of sheltered seclusion and ease" (3). In doing so, her work
complemented the geopolitical project of Orientalism, a racialized and gendered
project entailing the construction, justification, and perpetuation of political,
social, and economic hierarchies between the East and the West. Alzona was
not the first Filipino woman to employ such a strategy. In a 1920 article, Emma
Sarepta Yule highlighted Filipino feminism by contrasting it against the Oriental
backwardness of Japanese, Indian, and Chinese women:
 A FILIPINO WOMAN 139

Lying midway between the dainty kimono of Japan and the veiled lady
of India, and alongside of the "lily-footed" dame of China is the woman
of the Philippines, a type of feminism unique in the Orient. A woman in
whose development there has been neither seclusion, nor oppression, nor
servitude (737).

To the extent that it perpetuates such Orientalist stereotypes, the impact of The
Filipino Woman in transforming the social hierarchies Alzona wanted to contest
remains questionable.

In our current transnational world, trans-Pacific crossings play a formative

role. The sizable presence of Asian foreign students in U.S. universities, the
active recruitment of Asian professional workers by U.S. businesses, and the
continuing global presence of the U.S. in Asian countries through military bases
and export processing zones have changed the way Asian Americanists pose
questions and conduct research about the Asian American past. In this self-con-
sciously global age, the life of Encarnacion Alzona and her book The Filipino
Woman are no longer strange to or outside of what counts as Asian American
history and literature. Thus, in an essay about the writing of sociologist Paul
Siu, Adam McKeown reconceptualizes Siu's research on Chinese sojourners as
follows: "A recovery of these sojourners suggests that astronauts and diaspora
are not new challenges to narratives of Chinese American identity, but links to
a thread of the Chinese American past that have been submerged under nation-
based narratives" (140). McKeown suggests that these links "can direct us
beyond the historical myths of the United States to identities that flow through
and across boundaries rather than identities that are marginalized by them"
(140). In Alzona's case, her trans-Pacific life and her historical treatment of Fili-
pino women compels us to confront the construction and strategic uses of those
myths—Philippine myths as well as American ones.

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