Queering the Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalism in the Filipina/o Diaspora by Gina K. Velasco (review)

For hegemonic discourses of representation, critical scholars have paid intense attention to the U.S. nationalism politicizing the xenophobic hierarchy of differences. Aligning with anti-essentialist frameworks of identity construction, queering the global Filipina body signifies a rhetorical space of intersectional resistance where diasporic figures are racialized, gendered, and classed to facilitate the U.S. imperialism and purify the American national identity simultaneously. Within these inter/transcultural contexts, Velasco incorporates their anti-imperialist feminist standpoints to contest the racial heteropatriarchal structure of transnational exploitation. The book uncloaks the presence of nationalist ideologies in defending the subjugation of Third World migrants.

Contextualizing diasporic experiences in a heritage language program at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, chapter 1 reflects the gendered tropes of geopolitical representation in which balikbayans (U.S.-born citizens and migrants of Filipina/o descent returning to their homeland) perform masculinism to claim their U.S. national belonging. Balikbayan's diasporic nationalism is thus depicted through the relatedness with masculine America contrasting the normative symbol of feminized others. The articulation of feminized Philippine nation accentuates the U.S. heteropatriarchal legacy by juxtaposing the imperialist symbol of American masculinity with the inferior situatedness of gendered and sexualized Filipina/o body. Balikbayans then manifest their U.S. diasporic identity or American attachment in their homeland of the Philippines by demonstrating whitewashed heterosexual performances: "male, heterosexual, working class, American born, and English speaking" (p. 39). The racial gendered proximity/assimilation to the U.S. masculine empire signifies a discursive filter for identitarian inclusion where balikbayans manifest their claims of representational belonging. Challenging these heteropatriarchal conditions of identitarian negotiation, Velasco portrays Filipina/o immigration as an intervention in the U.S. racial and gendered homogenization. The politics of racialized and gendered Filipina/o body reveals a consolidation of the U.S. imperialism where the intersection of heteronormativity and whiteness functions to preserve the national hegemony. Anti-imperialist lenses of diasporic experience envision rhetorical critiques of gender-based nationalism racializing the other. Accordingly, Velasco complicates the queerness of global Filipina bodies through multilayered analysis of intersecting powers that addresses the "unfixing of essentialized relationships between ethnically marked femininity, racialized labor, and female-assigned bodies" (p. 85).

Chapter 2 analyzes the complex commodification of gendered and sexual Filipina labors within the imperialist structure of global capitalist exploitation. In this vein, the dehumanization of transnational labor migration and simplistic conflation of Filipina bodies and sex workers function as the discursive violence of U.S. exceptionalism. Velasco examines the impacts of global capitalism in mapping the peripheral terrorization of Third World countries. The binary discourse of modernity between Western and Oriental economies defends the materialistic myth of American savior. The transnational exploitation of labor migration becomes obscured by the ideological rhetorics of American rescue or advantageous site for life improvement. Gendered discourses of Third World body signifies heteronormative logics of the superior masculine America justifying their dominance over Orientalized others. The substitution of imperialist enslavement with gendered immigrant labor (e.g., sex worker, feminized industry workforce) characterizes the U.S. neocolonial control in which the global capitalism relies on racialized cis-hetero-able-productive bodies to facilitate the white heteropatriarchal influence. Critiquing the U.S. nationalism as an ideological basis on Filipina gendered racialization, Velasco dismantles the deceptive discourse of American progressive veneers advancing global women's freedom while obfuscating capitalist reality of transnational economic extraction.

Chapter 3 demonstrates Velasco's counternarratives of Filipina gender roles in the U.S. heteronormativity of Asian women hypersexualization and also in the American homonationalism embedded in LGBT cultural politics. Through representations of Mail-Order Bride (M.O.B.) in the heterosexual relationship, Velasco argues the historization of feminized Asianness in normalizing Filipina bodies as objects of sexual subservience including transnational sex workers and world bride commodities. These racialized fetishes not only emphasize the inherent constellation of masculine imperial power...