Filipino American Studies, Other Americans of European Descent - Biography, California - Regional Biography, California - State & Local History, United States - Ethnic & Race Relations, Asians & Asian Americans - Biography, Immigrants - Biography

Almost Americans

Name: Almost Americans
Author: Patricia Justiniani McReynolds
ISBN: 9781878610645

by Patricia Justiniani McReynolds

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Overview

A defining aspect of our American culture is the experience of those who are born on the fault lines of culture. Patricia Justiniani McReynolds was born of immigrant parents, her father was Filipino and her mother Norwegian. She grew up in California where racism was institutionalized into the miscegenation laws that denied the legitimacy of her parent's marriage and that of her birth. Further, because the Philippines were a colony of the United States, it was not possible for them to obtain citizenship despite long residency. The author's memoirs offer a sometimes tender, sometimes searing insight into the reality of the immigrant experience. American history is told through individual movements of human life coming together into the greater whole. It is the sheer wealth of complex and diverse elements that gives America its strength and meaning. At a time when hard issues are being raised in our society about the recent influx of people from around the world, these memoirs allow us to see on a individual level both the enormous contribution to the entire society that people like the author's family have made, and the often degrading barriers society has placed in their way. The internal search for integration is a constant of the human condition. Almost Americans is a story of a search that is painful, but infused with the joys of self-realization.