A second-generation Filipino in California, writer Mae Respicio Koerner remembers listening to her lolos and lolas tell stories of the “old country” as she was growing up.

“I was fortunate to have a family that taught me the importance of knowing where I came from,” she shares.

Her being Filipino was further bolstered by the close-knit Pinoy community where she was raised.

“I was into folk dancing and I was also a member of several dance troupes,” she recalls. It was only in college that she started to question what it meant to be Pinoy outside her family.

The quest to understand her roots and reconnect with her family’s personal history led Mae to put together Images of America: Filipinos in Los Angeles. The book documents the early 1900s when Filipino sakadas in Hawaii arrived in waves in Los Angeles, eventually settling northwest of downtown, now designated as Historic Filipinotown.

The majority of these Filipino settlers were males who found employment in the service industries, starting out as janitors, dishwashers, or houseboys.

Researching and writing the book took almost a year. “The longest part was gathering images—it’s not always that easy to find a bunch of old photographs as early as the 1920s!” Mae exclaims.

The fun part was meeting the “oldtimers,” which Mae enjoyed tremendously. Many of the people she interviewed for the book shared their experiences of how it felt like to step foot on California for the first time.

“One woman [I interviewed], who was born and raised in Southern California, was a young adult in the forties and had fun memories of going to Hollywood nightclubs and being an extra on movie sets. It was interesting to hear about her life as a young Filipina in that glamorous era. In the old movies, you don’t see Filipinos portrayed as part of Hollywood life.”

Knowing about the challenges and contributions of Filipinos in the LA community helped Mae appreciate the strength of her Pinoy origins, she says, especially as her Ilocano great-grandfather was also a sakada in Hawaii in the 1930s before moving to LA and becoming Shirley Temple’s driver. His sons ended up in Stockton, California, where they worked in a farm.

“They have since passed away, but I will always remember their colorful stories about working in the fields, gambling and dancing in pool halls, being bachelors during that rich era and dealing with discrimination at the same time,” Mae shares.

Feels like home
Mae understands Ilocano fluently and is able to communicate with it (“although not always the best!”), having grown up in a household where her elders spoke mostly in the language. She is now learning Tagalog for a novel in progress.

“One of my characters is Filipina, and there is some Tagalog I use in the dialogue. While it would be easy for me to just ask someone to help me in translating, I’ve always wanted to learn the language fluently,” says the recipient of the PEN Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship in creative writing.

While raised in the US her whole life, Mae says, “I am 100 percent Pinay!” Being Filipino is reflected in how she values family.

“I view the world as a mother/wife/daughter and woman of color, and as someone who is second-generation. I think I have a lot of filters in interpreting and processing the world.”

It has been some time since she last visited the Philippines, Mae intimates, but she remembers visiting the provinces and feeling the impact of the experience. “While it was different from the sort of American suburban high school life that I was used to, ultimately, it still felt like home.”

Mae Respicio Koerner’s Images of America: Filipinos in Los Angeles (Arcadia Publishing, 2007) is available in Amazon and www.filipinosinla.com. Portions of book proceeds will be donated to the Filipino American Library.

Her writing is included in the anthology, The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image, and Other Hazards of Being Female.