As early as the Civil War, a dozen Filipino men living in Massachusetts enlisted in the Union army. In the 1900s, Filipino pensionados studied at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other colleges. After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Filipino medical, military, and other professionals settled in and around Greater Boston in Cambridge, Lexington, Malden, and Quincy. To support their communities, Filipino immigrants founded civic organizations such as the Philippine Medical Association of New England, Pilipino-American Association of New England, and Philippine Nurses Association of New England. Since 1976, parents have been volunteering at Iskwelahang Pilipino (Filipino school) to encourage their American-born children's pride for Filipino traditions. Included are never before seen photographs of the Aquino family during their time in exile. This book highlights the rich histories of Filipinos in Greater Boston and aims to inspire more works that document our immigrant community that has grown in the early 21st century to over 25,000 people.

"Herein, we bring you to sites that have been central to the lives of 'the people' of Greater Boston over four centuries. You'll visit sites associated with the area's indigenous inhabitants and with the individuals and movements who sought to abolish slavery, to end war, challenge militarism, and bring about a more peaceful world, to achieve racial equity, gender justice, and sexual liberation, and to secure the rights of workers. We take you to some well-known sites, but more often to ones far off the well-beaten path of the Freedom Trail, to places in Boston's outlying neighborhoods. We also visit sites in numerous other municipalities that make up the Greater Boston region-from places such as Lawrence, Lowell and Lynn to Concord and Plymouth. The sites to which we do 'travel' include homes given that people's struggles, activism, and organizing sometimes unfold, or are even birthed in many cases in living rooms and kitchens. Trying to capture a place as diverse and dynamic as Boston is highly challenging. (One could say that about any 'big' place.) We thus want to make clear that our goal is not to be comprehensive, or to 'do justice' to the region. Given the constraints of space and time as well as the limitations of knowledge--both our own and what is available in published form--there are many important sites, cities, and towns that we have not included. Thus, in exploring scores of sites across Boston and numerous municipalities, our modest goal is to paint a suggestive portrait of the greater urban area that highlights its long-contested nature. In many ways, we merely scratch the region's surface--or many surfaces--given the multiple layers that any one place embodies. In writing about Greater Boston as a place, we run the risk of suggesting that the city writ-large has some sort of essence. Indeed, the very notion of a particular place assumes intrinsic characteristics and an associated delimited space. After all, how can one distinguish one place from another if it has no uniqueness and is not geographically differentiated? Nonetheless, geographer Doreen Massey insists that we conceive of places as progressive, as flowing over the boundaries of any particular space, time, or society; in other words, we should see places as processual or ever-changing, as unbounded in that they shape and are shaped by other places and forces from without, and as having multiple identities. In exploring Greater Boston from many venues over 400 years, we embrace this approach. That said, we have to reconcile this with the need to delimit Greater Boston--for among other reasons, simply to be in a position to name it and thus distinguish it from elsewhere"--

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States extended its empire into the Philippines while subjugating Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. And yet, one of the most popular musical acts was a band of “little brown men,” Filipino musicians led by an African American conductor playing European and American music. The Philippine Constabulary Band and Lt. Walter H. Loving entertained thousands in concert halls and world’s fairs, held a place of honor in William Howard Taft’s presidential parade, and garnered praise by bandmaster John Philip Sousa—all the while facing beliefs and policies that Filipinos and African Americans were “uncivilized.” Author Mary Talusan draws on hundreds of newspaper accounts and exclusive interviews with band members and their descendants to compose the story from the band’s own voices. She sounds out the meanings of Americans’ responses to the band and identifies a desire to mitigate racial and cultural anxieties during an era of overseas expansion and increasing immigration of nonwhites, and the growing “threat” of ragtime with its roots in Black culture. The spectacle of the band, its performance and promotion, emphasized a racial stereotype of Filipinos as “natural musicians” and the beneficiaries of benevolent assimilation and colonial tutelage. Unable to fit Loving’s leadership of the band into this narrative, newspapers dodged and erased his identity as a Black American officer. The untold story of the Philippine Constabulary Band offers a unique opportunity to examine the limits and porousness of America’s racial ideologies, exploring musical pleasure at the intersection of Euro-American cultural hegemony, racialization, and US colonization of the Philippines.

First-rate military history, A War of Frontier and Empire retells an often forgotten chapter in America's past, infusing it with commanding contemporary relevance. It has been termed an insurgency, a revolution, a guerrilla war, and a conventional war. As David J. Silbey demonstrates in this taut, compelling history, the 1899 Philippine-American War was in fact all of these. Played out over three distinct conflicts—one fought between the Spanish and the allied United States and Filipino forces; one fought between the United States and the Philippine Army of Liberation; and one fought between occupying American troops and an insurgent alliance of often divided Filipinos—the war marked America's first steps as a global power and produced a wealth of lessons learned and forgotten.

“Fascinating.”—New York Times Book Review • “Well-written.”—The Boston Globe • “Extraordinary.”—The Christian Science Monitor • “A compelling page-turner.”—Adam Hochschild On the eve of a new century, an up-and-coming Theodore Roosevelt set out to transform the U.S. into a major world power. The Spanish-American War would forever change America's standing in global affairs, and drive the young nation into its own imperial showdown in the Philippines. From Admiral George Dewey's legendary naval victory in Manila Bay to the Rough Riders' heroic charge up San Juan Hill, from Roosevelt's rise to the presidency to charges of U.S. military misconduct in the Philippines, Honor in the Dust brilliantly captures an era brimming with American optimism and confidence as the nation expanded its influence abroad.

"Wurfel presents a full examination of the island republic from independence to the present, placed in the context of the Philippines' long and rich history. . . . [He] has taken advantage of new research and publications, and has devoted more than a third of the study to the Marcos and Aquino administrations. . . . This is an important book--a study no student of Philippine politics and society can ignore."--Choice