Filipinos in San Diego with Judy Patacsil .

This post is a bit long overdue .. On October 4th the class went to the San Diego Book Fair at City College to meet Judy Patacsil and learn about her book Filipinos in San Diego. Judy is a counselor at Miramar College and she is also a founding member of the San Diego chapter of the Filipino-American National Historic Society. Her book is co-authored by Rudy Guevarra and Felix Tuyay, the book is a collection of pictures of the first Filipinos to come to San Diego. Through the pictures readers can experience how life was for Filipinos back then. I found the presentation especially interesting because; one, it was about Filipinos (which I am always eager to learn about because there is so much I don't know yet) and two because its based on Filipinos in San Diego, where I've lived my whole life. And I think it's nice to learn about how Filipinos lives were back then in the city I've always called home. Like I've mentioned before, whenever I come across something written and published about Filipinos I get excited because there is a lack of knowledge about them. So reading about and seeing things that validate Filipinos existence, historically speaking, interests me and makes me proud of where I come from.

Before going to the book fair and learning about Dr. Patacsil's book, I didn't really know how big of a Filipino community there was here. Maybe that has to do with the fact that there aren't any landmarks or buildings that show the public that Filipinos were a major part of the San Diego community. Personally I would have loved to see the Manila Cafe still up, as a landmark or something, just to have a piece of the past generations still with us, for the new generation of Filipino and Filipino Americans.

Til next time .. Happy readings (: