Installation and Dinner Event for Filipino Women’s Club at the Deer Park Lodge, c. May 19, 1957, photograph. Collection of the Sulay Family. WIITH Digital Archive.
Transcript:
In front of you is a photograph celebrating the 1951 swearing-in of new officers for the Filipino Women’s Club of Watsonville. The club was a multi-racial organization that serviced the greater Filipino community in the Pajaro Valley. As the photo shows, the organization did not guarantee that every member had the same experience. We were told that, in the image, Filipinas wearing elaborate and expensive Filipiniana, or traditional Philippine garments, occupy the front-row seats. Whereas, Filipina and non-Filipina women primarily wearing American clothing and less ornate Filipiniana stand in the back. This photograph illustrates how the Filipino Women’s Club was a space where members negotiated racial and economic privilege.
As mixed-race Filipino Americans, Rita and Modesto Tuzon grew up “in-between” two cultures. Although the Pajaro Valley was a multi-ethnic region with many interracial families, some mixed-race Filipinos felt marginalized at times because of their racial background. In this clip, they discuss how their mother, Linda Ardell Tuzon, navigated the racial dynamics of the Filipino Women’s Club.
Modesto Tuzon
Modesto: To be honest, I think that a lot of the Filipino women didn’t realize that—
Rita Tuzon
Rita: Of that generation
Modesto: Of that generation didn’t realize they were saying hurtful things to Mom, in reference to her being white and Rita and I being half-white […]
Rita: She navigated it well. Because she wasn’t super accepted by the Women’s Filipino club […]But she was, she was friendly. I don’t think if you talk to any of those women, they would say that they didn’t have a good relationship with her. […] I don’t think she felt like she had a genuine friendship with a lot of those ladies. […] But there’s a cultural class system, right? Because there were very few in that generation with the manongs, there were very few kids were– who were full blooded, right? […] So it was kind of, from their perspective, an elitism of those kids in those families that were pure. That were 100%. Because they could carry the traditions and it was good they carried the traditions.
