In American Tropics, Isaac examines the American empire's images of the Philippines in turn-of-the-century legal debates over Puerto Rico, Progressive-era popular literature set in the Latin American borderlands, and mid-century Hollywood cinema staged in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Isaac also scrutinizes media coverage of the Cunanan case, Boy Scout adventure novels, and Hollywood films to argue that territorial sites of occupation are an important part of American identity. The book further reveals the imperial imagination's role in shaping national meaning in Filipino American novels forced to articulate the empire's enfolded but disavowed borders. Tracing the American empire from the beginning of the 20th century to Philippine liberation and the US Civil Rights movement, the book lays bare Filipino Americans' unique form of belonging marked indelibly by imperialism and at odds with US racial politics and culture.

Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press, USA

Publication Date:
2006

Format:
Softcover / 9 x 5.75 inches / 205 pages / BW

Language:
English

ISBN: 978-0-8166-4274-8