Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T16:17:43.127Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Feminist-Pragmatist Reflections on the Filial Obligations of a Filipina American Daughter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2021

Celia T. Bardwell-Jones*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Hawai`i at Hilo, 200 W Kawili St, Hilo, HI96720
*
Corresponding author: celiab@hawaii.edu

Extract

In this essay, I reflect on the contradictions that arise from a personal experience of conflict with my father and the clash of traditional Filipino gender norms in the context of the practice of name changes within the institution of marriage and intersecting feminist critiques of patriarchy. My understanding of the Tagalog amor propio is self-love or self-pride within Filipino culture and signifies one's authority, place, and meaning in the community. As a concept of authority, amor propio encourages practices of respect toward the authority figure. In the context of the home, amor propio is attributed to the father, and members of the family ought to respect his amor propio. This essay examines my own conflicted relationship with my father and my attempts to navigate the complex terrain of amor propio, as a Filipina, feminist/peminist, dutiful daughter. Filipino immigrant families face distinct challenges within family life owing to globalization, colonialism, and racism, so I find Jane Addams's social ethics of filial relations helpful in framing the tension between individual and social claims within the specific cultural values expected of Filipina women as dutiful daughters. Addams's feminist social sensibilities in her work at Hull House were attuned to the plight of daughters and the conflicting claims of the family emergent within the crowded immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago. She was able to articulate and sympathetically understand the generational divide within immigrant families at Hull House and sought to bridge these differences within the context of the family. I reflect on her work in my own experience as a dutiful Filipina daughter.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Addams, Jane. 2002. Democracy and social ethics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1999. Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Bardwell-Jones, Celia T. 2009. Meeting a salty piece of land. Philosophy and Jimmy Buffett: The porpoise driven life, ed. McKenna, Erin and Pratt, Scott. Chicago: Open Court Press.Google Scholar
Espiritu, Yen Li. 2003. Home Bound: Filipino American lives across cultures, communities, and countries. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geller, Jaclyn. 2001. Here comes the bride: Women, weddings and the marriage mystique. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.Google Scholar