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Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, "The Heartland of US Empire: Race, Region, and the Queer Filipinx Midwest" (Temple UP, 2026)
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Donna Doane Anderson
So good, so good so good.
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
welcome to the New Books Network
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Donna Doane Anderson
hello and welcome to another episode of the New Books Network podcast. I'm your host Donna Doane Anderson. Today I have the pleasure of conversing with my friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento about his recently published book the Heartland of US Empire, Race, Region, and the Queer Philippinex Midwest. Published by Temple University Press in 2026, the Heartland of US Empire examines Philippinex cultural representations in the Midwest since the early 20th century. In it, Sarmiento considers the impact of American exceptionalism and US Imperialism in a region where white, middle class, heterosexual and Christian is the norm. He employs a queer, decolonial Philippinex methodology that traces how narratives of America's heartland positions philippinex in the region as normative due to their racial, gender, sexual and national statuses. As a result, the Heartland of US Empire locates queer filipinx in the geographic center of the nation and at the center of cultural narratives, thereby mapping alternative images of diasporic Filipinx identity and experience alongside US regional and national identities, histories and realities. Tom Sarmiento is an award winning Associate professor of English and Affiliate faculty of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University. He specializes in diasporic Philippinex American literature and media cultures, queer feminist theories and cultural representations of the US Midwest. He is the co Editor of the American Studies double special issue, Unsettling global Midwest from 2023. His research appears in several journals and edited collections including Asian American Literature, Discourse and Pedagogies, Multi Ethnic Literature of the United States, Q and A, Voices from Queer Asian North America, and many more. Hey Tom, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Thank you for having me, Donna. It's great to be in conversation with you.
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Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, I'm super looking forward to it. Talking about your book, I know it's been a work in progress. I remember bringing this up to you. Gosh, what was the first time we met at like AAAS and LA? Was it, I don't know.
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yes, 2023 actually. And I remember it because I had just finished writing the first full draft and sending it out. So gosh.
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Donna Doane Anderson
And now I'm holding it in my hands, which is really cool to think about, like how even just in the span of three years, how far things get to come. So I'll just kind of go into my first question, which is thinking about your introduction. And I really loved how in your introduction you really situate yourself into this study and why this is important to you. You mentioned that you're a transplant to the US Midwest. How did you come to write a project then on Queer Philippinex Midwest? And what does that project or process of encountering materials for this book look like for you?
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yeah, that's an excellent question and something that even surprises me in terms of how I ended up writing a project, because this was not the project that I thought I was going to write for my dissertation. And everyone says, oh, you propose a dissertation project and you end up writing something different. And I was like, no, I know what I'm going to write. And what ended up happening actually is because I chose the University of Minnesota to go to graduate school, some of the people that I started to work with had suggested that I think about maybe thinking about Asian Americanness and queerness in the context of the Midwest. So I hadn't, you know, I grew up in California, up all my life up until that point. So thinking about another region was foreign to me but also exciting to kind of think of the different possibilities of what would it mean to do a project that is unexpected in some ways or something that's unfamiliar to me. But I also think, in part because of my thinking through queerness of non normativity that excited me to think about, oh, the Midwest is non normative place to think about Asian Americans. Or at least I thought it wasn't. Right. I think the Narrative continues to be that way. But I think after doing research and studying and I only focus on Philippinexis but recognizing the broad range of Asian American identity and community in the Midwest, realizing that there's so much there that people are doing work, but it's isn't always amplified or people just don't realize that or they overlook it. So. So that's how I came to start thinking about is actually relocating there and kind of having a project that on the one hand, in part because there weren't many people doing this work, but also for me, like it was exciting to kind of be someone that's like familiar as an Asian American person, but not having grown up there and so kind of having like kind of insider outsider status. And then in terms of the actual materials, in terms of how to kind of approach like what does it mean to like study Asian Americans in the Midwest? There's so many different ways to do it. I think part of it is I'm shy. So I knew I didn't really want to talk to people who are alive or many people who are alive. So I knew I didn't want to necessarily do a community based researcher or do ethnography. But realizing the reading materials and particularly the literature that I read or the television show, these are people who are alive. And so nevertheless thinking about the impacts of what does it mean to do work on people who can also respond. And so I want to exercise some care with that. But also I think I. I chose to go the literature cultural studies route in part because like those texts were a little more accessible to me, so I didn't have to travel to as many places. I, you know, I mean, the, the most travel that I did was going to different archives. And that, that was a lot of fun, but just not having as many like, I think having the resources to like do the work based in Minneapolis was really helpful.
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Donna Doane Anderson
Well, I think you do a great job of demonstrating all the ways in which Philippinex people show up in the Midwest, whether that be in the archives or whether that be in these kind of cultural spaces. I know we're going to get into more of that discussion as we continue on with the questions. But I also love the point that you made about the insider outsider perspective. You know, I think there's something really valuable in thinking and critiquing a space by having been quote unquote transplanted there. Right. And then seeing it and then processing it through a field of study. And so this kind of gets me to the intervention of the work which is about the Midwest as the heartland of US Empire, which of course, conveniently is the title of your book. Can you explain a little to our listeners of how normativity is also geographic, which is a quote from your text on page 12, and. And what a study of regions, specifically the Midwest offers to our understanding of the Philippinex American relationship with queerness, race, nation, diaspora and empire, et cetera?
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yes, this. The notion of normativity for me, I think really comes from my training as a queer studies scholar and so recognizing social norms and cultural norms as the kind of basis for which we understand how we live and move through the world. And so even though my focus isn't specifically only on LGBTQ people, LGBTQ people appear in the, in the work nevertheless. But I think it's more this broader sense of kind of one's relationship to other people and to their environment, of how they can feel out of place. And I think that notion of feeling out of place really stuck out to me of like, why for me, as an Asian American person who is also a queer person. And so for me, it's always inseparable, like, do I feel out of place because of Asian American and living in Minneapolis at the time, or is it because I'm a queer person? Or is it both of these things? And you know, I would suspect that it's the intersection of those. And so, like, that's kind of where it started for me, kind of at a personal visceral level, but then kind of to start thinking like, as I would tell people where I live, or like, encountering like, other Asian Americans that, like, oh, like there are people, like there are Asian Americans in the, in the Midwest. And so, like, it was always like a surprise. And so I think that's that sense that it started to feel like, oh, it's not the norm or not the expectation for there to be Asian Americans or Philippine ex Americans in the Midwest. And, and I think the Midwest as a particular region is special not because it's not to claim it as exceptional, but because unlike other regions in the United States, it's both a region and the region or a region that gets stand in for all of America in a way that other regions don't stand in for the nation as a whole. And so, like, and there's work that historians in the Midwest have done, such as Andrew Kin, for example, and a couple other scholars that have done that are cited in the book, but also that have informed my work around the history of the Midwest as this region that is both a region and not a region or an anti region as Kate and mentions in his work. And so for me, the idea that the Midwest is both a normative space because it kind of stands in for middle America and kind of American values and the notion of the heartland as kind of pride and joy of the United States is one aspect of how geography is normative. And then, like coming from an Asian American perspective, the dominant region for Asian Americans is the West Coast. And like, that's part of it is largely because there's a large concentration of Asian Asian Americans along the West Coast. And so that becomes like the norm or the default of like, oh, if you're like Asian American, are you like from California, for example, or Hawaii? But mainly along the continental United States. And so thinking about how that becomes a default and something that isn't questioned.
- [12:26]
Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah. To think about how regions end up carrying these certain signifiers. Right. Whether that be for the Midwest as America's heartland or for the west coast as being maybe the center for Asian American or Asian American histories really demonstrates why surprise seems to be central to the existence of queer Philippinex Americans as you document throughout your work. Right. So that takes us to what you end up calling the core of the psychic life of Philippinex America. The St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, and particularly the Philippine Exposition. And of course, for those of us who study Asian American history or an Asian American student studies period, we know this is like a cornerstone event. This is regularly cited. We regularly talk about it and we note the Philippine Exposition particularly for the ways in which it kind of dehumanizes the over a thousand Philippinex who are made spectacle in that display. So as the kind of core of psychic life of Filipinx America and how it permeates. You mentioned how it permeates through Philippinex American cultural productions such as Susara's poems, Fuentes's experimental mock documentary film and Kershaw's short stories. How do these three texts that you talk about take the location of St. Louis and its contribution to us Philippinex diasporic creativity seriously?
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
So on the one hand, when I started this project, I felt like it would be cliche to write about the St. Louis World's Fair. But then I thought, the more I thought about it and the more work that I did, I'm like, how could I not not also talk about it? And not so. And I realized part of it, the contribution that I am offering, is to really take seriously the place of the Midwest as the staging for this event in Philippinex and Philippine histories. And so the reason why, you know, I call it the core to the psych like a Filipino America is that it's the place that Philippine Studies scholars continue to return to or as an origin point or a starting point for thinking about how to do Philippine and Philippinex American history. And so in part because of its, its timing right of 1904, it's one of the first events or instances of the Philippine ex US encounter on American soil, even though there are other histories that have pointed to Philippine X's or having arrived on US shores prior to that. I think this event in the context of the US Empire really stages the kind of primal scene and kind of a wound that Philippinexes repeatedly return to. And so for me, thinking about the St. Louis World's Fair was a way to not just think about it as an event that happens to take place in the Midwest, but that it's very. Placement in the Midwest is important and that Philippine scholars, Philippine Studies scholars, return to this site as a way to kind of understand what it means to be a Filipino person in the United States. And so the take that I offer is again, so I think Batok eulogy is in an older text or a familiar text to scholars, but I think pairing that with Cesare's contemporary poetry and then Jesse the Courcheball short story, who most folks aren't familiar with. And I think part of that has to do with because Kercheval is not of Philippine descent. And so still I found it interesting that a non Filipino person kind of writing about this history through or fictionalizing this history, I thought was a way to kind of think through these different tropes. So Susaro's poems not only are about just the St. Louis World's Fair in general, but there's a set of poems that actually take us through the different places that like, if you have gone there as an archivist or to study like the fair, like, you'll know these places that she's talking about. So it's not just the fair in general, but like the specific, the site specificity, which I, which I appreciated. And it made me feel connected to her poems because I had also been to those places. And so in the same way that like, I had like, kind of Learned about the St. Louis World's Fair through, like, as a. As a college student in California, it wasn't until I actually went to St. Louis that I kind of had this different kind of reaction. And since then I've seen people who've gone there or who Talk about going there. Like Serita C. In her book the Decolonized Eye talks about visiting the site of the St. Louis World's Fair. And so that notion that there's a placeness to this event in history, that's what I latched onto. And so being able to then also connect that in Fuentes mock documentary Bontoc eulogy as well as Kercheval's short story about and for her. So even though Fuentes did not visit the location, his documentary does try to recreate those site specific places, whereas. And then Kercheval I believe did not visit, but encountered the work through archival traces at her library. And so like I think again the the notion that this event was happening not just in the U.S. but specific in the U.S. i think these three cultural texts help us to kind of make sense that this event happens in a particular place and time.
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Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, I think I agree the idea of thinking or feeling the tension of should I start or should I include the World's Fair? Like it's something that gets referenced a lot. But I appreciated the seriousness in which you were taking the location and how it's appearing in these different cultural forms. Chapter two, of course, turns then to the archive, which unsurprisingly to me and you, is probably one of my favorite chapters, particularly because I love this idea that you open with where you talk about going to all these different archives with not really a specific idea of what you were hoping to look for, but just trying to encounter Philippinex Americans wherever they appeared. And so when you're tracing queer Philippinex Midwest representation in the archives across the region, how do these archives demonstrate, and this is a quote from page 64, the region's central role in administering and documenting the United States Trans Pacific imperial forward ways and how the Philippines as a signifier of her place, queers the Midwest. So that's also another quote from page 30 or 91. So in other words, basically how do Philippinex archives in the Midwest queer our understanding of this region? Just put simply. And then how does that simultaneously produce new ways of reading Philippinex agency within that archive?
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
So I'll tackle the first question first in part because the first part of the book is actually talking about the Philippines queering the Midwest. Right? And so the first two chapters are framed around this notion of the Philippines as the signifier for both a country, but also people or an idea or an imaginary queers, this other entity known as what we think of we know as the Midwest. And so I think for me, putting these two together Intention helps to create this juxtaposition of, again, what we think of as being out of place may actually not be as so out of place as opposed to being socially constructed to be out of place, if that makes sense. So the Philip like and the way sometimes the way I'll talk about this project is like the. The Midwest isn't the first place that you think of to study the Philippines or immediately. Right. And yet actually to study most of Philippine American history. The largest archives are housed in different parts of the Midwest. And so. And so one of those which I talked about is the Bentley Library in the University of Michigan has the largest holdings of Philippine American archives outside of national archives in the United States. And so. And how you and I don't tell this story fully. Other people have done a great job to kind of trace that. That history. But I think for me, I talk a little bit about why Michigan is a place to go, in part because the Michiganders who went to the Philippines at the late 19th century brought back the materials which are then now housed there. And so that's one of the ways that I think the Philippines queers the Midwest is that it kind of unsettles our normative understandings of the Midwest as the heartland, which then kind of gets read as white Americana. And actually studying the Philippines through the Midwest helps to amplify the US as an imperial power. And that because of its connections abroad through empire and colonization, that it changes the story of the Midwest as simply being insular or cut off from the rest of the country or this pastoral ideal. But it's actually a transnational region that gets connected to all these other places. So it reminds me of Kristin Hogansson's work in the Heartland of the notion of connection. And then Gayatri Gopinath's work on just region and more generally talks about region as being about connection as well, as opposed to being cut off. And so those two kind of ways of thinking about the Midwest and region more generally as a space of connection as opposed to simply insularity or being cut off. The other part of your question around new ways of thinking about Philippine agency. So I guess part of this actually is an issue of method as well. And I appreciate how you mentioned, because that's really actually what I did is, is like I just randomly would pick a location that I happened to be adjacent to, and I'm like, is there anything about the Philippines or Philippine exes? And so. And so for me, it was both about, like, yes, like, going to the Bentley was an obvious place but then thinking about my own institution, Kansas State University, would there be anything there? And there was it actually. This has become one of my favorite chapters. This is one of the last chapters I wrote. And it's a newer chapter. It's not in my dissertation. And so this was a lot of fun to write and to pretend to be a historian for a minute, or I guess, as an interdisciplinary scholar, trying my hats at a lot of different ways of doing the research. And I think one of the things that I wanted to bring about was to call attention to that, like, even in the colonial archives, where colonized voices, marginalized voices may not be as prominent that you can still find them if you look. And so I think for me, part of it was, you know, trying to look intentionally, but also some of it was happenstance. Right? And so one of the examples that, like, I've fallen in love with is this story of Asboa, who was a. A cook for a Kansas State alum, Franklin Kaufman, when he was abroad there. And so he mentions having this cook that was with him. And it's like, in his memoir that he wrote, like, in his, like, 70s or 80s. And so the fact that this person was someone that he remembered, but also, like, is named, I thought was really special to kind of show that there are, like, Philippine voices in these archives. And so even, like. And there's a photograph that I am not sure, but I speculate is. Could be the. The cook that's this photograph in the book. But he's also overshadowed by a white man in front of him, which I also thought was, like, metaphoric of, you know, the. The presence or the. The overpowering presence of. Of whiteness kind of eclipsing Philippine voices. And yet they. They still are there if you. If you look. And so I think. And then similarly with the student papers that other. That are at the University of Michigan that other people have started to write about as well. Like, seeing those like, as a teacher, as someone that teaches. Right. Someone that teaches writing, and being able to see the kind of writing relationship with the students and again, being able to see student voices. So even though they may be responding to prompts by this white man, Frederick Boehner, they're still offering some of their own style and agency and their own perspective and voices. And so I thought that was also something to see or to acknowledge in the archive.
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Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, I really appreciate that you're breaking that down. 1. I can't help but make the parallel between the photograph that you're talking about and chapter five, which we're not going to jump from chapter two to chapter five right now. We'll get there eventually, but particularly the character of Howard. So anyway, I'm just saying that out loud so that I remember to come back to it. But the other thing too is grounding this chapter within these key moments within Philippinex American history, right? The Thomasites, Land grant universities and the international student. And also I love the idea that you are going into places archives just trying to discover Philippinex voices whenever possible. And I think that's a great, great part of the historical practice. So I really appreciated that chapter. We get a little bit more into the literary in chapter three, which is actually the interlude of your book, which focuses on sensing through geographic nostalgia and melancholy, which particularly appears in Bienvenido Santos literature. Particularly you focus on spatializing loneliness, processes of missing and inhabiting loss, and how that attends to commonly held beliefs that Philippinex Americans situated in the Midwest must be or must feel in terms of disorienting and because they lack diasporic communities like those on the West Coast. How does Santos's writing employ the middle as a metaphor? And how does this afford opportunities to imagine community and social belonging differently?
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Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yeah, this is a tricky one for me. I think in part because and I and I guess in many ways there's always more than one answer or more than two answers. And I think that's if I think about that in terms of the metaphor, the middle as being two open ends, that there are possibilities, that there's more than two possibilities and definitely more than one. And so I think so. On the one hand, and the reason why I say this is tricky is on the one hand I. I do make the argument that the Midwest affords different opportunities for diasporic Philippinexes to live a different life than they would have like on the west coast around other, more around more Philippine exes. Because there actually is a community of Philippines in places around Chicago and that other old timers of Santos's generation do connect with. But it's not as populous as the kinds of communities that Carlos Bulason writes in America's in the Heart. And so I and so in some ways, like I feel like unintentionally or perhaps implicitly, like I use Bienvenido Santos's work as a kind of anchoring for the Philippinex Chicago or the Philippinex Midwest more broadly, in the same way that Bulasan is often used as the kind of Filipino X narrative for the west coast and in particular California, even though like the migrants that he traces go up and down the west coast, which is reflective of the transient nature of migrant labor. So for Santos's work, the middle as a metaphor, I think is about being generationally kind of as old timers who are at one point new migrants, and then they age and become, post 1965, become the old timer generation that kind of have a disconnect with the newer migrants that are coming. And so I feel like they're kind of stuck in this limbo place and being nostalgic for a past that is no longer there. And then I think, so that nostalgia also comes with the loss of one's homeland and not being able to return. And I think that's also reflective of Santos in his own biography of different points, of not being able to return to the Philippines during World War II and then later during the Marcos regime, he was unable to return to the Philippines. And so I feel like that sense of nostalgia for a past, but also the loss of homeland becomes prevalent in the. The middle of the country where Santos was largely based most of the time when he was in the United States. And then how I read that in his stories is these different moments of, like, the tone of melancholia recurs. And so for me, like, trying to figure out what that could be about. And so I speculate it has to do with the place that they're located. I'm sure there. There are other answers to that, but, like, for me, I felt like that was an opportunity to kind of again, think place based. And how that kind of being in. In a different part of the country that isn't typically associated with Filipino is how that kind of manifests in the kind of the connections that. Or lack of connections that the characters are able to form. So there's one of the stories where it's. They joke that, like, oh, like, how did you survive living the winters of Chicago? And so. And. And these were because one of the characters ends up on the east coast, where there's a larger concentration of Philippine exes during World War II. And so again, that notion that this, the middle is this kind of wasteland, if you will, or like. Or a no. A no man zone, so to speak.
- [33:18]
Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, I think 1. I find that reading of Santos's work really compelling, particularly because you're offering us kind of new geographies to think through what Midwest means, and particularly through the way he's articulating it and talking about his experiences. And I think it's a great moment in which we transition into the second half of your book. Right. Whereas the first part of the book focuses on how the Philippines queers the Midwest. We have this chapter on Santos work which really kind of situates this metaphor of the middle, literally in the middle of the book itself. And then we move into part two, which is focusing on how the Midwest queers the Philippinex diaspora. You mention how in this second half of the book you focus on the Philippinex Midwest cultural productions and. And how they quote, rethink questions of home, homeland, nation and belonging through queer embodiment, sociality and trans locality. And that's from page 26. I think Santos's work gives us a great launching point into thinking about some of those questions as you analyze in that previous chapter. In chapter four we get a focus on Filipinas in the Wild west, which situates the Midwest in a spatialized narrative of unruliness that is often attributed for most folks to the West. Right. Whatever the west embodies or whatever the west may be. So how does Galang's work, her wild American self and Pamatmat Edith can shoot things and hit them render the Midwest as an origin for Philippinex? And perhaps could you maybe describe a little bit of how you're interrogating or thinking through the notion of wild or unruliness in this particular chapter?
- [35:09]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Sure. Actually, I was wondering if I could circle back to the previous question or make a connection to. Yeah, yeah. Because So I think. So part of when I'm thinking about Santos's work, not only is there this intensity around nostalgia and loneliness and melancholia, but there's also intense homosociality that happens amongst his male characters that can border on homoeroticism. And so I think that is also another moment where I feel like actually the middle, the Midwest creates an opportunity for queer sociality. Which isn't to say. And this is where the kind of. When I go back to that, when I said it was kind of tricky, like I don't want to necessarily paint like Diaspora or like the Midwest as a space that all of a sudden is more liberatory. But I think for me it's more about different kinds of possibilities that. That emerge. And I think it's actually a nice segue into chapter four in part because in Sanchez's stories the Midwest isn't an org, like it's an origin point in their. Or one of the destination points along their way in their migration. Whereas in the stories of Galang and in the Pamat Mat's play, these are second generation Filipino Americans who are born and raised in the Midwest. So that that becomes a literal point of origin. Like that's like all they've ever known to be what the US Philippine ex America is. And so I think the notion of the. The West. So this is where my literary hat comes on of like using puns to play around with the notion of the west, of the different meanings of the west, right? So like in the context of the Philippines, like the west becomes the US right, or Euro America, whereas in early instances the west was the Midwest. And so I see those as like two different. Like, so coming one from the Philippines and then coming from the east coast to moving westward through expansion, this, the mid. The Middle west, the Midwest becomes a place that is also the west and not the West. And so it kind of functions as this ambiguous space which I actually think is really generative to think about the Midwest or regions more generally, as actually always in movement, that they're not just these static things that kind of are forever the same thing. And I think, you know, and I imagine you would appreciate this as the historian, right, that like, you know, change over time, that like, nothing stays the same and that. And actually the kind of. Kind of a tangent, but just kind of fresh on my mind. Mai Ling Hong is a literary scholar and a poet, and she has a new book of poems called Continental Drift. And she talks about how, you know, continents at a kind of geological scale are always right. And so that was actually a really great way for me to think about like, place as always in movement, like literally as the kind of geology of it, but also geography in terms of kind of how we make meaning of a thing. And so to come back to the stories, I think for galang stories, because they're mostly about young Filipinas who are coming of age in the Midwest, who have. Who were born and raised in the United States. The Philippines is this other place. And so, I mean, their parents kind of admonish them and saying, like, you become this wild, unruly young person and the way that we're going to set you straight, so to speak, is to ship you back home to the Philippines. And it's always, it's. It's funny to me in part because. Or this attention that I try to wrestle with is like, for me personally, like the Philippines is my parents home, not my home. And not to say that I don't have ties to the Philippines, but I want a question. Does the Philippines always have to be the point of origin for people of Philippine descent as opposed to can other places be also home? So, like, can the west coast be home for me. And me being a transplant out of the west coast, being a diasporic person in relation to the West Coast. And so I think that's what I try to wrestle with when I'm reading these. These stories, or in the case of a Matt Wat's play, it can shoot things that hit them. It's also about another kind of unruly young, young woman who is, you know, or tween, really, who is trying to, like, make sense of growing up as a latchkey kid with her brother. And so I latched onto this notion of wildness in part, actually, by teaching about Midwestern literature and starting to see kind of this thread of both, I think, or maybe perhaps they all happen to be migrant literatures of a sort, because I'm thinking of Willa Cather's My Antonia, who follows bohemian immigrants, and then other immigrant literatures that had women protagonists that I had been teaching at the time kind of all, like, had. As if, like, the United States was this place in which young women were becoming improper. And so I wanted to think about that as, like, what is. Like, this is a. A larger genealogy of, like, how the Midwest or the west as the frontier becomes a space in which gender boundaries can be crossed, for example, but other social and cultural boundaries more broadly.
- [41:36]
Donna Doane Anderson
I loved that reading and the connection that you just made with Catherine. I also made while I was reading it, and I was like, wow, I'm so glad that you brought that up because of thinking through, like, how, you know, women are portrayed in these literatures, in these spaces. Right. There are some common threads. We'll save that for another conversation. Maybe let's stick with the book.
- [41:57]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yeah, there's an article in there somewhere.
- [42:00]
Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, there really is. That's what I was thinking. I actually wrote it down in my notes to be like, let's talk later. But I think the reason why I want to move on so quickly is because I love chapter five one, because I'm a massive fan. I grew up on Glee Love Superstore. And this idea of analyzing these two TV shows, and particularly the Philippinex American representation in them, was creative, astounding. Lovely. I was. I was eating it up, really. So by this point in the book, we've already established the Midwest as the palm facet of US Empire in the Philippines. So what makes the appearance of Filipinx characters in both of these shows surprising and unexpected? And I love that you kind of break down how each of these characters assume kind of dominant scripts, and then you're reading through them I know that maybe we don't have time to go through every single one of them, but are there ways in which the dominant scripts, whether racial or gendered, that these characters represent or are responding to? How does this kind of point us to seeing the world as it should be, which you allude to in the chapter's title?
- [43:15]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Yes. So this is actually, if I. If my memory is correct, I think this is the. One of the. The first chapter I wrote, or a version of it. Right. So this actually has always been one of my favorite chapters, in part because I'm a huge Gleek. And so I think, you know, what. What better way to work through being a fan than to write about it? Right. But. And so the. The title of the chapter, you know, a part of the chapter of Seeing the World as it should be, comes from the. A quote from the. The show Glee, which I. I thought was really. You know, on the one hand, people can interpret it as cheesy, and I can see it that way, too. But I also genuinely do think. I think the show was transformative, even though with all its thoughts around multicultural inclusion, I still think what the show did and what I wanted to try to do through its Filipino characters, to kind of even push it even further, is the kinds of possibilities that that show allows through representation in a popular medium like mainstream television, like on primetime television. And so, on the one hand, so circling back to this, and I. And I think you're right, that by the time we get to this chapter, Philippines in the Midwest shouldn't be surprising. And yet they continue to be. And I think that it is a reflection of how the dominant scripts that were not encouraged to think, like, of course there would be Filipino people in this area. Right. Or, of course there'd be Asian Americans in Ohio. And yet. So I wanted to think about that tension of why is it that these characters continue to be surprising for me as a. As a viewer and then for other people as well? So both the Filipino characters on Glee and then and on Superstore, what is it about? I think it so happened. So on the one hand, like, I don't want to downplay the Midwest, because I think it is important to where these sites happen. Like. Or in terms like. Because for Glee, Ohio, which is connected to McKinley, and then for Superstore, it's set in St. Louis, which is connected to the St. Louis World's Fair. But I also think as. As I'm kind of thinking aloud right now, that part of the surprise comes, I think, more generally from where Philippinexes are in mainstream US Culture. And so the kind of It's. It's surprising or unexpected to see Filipino's characters on television or even in movies, because that's not the norm. But I also don't know if. Or I guess I do know the answer. Like, I think. Like, I don't think more. Like, more would necessarily be the answer either. I think part of it is structurally the way that Philippinexes are. The relationship to the US Is one. For me, it's structurally queer, which, you know, builds up Sri to C's work and Alan Isaac's work in part because of the terms of colonization. Right. So not to say that that can't be undone, but I also feel like that's a genealogy that can't be erased. And so I think the kind of structurally subordinate, queered position in which Filipinos find themselves in kind of continues into the present day. And so the notion that they're surprising and unexpected is because, I guess I've internalized that I'm not supposed to be visible. And yet they're very visible. Yeah. And so I think that that's one of the fun things to play with is actually to then in. In some ways, like, I go against this. My own argument that they're surprising because I'm able to, like, chart all the ways in which the. These things may be coincidental. But then there's so much of a pattern there that, like, how can you not not see them?
- [47:27]
Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah. But I also want to think through how you're kind of breaking down each of these characters and thinking through the ways in which they kind of reinforce some of those tropes that we see elsewhere. Maybe this is more a fixture of Glee. Right. And perhaps maybe a fixture of the 2010s, and maybe what was more acceptable a decade and a half ago than perhaps now. Whereas Superstore really kind of situates Mateo, the character, in this kind of intersectional framework where he's allowed to be a little bit gray area. He's not really the best character, but he's deeply likable in terms of how he maneuvers through the world. All that said, love this chapter. Highly recommend. Tan out of ten.
- [48:20]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Thank you. Yes. Yeah. And even if you don't, even if you aren't familiar with the show, which how could you not be? But even if you aren't, I think I hope that you're able to enjoy the different ways to read through characterizations.
- [48:36]
Donna Doane Anderson
Yeah, of course. Of course. And anyway, I could continue on and on, but, you know, I'm gonna Think about the listeners here and. And try and think about your conclusion too. So, you know, you mentioned how Glee is situated in Ohio, which is very much tied to William McKinley, who's the president at the time in which the Philippines is annexed by the United States. And then also how, you know, Superstore is situated in the suburbs of St. Louis, which of course is bringing us all the way back to the St. Louis World's Fair. So what better way to kind of think about the conclusion of your book where you go to the Missouri History Museum and review the 1904 World's Fair, looking back and looking forward exhibit in your kind of reworking of the fair and its meaning to the US Philippinex Diaspora, as well as this establishment that you've made through your book of a new queer Philippinex Midwestern cartography. What are you trying to offer Philippinex Americans and Asian Americans more broadly about how they can envision the Midwest? And maybe if I were just to kind of simplify that question all the way down, what are you really hoping your readers take from this book?
- [49:49]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
So one of the things that comes to mind is so there's a book by Benito Vergara Jr. Called Pinoy Capital, which is about Philippinexes and Daily City. And so again, that kind of anchor point for California being the capital of Filipino America. And so I wanted to think about this book as a. As a way to think about the other parts of Philippinex America that aren't always thought about or seen as an afterthought and yet continued actually or incidentally happen to be central to our understanding of diaspora. And so for me, this new queer Philippinex Midwestern cartography really is about, for me, queer as a method of kind of frustrating, unsettling, troubling, challenging, normative ways of understanding our world. Not to be critical of it, right? Or not only just to be critical of it, but actually to be creative in terms of trying to make and generate new meaning, new ways of looking, new ways of knowing, new ways of being, feeling and seeing. And so I think that for me is this mapping project. And I often write about the different chapters as constellation points that, taken together offer like an image or a different kind of image of the Philippine diaspora in the United States that, I mean, I guess, is trying to be more inclusive, right? And so. And I know the project of inclusion sometimes can feel like, you know, when is it enough? And I don't think it'll ever be enough. And I don't think it should just be about inclusion or belonging or like, for me, like the goal isn't a sense of belonging or to claim the United States, but it is to reckon with the absences or the things that we overlook to generate a more holistic picture. And I think, and again, as someone that's a transplant. So I guess taking it back to your first question, that I want to exercise care too. That even though I don't necessarily directly talk about Midwest, Filipino or Philippinex Midwesterners, that it is also, the book is also a nod to the actual people who do live here, including myself. Right. And that, that we exist, that we have stories to tell and that like I hope that the book becomes an entry point to, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, in an ideal world, like I would like my book to. In the same way that, like, it's not I, I, it's for it to not be so surprising that I'd like the book to become an entry point for us to, you know, one day see the Midwest as not an exceptional place, but a place in which of course there are going to be Asian Americans there. But that at the same time it's. The stories are unique, right. Or they're place specific like that you can't have a homogenous story because I think that would also be a disservice. And so I think for me the emphasis is recognizing that the Philippine Diaspora, the history and reality of it is geographically diverse and so that there isn't just one place that then calcifies into a norm. In the same way that I think for me, the Philippines has become this place in which all diasporic Philippine exes are anchored to. But I don't want that to be the only place. So in the same way that I don't want just one place like within the US Filipino Diaspora to stand in for all of Philippinex experiences in the US So, so I'm saying like, yeah, like the west coast shouldn't be the only standard for which we measure what Philippinex experience is. Like, yeah.
- [54:03]
Donna Doane Anderson
I really appreciate really the exercise of care that you present throughout this book and the ways in which you're asking your readers to reimagine new maps, new cartographies that situate Asian people in all places. Right. And I know that your work is building on a growing literature of Asian American Midwest studies, which I get to be such a part, I mean, to be a part of is great. And I get to be able to cite this work and to think about this work with intention as I think through my own studies. So I really appreciate you Putting this forth, Tom, and as we kind of close out our conversation, I always like to end with just kind of a note of inspiration. What's currently inspiring you, and if there are any projects that you're working on, things that are exciting to you, as you've kind of closed out the heartland of US Empire, would you be able to share that with us?
- [54:59]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Absolutely. Yeah. So as I've thought about this, I've thought about what inspires me on multiple fronts. And so one of them is actually, it just so happens that the timing of my book, I feel like I've noticed, or maybe I've just become more aware as my book has come out that. But it feels like there's a lot more Asian American studies books that have come out. And I don't know if it's like maybe Covid lag, but it just feels like there's a. A fluorescence of a lot of new, exciting books that are out there. There's so many to name. And so I'm afraid to like, name name them only because I don't want to like, highlight one or the other. But I mean, I guess I will say, like, for example, a book that I'm looking forward to reading is Anna Stortes Torn, which is about Asian white life or the kind of tensions around multi raciality. And I think it's. I'm not sure if it has anything about Darren Criss, but it reminded me that the work that I do on Glee and Darren Criss kind of gets at multiraciality as well. And so that's a book that I'm looking forward to. And then Scott Kershiggy's American Peril is a new book that's come out around anti Asian violence and the history of that. And so that's. I'm just really excited to see the work that's coming out. I think in part because of all the things that are happening in the United States, that to know that Asian American studies scholarship continues to thrive amidst attacks against ethnic studies more broadly, queer studies, women's studies, disability studies, and just seeing all this great work that's coming out. And for me, it's an honor to be a part of the conversation and to have my book come out during this time and being seen as part of that conversation in terms of projects that are coming down the pike. So you and I, along with Rebecca Joe Kenney, are in the early stages of thinking about an edited collection on Asian American studies in the Midwest. And so I'm excited about that. And I'm more excited not by the idea of the project but that we put out a call for the American Studies association conference and I'm just getting a lot of response from different people who want to be in conversation. I think that's exciting. And then for me personally, the kind of what's next after this book I'm like I don't want to write another book but I do actually and I know I have time to do it. So this may be another decade long project but I'd like to continue writing about Philippinex actors in particular Attention that I've noticed is the historically Philippinex actors have played everything except being Filipinx so being able to pass as different ethnic characters but more recently Filipino actors have been playing Filipino characters. And so I'm curious of what that shift might be but also what does it mean again to kind of as a viewer feel seen and not seen at the same time.
- [58:34]
Donna Doane Anderson
So wow, all of that sounds fascinating and I just gotta say, like what a culture of community that you've established through your work, your research, your projects, all of that. And so obviously I know I'm looking forward to the work that will continue to be thinking through and I know American Studies is going to be a great venue in which we could really solidify what we're trying to articulate there. But knowing and thinking about this project about Philippinex actors and the second you mentioned that, I'm thinking about all these different, you know, examples in which you're right, like they play these characters that are just not, you know, identified or attributed with Philippinex American cultures. Right. So really excited to see what comes from all of this in the future. But I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today about your book. Highly recommend listeners. Please make sure you check out Heartland of US Empire, Race Region and the Queer Philippinex Midwest and I will see you all later.
- [59:39]
Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento
Thank you for the opportunity. So it was great.
- [59:41]
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