Rina Ayuyang’s noir-styled graphic novel reveals the bleak realities of the Filipino immigration experience
Filipino-American Rina Ayuyang’s noir-styled graphic novel opens at a boarding house in Depression-era Watsonville, California. That’s where our protagonist, Bobot, lives. Bobot has come to the United States from the Philippines, but, despite holding a law degree, can only find work as a strawberry picker. Upon learning that his estranged wife might be in San Francisco, he sets out in search of her. We venture with him into the city’s Manilatown, where he mistakes a club entertainer, La Estrella, for his wife. A shortlived romance ensues, until Bobot discovers that La Estrella is in fact the wife of a fellow farmworker, Angel, who, along with La Estrella’s female lover Dulce, has set Bobot up for a mission to rescue La Estrella from the local Filipino gang.
Bobot’s detective odyssey unfolds in an atmosphere that reflects on a poignant chapter in America’s immigration history. As one of the few Asian groups still allowed entry to the US following passage of the highly restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, Filipinos arrived on the West Coast in large numbers and occupied labour positions previously held by Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian workers; these underpaid, strikebreaking sakadas would dominate the Golden State’s agricultural labour market for the next two decades.
Racial exclusion laces the novel, revealing the bleak realities of the Filipino immigration experience. We witness repeated encounters with xenophobia: a waiter shoos Bobot and La Estrella away, shouting, ‘We don’t want your trouble here!’; a hotel where they wish to spend the night displays a notice reading ‘Positively No Filipinos’; and a race battle occurs outside a dance club frequented by Angel – a reference to the 1930 Watsonville riots, during which hundreds of white men gathered outside a Filipino nightclub and threatened to burn the place down. Even as Bobot dons a neat McIntosh suit and walks around like a savvy cosmopolitan, a sense of alienation haunts his quest for love and belonging.
The Man in the McIntosh Suit by Rina Ayuyang. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 (softcover)
