Asparagus

Asparagus

as I drive by

look like young green lances

thrown violently from the dark inside the earth.

Whetstone sharpens the spade

to silver and the field hands

thrust the blade in the ground

to cut. Maura pours

hollandaise over the speared tips

on my blue plate,

the last for seasons.

What is worse, pain

from outside or inside?

Early morning the shadows of asparagus

reach across the earth like the shadows of sundials,

marking the moment 

my father collapsed, was pressed down.

This poem by Kenneth Zamora Damacion was first published in “The False Angel,” A limited edition booklet from Pegasus Bookstore, 1998.

……………..

Filipino America is the direct outcome of American subjugation over the Philippines and its people following territorial concessions to the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Filipino people indoctrinated with American customs and standards were further conditioned by white supremacy as a product of American re-education. As colonizers, America had introduced a period of reprogramming throughout the Philippine Islands, including the establishment of colonial education that taught American history, economics, politics, and the English language as a superior alternative to Philippine culture and teachings. In The Making of Asian America, Erika Lee notes that “By the early twentieth century, there were American missionaries, teachers, doctors, and colonial officials all over the new colony, and American-style schools taught U.S. geography, history, government, and civics.” An American education in the Philippines intended to comprehensively mold a docile population fit for the agendas of its colonizer. When a demand for cheap labor became critical after the exclusion of other Asian immigrants (such as the Chinese and Japanese who were targeted by policies in the 1880s and early 1900s), recruitment for Filipino immigrants to the U.S. began in earnest. Many Filipinos (and noticeably fewer Filipinas) eagerly responded to the opportunity to exercise the American dreams they had been implanted with. 

At first, Filipinos and Filipinas (the Philippines uses gendered language as a result of centuries under Spanish colonialism) were heavily recruited by the Hawai’ian Sugar Planters Association, which had managed to incite a trickle of interest. When the first migrants returned home with stories and, even more importantly, cash, clothes, and evidence of their success in America, an influx of immigrants from the Philippines landed in the U.S. Perhaps out of contempt or maybe because of shame, many early Filipinas/os didn’t articulate the extent of their experiences with racism and subjugation in America. In Little Manila Is in the Heart, Dawn Mabalon explains this anomaly further, “Preferring instead to allow myth and rumor to make their experiences seem glamorous, or perhaps because descriptions of the conditions they had lived in might prove too humiliating, returning sakadas [Hawai’ian plantation workers] rarely shared their true experiences with their families.” As a result of their silence concerning racist oppression in America, waves of Filipino migrants continued to emigrate with the expectation that America would be a supportive and fruitful respite from centuries of Spanish oppression (the Philippines was formally colonized by Spain from 1565 to 1898).

Once stateside Filipinas/os were met with a reality that entirely contradicted set expectations. Instead of acceptance and advancement as wards of the United States government, Filipinas/os found that they were completely ostracized from every facet of life in America, from political enfranchisement to home ownership and social interaction. In the Making of Asian America, Lee captures this experience in the words of Francis Carino, an early Filipino immigrant to the United States. “Growing up learning about ‘the best of America,’ Carino was convinced that the United States was full of ‘riches, beauty, and grandeur.’ ‘We have heard much of America as a land of the brave and the free, land of opportunity,’ he told an interviewer…When Carino arrived, the rampant prejudice and discrimination [he] experienced in the United States, however, broke his heart… ‘The color of the skin makes all the difference’ in the United States, Carino observed.” In fact, Filipinas/os were not only unrecognized in common cause with their fellow American subjects (as their national status and colonial upbringing would have led them to believe), but Filipinas/os found that they were relegated to the very bottom of America’s social hierarchy. As a class of mainly impoverished and uneducated Asian immigrants, and most especially as latecomers, Filipinas/os were the last to wade through the complexities of deep class and racial tensions that pitted communities against one another for resources in one of the world’s most abundant countries. Again, Lee notes that 

U.S. imperialism and the status of Filipinos as U.S. nationals shaped every aspect of Filipino migration to the United States as well as their experiences within the U.S. empire. The U.S. colonization of the Philippines set in motion the second wave of Filipino migration to the Americas (following the thousands who came during the Manila galleon era), and the American presence in the islands taught Filipinos that they were part of America. But when they arrived in the United States, their status as Asians and as colonized people translated into unequal treatment. They were included in the United States, but not as citizens. They could be in the United States but were relegated to the lowest and most exploitable positions. They suffered racism but in ways different from other Asians. They were ‘little brown brothers’ in the United States, and that status came with its own set of problems.

 For the majority of Filipinas/os who had made the trying journey across the Pacific with specific intentions to escape political turmoil and poverty at home, life in the U.S. disappointingly offered more of the same, with the added abasement of being dehumanized by racist social practices and inhumane working conditions. 

Oppressive parameters led to subhuman conditions in the lives of Filipinos working in America. Laborers were forced to work exhausting hours from dawn until dusk in painstaking physical and environmental conditions, with little to no respite. The most infamous jobs were related to asparagus cultivation, a notoriously difficult crop to harvest through skilled knifework, one spear at a time for hours on end. Mabalon gathers the stories of asparagus harvesting in excruciating detail: 

The asparagus season began in late February and lasted until June. When temperatures rose into the 90s and 100s in late spring, two harvests a day were sometimes required. Each worker was required to cover at least eight to ten acres per day. The relentless afternoon heat of the Delta and Central Valley in the spring and early summer forced workers to rise as early as 3:00 AM so they could complete their work by the early afternoon, right before the heat became unbearable.

“…Some Pinoys dropped dead in the fields because of heat and exhaustion. In the 1950s, Demetrio ‘Jimmy’ Ente, a second-generation Pinoy, worked as a sled boy in charge of collecting the asparagus at the end of the rows and conveying it by truck to the packing shed… ‘There was an old man, I was sledding, and the old man - he must’ve been in his eighties - he died right there, about a couple of lines from me, poor guy… We took his asparagus knife and put it in the ground, and put his hat on it. Some of the guys took his body back to the camps. I’ll never forget that.”

In the 1980s, several decades after the barbaric conditions described by second-generation Pinoy Demetrio Enente (Pinoy and Pinay are terms for Filipinos and Filipinas living in America, respectively), my Filipino grandfather died of a heart attack while working at an asparagus farm in Lodi. Grandpa hadn’t been in his eighties, but he was edging toward his seventies when he passed at the age of 69. Reading Demetrio’s story prompted my first consideration of Grandpa’s age in relation to his work, and more specifically, why someone in their senior years was still working under the same harsh conditions they had endured as a migrant laborer for over 40 years. I didn’t know much about my grandparents, but I understood that it was their hard work that set our family’s story in motion. I was also aware that my father, aunts, and uncles, had worked alongside my grandparents in order to sustain their lives in America. Like the early sakadas who returned to the Philippines without mentioning their inhumane experiences in America, my family had also opted for silence in regard to their hardships. Thus without any details regarding his past, I had accepted my father and his stoicism as the product of a necessarily ‘hard life,’ an acknowledgment that underappreciated the scope and tenderness of his humanity. Understood as a requirement that was dutifully taken in stride, the sacrifices of my grandparents and other early Filipinos in America were -and continue to be taken for granted.

Underappreciation for the sacrifices of Filipino Americans, and Filipino American agricultural workers in particular, is the desired consequence of America’s well-oiled systemic racism. The same businessmen who needed the aid of skilled Filipino workers to operate America’s billion-dollar agricultural industry also manufactured racist and derogatory narratives of their Filipino colleagues, in order to negate their contributions and therefore dilute both their humanity and socioeconomic standing. Describing Filipino migrant labor in the early years of migration, Mabalon writes “naive and desperate immigrants were willing to put up with low pay and deplorable conditions. This contributed to the belief that Filipinas/os were docile, tractable, and easily exploited…Growers maintained that their size, skin color, and other racial qualities made Filipinas/os ideal to perform ‘stoop labor’ and to work on wet soil for hours on end.” According to Frank Waterman, formerly of the State Employment Agency, “The white man can’t stand the itch which results from working in the peat fields of the Delta,” insinuating that non-Whites such as the Filipina/o laborers were better suited for work that was physically abusive. 

It wasn’t difficult for Whites in ownership and executive positions to justify the poor and sometimes even deadly working conditions for Filipinas/os. White politicians and academics promoted faux scientific theories about the physique and disposition of the Filipino as being naturally complimentary to the physical contortions of field labor. These arguments for the subhumanity of Filipinos enabled farmers to marginalize their workers and treat them inhumanely. 

The plight of this inhumanity toward Pinay/oy laborers is the subject of my father’s poem, “Asparagus.” In this poem, he offers a rare glimpse into the firsthand perspective of a Pinoy field worker and the mental and emotional tolls that were in addition to the physical suffering of Filipino Americans. As Papa reflects on the fatal heart attack that took Grandpa’s life in the asparagus fields, we are introduced to themes of pain and inhumanity that were pervasive in much of early Filipino America. In these reflections we are allotted the rare opportunity to consider the humanity of Pinays/oys who were otherwise demeaned and disregarded by a white supremacist society, therefore causing an internalized suffering without human emotion and concern within the Filipino American community. 

In “Asparagus,” the value of Filipino American life is both contrasted and contemplated in an appropriate response to my grandfather’s death. Imagery and themes represented in the work subtly allude to fascination with productivity, capitalism, humanity, existence, and meaning. Without offering any specific conclusions or sentiments, the poem offers attention to the life and legacy of Filipino America, where it has been long overdue. This poem illuminates the broader reality of early generations of Filipino Americans contending with the barrage of a white supremacist society. Though they migrated to find work and supply the detestable labor that benefited those who despised them, Filipinos were identified as enemies to this country as disparate newcomers and brown-skinned people. The result was repression. White America took cruel advantage of a population in need, damning them for their efforts in the meantime. Life for Grandpa, and most other Filipinos in America toward the beginning of the 20th century, had been interwoven with disappointment, degradation, and depression, making their stories and lives seemingly forgettable, despite their unprecedented accomplishments. The inarticulation of these experiences thus cemented the effects of systemic racism by allowing Filipinos in America to underestimate and devalue themselves. Filipino Americans responded to the duel attacks on their survival and humanity by avoiding natural human inclinations for love, logic, and expression. In the process of avoiding their inconceivable trauma Pinays/oys buried themselves alive, entombing history, culture, and traditions alongside them. Without sharing Filipina/o stories, even within the community, our histories risk erasure, placing our futures in an equally precarious position. By discovering Pinay/oy contributions such as the creation of distinct urban developments and niche subcultures, or the establishment of ethnic unions and unprecedented labor improvements, we give credit to Filipino people both living and deceased. These validities help Filipino Americans, Americans, and others interested in history, social studies, and the humanities, have the opportunity to further their knowledge and understanding of the diverse human experience, which is an important contribution in and of itself. 

The poem doesn’t explicitly name factors of race, ethnicity, and class. But to an astute and informed reader aware of the poet’s personal context the socioeconomic traits are unavoidable. The “field hands” referenced by the poet are most likely Filipino, like my grandfather. The visualization of a worker using whetstone as it “sharpens the spade” in preparation for duty, sounds more militant than docile, a contradiction to racist propaganda describing Filipinas/os as “little brown brothers.” The militancy of the workers’ preparations is set in opposition to the menacing attributes of the asparagus that is to be contended with. Their stolid activities are reminiscent of the solemn moments that take place on the eve of battle. “Young green lances” announce the arrival of a surprise attack “thrown violently from the dark inside the earth.” In response to the alarm, Filipino laborers knowingly march to their battle stations, ready to “thrust the blade” and “cut,” the enemy “in the ground.” The opposition between the two --laborer and product-- reveals personal sentiments Papa must have harbored against the abusive systems that had taken advantage of him and his Filipino American family, for the benefit of big business and racist economics. While asparagus rules the day and is able to continue life beyond the battlefield and into the lap of luxury as a delicacy to be dressed by “hollandaise” and enjoyed in more vibrant settings, Grandpa and the other workers are immobilized beyond the agricultural setting. Outside of the fields, their presence is unremarkable. 

Consideration of Grandpa’s life is noticeably incomparable to that of the asparagus. While asparagus is the focus of the poem from beginning, middle, and end, Grandpa is a footnote in the last lines: “marking the moment my father collapsed, was pressed down.” The mention of his death in the last snapshot of a panorama that envisions “the shadows of asparagus” that “reach across the earth like the shadows of sundials” evokes an expanse -or abyss- which ultimately claims the life of Grandpa Mamerto. There is no mention of other human beings or a humane reaction to Grandpa’s death. The earth marks the moment of his collapse, yet again signifying disinterest in his humanity. The surface message is clear: the poet’s father died alone. The hidden message is much more complicated: the circumstances of his lonely death are the fabrication of the miserable and lonely lives intended for those marginalized by white supremacist social structures. 

Placed among the footnotes, the overwhelming acknowledgment of his father’s life as worthless in the eyes of humanity seems muted. In reality, the quiet sensations aren’t a reflection of a dull interest in his father’s life, but more so a dullness in response to life in general as a Filipino American. Familiarity with abusive environments and feelings of insignificance would lead someone to soberly contemplate the severity of pain. Questioning, “What is worse, pain from the outside or inside?” seems to question the strength of pain itself. Such a question suggests unfamiliarity or numbness. The understanding with which Papa writes of agricultural life suggests that his experiences would have led him to hold the latter of the two positions. As a poet and a diner, he has evolved from the “stoop labor” which was identified as befitting Filipinos, yet he cannot remove the trauma of those affiliations. Even on the opposite end of the crop’s life cycle, he can’t avoid noting the asparagus’ provenance as “the last for the seasons.” Far removed from the conditions that eventually took the life of his father, Papa is still haunted by the experiences guiding Filipino America.

Cynical and melancholy as the poem might seem, traces of optimism are present behind the scenes. The simple act of recording his father’s death through poetry was an act of rebellion against a system that aimed to render Grandpa worthless. Through “Asparagus,” Grandpa’s life was extended into something greater than the terms of his bodily existence. Transformed into a subject of study for the inhumane labor conditions and unjust systems that prioritize goods before human life, the father who once died alone and unremarkable became an invaluable lesson in Filipino American history. By presenting an alternative to the racist propaganda that once led to the dehumanization of Filipino Americans, history can be rewritten to appreciate that culture’s past and expand its future. Once alternatives are introduced the weight of an oppressive narrative and its functions are shifted to allow for new opportunities. 

The lives and stories of Grandpa and other early Filipino Americans weren’t treated as significant-- inside or out. Life for Grandpa, and most other Filipinos in America toward the beginning of the 20th century, had been interwoven with disappointment, degradation, and depression, making their stories and lives seemingly forgettable, despite their unprecedented accomplishments. The inarticulation of these experiences thus cemented the effects of systemic racism by allowing Filipinos in America to underestimate and devalue themselves. Without sharing our stories, even amongst ourselves, our histories risk erasure, placing our futures in an equally precarious position. By discovering our contributions, such as the creation of distinct urban developments and niche subcultures, or the establishment of ethnic unions and unprecedented labor improvements, we give credit to people both living and deceased. These validities help Filipino Americans, Americans, and others interested in history, social studies, and the humanities, have the opportunity to further their knowledge and understanding of the diverse human experience, which is an important contribution in and of itself.