Nicholas Trajano Molnar, “American Mestizos, the Philippines, and the Malleability of Race, 1898-1961” (U Missouri Press, 2017)

New Books in Asian American Studies · Feb 7, 2018 · 51m

In 1898, the United States took control of the Philippines from the Spanish. The U.S. then entered into a brutal war to make the Filipinos submit to the new colonial power. The war and subsequent decades of U.S. rule meant a small, but continuous presence of American soldiers on the islands, which, unsurprisingly, produced a notable population of children born to Filipino mothers and American fathers. Nicholas Trajano Molnar’s new book, American Mestizos, the Philippines, and the Malleability of Race, 1898-1961 (University of Missouri Press, 2017), examines the contested racial identities of…