Trafficked woman, sex worker, mail-order bride, and domestic worker. These are some of the dominant images of Filipino women that circulate in global popular culture. Filipinas are constructed as ideal workers and wives and as sexual fantasies. At the same time, many diasporic Filipinas organize toward the liberation of women and the Philippine nation-state from imperialism and global capitalism. In her book Queering the Global Filipina/o Body, Gina K. Velasco explores these contradictions and seeks to understand the political potential of the global Filipina body.
The book offers important contributions to Filipina/o/x studies, feminist studies, and queer studies through its transnational and diasporic approach. According to Velasco, the global Filipina body “signifies the subjection of Filipina/o bodies to the gendered and racialized effects of neoliberal globalization” (p. 3). Velasco draws from ethnography in the Philippines and the United States and from Filipina/o American cultural productions, including film and video,...
