Skip to Main Content
CCSF Library logo Library Locations | Ask a Librarian | CCSF Home

Philippine Studies

Books of Interest

A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year . A chronicle of the age of global migration, told through the multi-generational saga of a Filipino family, by a New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age--the age of global migration. Giving new meaning to "immersion journalism," DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class. At the heart of the story is Tita's daughter, Rosalie. Beating the odds, she struggles through nursing school and works her way across the Middle East until a Texas hospital fulfills her dreams with a job offer in the States. Migration is changing the world--reordering politics, economics, and cultures across the globe. With nearly 45 million immigrants in the United States, few issues are as polarizing. But if the politics of immigration is broken, immigration itself--tens of millions of people gathered from every corner of the globe--remains an underappreciated American success. Combining the personal and panoramic, DeParle presents a family saga and a global phenomenon. Restarting her life in Galveston, Rosalie brings her reluctant husband and three young children with whom she has rarely lived. They must learn to become a family, even as they learn a new country. Ordinary and extraordinary at once, their journey is a twenty-first-century classic, rendered in gripping detail.

In the Country

In these nine globe-trotting tales, Alvar gives voice to the women and men of the Philippines and its diaspora. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar's stories explore the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home--and marks the arrival of a formidable new voice in literature.

Patron Saints of Nothing

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST. A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder. Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.

I Was Their American Dream: a graphic memoir

A triumphant tale of self-discovery, a celebration of a family's rich heritage, and a love letter to American immigrant freedom. The illustrations, infused with teenage antics and earnest questions about identity and culture, provide thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised . Malaka's upbringing will look familiar to anyone who grew up in the pre-internet era, but her particular story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigates her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. I Was Their American Dream is at once a journal of growing up and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children.

Monstress

"The debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told....Bravo for this fabulous American fiction!" --Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Native Speaker "A wonderful story collection that's as wide and rich and complex as the geography it spans." -- Ben Fountain, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera "Tenorio is a deep and original writer, and Monstress is simply a beautiful book." --Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters A luminous collection of heartbreaking, vivid, startling, and gloriously unique stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines, Monstress heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new talent on the literary scene: Lysley Tenorio. Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.

eBook Collections

The CCSF community has access to many ebooks and evideos via our subscriptions. Want to learn more about using and finding ebooks for research? We have a video showing how to do just that.

Finding Books

Library organized its collection by subjects matter.   You can often simply locate a book of a specific subject area. Call numbers are roughly assigned by subject areas according to the Library of Congress classification system, and incate books location on shelves. Here are some relevant subjects and their call numbers:

Economic history and conditions of Philippines      HC451-460

Filipino Americans                                                          E184.F4

Filipino women                                                                HQ1757

History of Philippines                                                     DS651-663

Relations of Philippines and America                        E183.8.P5

Spanish-American War                                                 E714-717


Library & Learning Resources, City College of San Francisco
50 Frida Kahlo Way, San Francisco, CA 94112 | 415-452-5541

Staff Intranet