Abjection, masculinity, and violence in Brian Roley's American Son and Han Ong's Fixer Chao.

Globalism is not an abstraction but a concrete activity whose mode of being has its effect on the local body.

--Dana Polan, "Globalism's Localisms."

Half a century after its independence from the United States, the Philippines is still very much in a neo-colonial stage. (1) Propelled by dire economic conditions in the Philippines and fed by the American dream of wealth and success, Filipinos migrate in large numbers and have become what Rhacel Parrenas calls "servants of globalization." By globalization, I refer to the movement of people, goods, culture in the new global capitalism which entails, as Arif Dirlik writes, the "transnationalization of production, [...] the decentering of capitalism nationally," the increasing importance of the transnational corporation, and the "fragmentation of the production process into subnational regions and localities" (30). Filipinos are a transnational subaltern, used in many countries as cheap and temporary labor: the "'warm body export' of Filipino workers to the Middle East; Filipinas as 'mail-order brides,' ubiquitous prostitutes around enclaves formerly occupied by U.S. military bases; and 'hospitality girls' in Tokyo, Bangkok, Okinawa, and Taipei" (San Juan 79). Negative effects of this migration and globalization include the separation of family members, perpetual states of exile and displacement, and self-hatred that results from the neo-colonial mentality of seeing oneself as other. What faces Filipino immigrants in their adopted countries is often not a life of ease, but difficulties due to prejudice, racism, and alienation.

Two recent novels by Filipino American writers, Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son (2001) and Han Ong's Fixer Chao (2001), document these problems and reveal the ways in which global capitalism takes its toll on the young. (2) Roley's and Ong's novels are told from the perspective of children or young adults whose familial and social lives have been changed by transnational migration, and who see themselves as failures because their lives do not match the high expectations of the American dream. Fuelled by Hollywood ideals of glamour and power, various characters in these novels suffer, and, consequently, lash out against others when they fall short of capitalist notions of success. These novels show the impact of global American culture on Filipino immigrants, problems in the construction of Filipino American subjectivity, and the violent effects of racial abjection on the body.

In general, these novels reveal a number of common negative effects of globalization on children. First is the over-valorization and desire for wealth, First World products, and material goods. In these narratives, the children compensate for their lack of familial bonds and/or dysfunctional family situation by coveting, buying, or stealing goods. Transnational production does not affect only people's work conditions, but also libidinal desire. The second negative effect consists of overdetermined and unattainable ideals based on Hollywood models of masculinity and beauty since "the global distribution of power still tends to make the First World countries cultural 'transmitters' and to reduce most Third World countries to the status of 'receivers'" (Shohat and Stam 147). When Filipino American men find themselves unable to live up to the seductive or forceful celebrity images they see in films and on television, they frequently resort to violence or aggression.