Pinoy in America: The stateside life in the time of Barack Obama, Facebook and Pacquiao-mania

The life of a Pinoy in America can be a dizzying one. When you’re in America, it often seems you are waiting for that day when you will be “back home.” But when you get there, you feel restless (anyone with a translation of di mapakali?) because you know your life is waiting for you back in America. So where does that put you?

Quite literally nowhere. You’re here, but your mind is there.

— Lorenzo Paran III, from “Pinoy in America: The stateside life in the time of

Barack Obama, Facebook and Pacquiao-mania”

The Pinoy-in-American life with Lorenzo Paran III

What do you get when you take a 30-something Pinoy, who fancies himself a writer, from the Philippines and transplant him to America? You get “Pinoy in America: The stateside life in the time of Barack Obama, Facebook and Pacquiao-mania,” an immigrant notebook that chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Pinoys in their adopted land.

Lorenzo Paran III, an English teacher at the University of the Philippines before moving to the U.S., takes his cue from his first years as an imigrante, a period of learning and unlearning that, as he finds, many others have gone through before him and many more undoubtedly will.

He shares the stories—always poignant, always moving—of the Filipinos he meets as he tries to carve a home in a new land: old-timers eager to share the voice of experience; young guns audaciously taking on the challenges but also opportunities in the complex landscape that is America; the proverbial Filipinos who are “more American than Americans”; and second- or third-generation Filipinos reaching out to their parents’ homeland.

Paran discovers too that just because you’ve spoken English, gone to McDonald’s and watched Hollywood movies all your life doesn’t mean you’ll instantly fit right in in America. On the contrary, the story becomes more interesting if you think you will.

Witnessing how others have managed to become Americans and yet stay true to their Filipino roots, Paran, a Bikolano through and through, finds that the secret often is to nurture a dual mind-set that allows for constant reminiscence but also leaves room for living in the now. Home is a matter of mind, Paran seems to say in his essays.

At times lighthearted and at times musing, “Pinoy in America” offers a look at the Filipino-American life from inside, and Paran finds that the story is not always as simple and clear-cut as it often seems when seen from the homeland.

“Pinoy in America: The stateside life in the time of Barack Obama, Facebook and Pacquiao-mania” is available at (please fill here) ______________________.

Praise for “Pinoy in America”

It’s an experience that’s been told many times before by other writers, and indeed the continuing diaspora is the great Filipino story of our time. But Paran brings to it a wry and gentle humor, provoked by the condition of always being in the present and yet also always in transition. The author marvels at his inevitable transformation into a 21st century American, but for those who fear that Paran may have lost his Pinoyness, read the book to see how and why the Pinoy endures, not by clinging to his old self, but by adapting, as Paran does, to the new.

— Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City

No pretentious verbal pyrotechnics here, just the honest musings of a 30-something Pinoy who has (re)turned to writing to make sense of his life after being transplanted to America. In this collection, Paran not only illustrates how a person can never be more aware of being Pinoy than when he or she is living in another country but also explains how the sense of Pinoy-ness will be questioned and changed as it tries to adapt to a foreign land.

— Marie Aubrey Villaceran, La Trobe University, Melbourne

“Pinoy in America” is an immigrant’s journal —shot with anecdotal and vernacular verve. Filipinos across the shores will see in Paran’s homey welter of vignettes and stocktakings an articulation of the everyday tensions, easements and joys accompanying their often self-willed displacements, re-settings and resettlings. An armchair treat for balikbayans, Filipinologists and Pinoys-at-heart alike.

— Par Patacsil, art critic, Quezon City

What readers say

“Thoroughly loving it …. the material is familiar and so true. ”

— Bing, Chino Hills, Calif.

“Funny (and) down to earth …. hard to put down!”

— Denise, Los Angeles, Calif.

“To all my Pinoy or even non-Pinoy friends who want to learn and explore the experiences of immigrants like me, this is a MUST READ! Go and grab a copy! ”

— Ampie, Oceanside, Calif.