Questionable Solidarity: ‘Romances, After All, Start in Various Ways’

Abstract

There are two salient points discussed in this chapter: (1) the politics of representation and self-representation of Filipino-Australians and (2) the strained relations and contested unity of ‘Filipino women’. I argue that the trauma of being the ‘mail-order bride’ community manifests in the contradictory and painful ways the community builds itself. Using the writings of Filipino-Australian, I interrogate the solidarity forged under the banner of ‘womanhood’ and ‘multiculturalism’ by which the project was articulated. I critique the attempt to own the representation, on the one hand, but also argued for the usefulness of the ‘error’ within which the exercise is couched. The valorisation of the middle-class migrant and the subsequent exploitation of the sexualised Other had made this race for distinction possible. I problematise the exploitation of the first-person, I am a mail-order bride scapegoating which certain cultural productions reinforce.