Pinoy Capital

Home to 33,000 Filipino American residents, Daly City, California, located just outside of San Francisco, has been dubbed the Pinoy Capital of the United States. In this fascinating ethnographic study of the lives of Daly City residents, Benito Vergara shows how Daly City has become a magnet for the growing Filipino American community. Vergara challenges rooted notions of colonialism here, addressing the immigrants identities, connections and loyalties. Using the lens of transnationalism, he looks at the double lives of both recent and established Filipino Americans. Vergara explores how first-generation Pinoys experience homesickness precisely because Daly City is filled with reminders of their homelands culture, like newspapers, shops and festivals. Vergara probes into the complicated, ambivalent feelings these immigrants havetoward the Philippines and the United Statesand the conflicting obligations they have presented by belonging to a thriving community and yet possessing nostalgia for the homeland and people they left behind.