Encounters: Packing and Unpacking Balikbayan Boxes - Paperback

by Cora Balolong Aquino (Author)

This book is about one woman's journey surviving wars, colonialisms, dictatorships, and migrations. It is a reflection on how to un-pack and re-pack ones bags (and balikbayan boxes) and re-imagine one's routes and life. It is a meditation on the contributions of Overseas Filipino Workers; how the Philippines started out as a country richer than Korea in the 1950s, but because of the dictatorship ends up losing thousands of skilled professionals to "brain drain". What happens when girls and women from rural villages become educated, mobile, independent, and learn new methods of re-creating new life-spaces? It is about the journey of one woman who came to the U.S. with only $40 and the resources and skills she used in order to support her five children as a single mother, and not only survive, but thrive. It is a meditation on childhood, adulthood, marriage, motherhood, grandmotherhood, and becoming elderly. Along the way, she provides reflections on the meanings of nationalism, belonging, citizenship, identity, resistance, and mobility.

Author Biography

Cora Balolong Aquino was born on May 14, 1936 in Bonuan Gueset, Dagupan City, Pangasinan, Philippines. She is the first woman from her village to complete a law degree in Manila and obtain a Fulbright scholarship to the U.S. Upon her return to the Philippines, she worked as a lawyer at the Bureau of Lands, eventually becoming Acting Director for Region I. After a failed marriage and with 5 kids to support, she decided to leave her public sector job under an oppressive dictatorship that was using state institutions for land-grabbing, take a risk at starting a new life as a de-professionalized waitress, and create a new life-space for the sake of her children. She is 80 years old and has become an expert on packing, un-packing, re-packing, and re-imagining ones life, and on womens' mobility. She has returned to her beloved village, Bonuan Gueset, in Pangasinan. This is her first book.