Cora Balolong Aquino

Encounters Cora Balolong Aquino

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.