The dramatic growth of the Internet in recent years has provided opportunities for a host of relationships and
communities--forged across great distances and even time--that would have seemed unimaginable only a short while
ago.
In Building Diaspora, Emily Noelle Ignacio explores how Filipinos have used these subtle, cyber, but very real
social connections to construct and reinforce a sense of national, ethnic, and racial identity with distant others.
Through an extensive analysis of newsgroup debates, listserves, and website postings, she illustrates the significant
ways that computer-mediated communication has contributed to solidifying what can credibly be called a Filipino
diaspora. Lively cyber-discussions on topics including Eurocentrism, Orientalism, patriarchy, gender issues, language,
and "mail-order-brides" have helped Filipinos better understand and articulate their postcolonial situation
as well as their relationship with other national and ethnic communities around the world. Significant attention
is given to the complicated history of Philippine-American relations, including the ways Filipinos are racialized
as a result of their political and economic subjugation to U.S. interests.
As Filipinos and many other ethnic groups continue to migrate globally, Building Diaspora makes an important contribution
to our changing understanding of "homeland." The author makes the powerful argument that while home is
being further removed from geographic place, it is being increasingly territorialized in space.