"There's Not a Name That Fits": Towards a Filipino American Poetics of Shame

Abstract

My thesis explores the functions of shame in contemporary Filipino American poetry. I draw on theorists of shame such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Timothy Bewes alongside applications of the indigenous Filipino value of hiya to demonstrate how racialized and gendered shame informs the writing and identity formation of Filipino Americans. Through close readings of Patrick Rosal’s Brooklyn Antediluvian and Barbara Jane Reyes’s Letters to a Young Brown Girl, my thesis argues that contemporary Filipino American poetry not only contends with the painful restrictions that come with shame, but also reconceives shame as a potentially positive tool capable of fostering ethical engagement and newfound (or restored) forms of relationality.