Angeles Monrayo (1912–2000) began her diary on January 10, 1924, a few months before she and her father and older brother moved from a sugar plantation in Waipahu to Pablo Manlapit's strike camp in Honolulu. Here for the first time is a young Filipino girl's view of life in Hawai'i and central California in the first decades of the twentieth century--a significant and often turbulent period for immigrant and migrant labor in both settings. Angeles' vivid, simple language takes us into the heart of an early Filipino family as its members come to terms with poverty and racism and struggle to build new lives in a new world. But even as Angeles recounts the hardships of immigrant life, her diary of "everyday things" never lets us forget that she and the people around her went to school and church, enjoyed music and dancing, told jokes, went to the movies, and fell in love.
Essays by Jonathan Okamura and Dawn Mabalon enlarge on Angeles' account of early working-class Filipinos and situate her experience in the larger history of Filipino migration to the United States. Tomorrow's Memories not only provides a rare glimpse into the lives of Pinays during the 1920s and 1930s, but also contributes valuable insights into the study of race, class, and gender in American history and the study of power and resistance in Asian American and ethnic studies.
