A Past Revisited, Connecting the Dots, part 12
My Fourth of July (2025) Reflections
In 2003, I authored an extensive essay that was published by Manila Bulletin-USA, an LBC publication based in South San Francisco. The piece reflected on my experiences as a U.S. immigrant residing in San Francisco.
Having migrated to America in 1984 with some reluctance, I gradually became immersed in the social life of San Francisco, particularly in the South of Market area. Over time, my perspective shifted from a deep longing for my homeland, the Philippines, to developing a sense of belonging within my new home in America.
Today, July 4, 2025, I spent time at home revisiting my previous writings and books. Among them, I found one essay—focused on the theme of “Kanlungan”—to be especially relevant and intend to share it as part of my ongoing Facebook series.
Kanlungan of Filipinos in San Francisco, (2003)
America is a nation of immigrants. For centuries, hundreds of immigrants have been leaving homelands to come to America hoping to recreate their lives, build their families and homes in newfound land.
Engraved on a plaque in the Statue of Liberty are the famous lines from “The New Colossus,” the celebrated poem written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus. These lines have captured this immigrant milieu that has become part of American culture:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
My only concern is whether America is really the nurturing kind to newcomers – the tired, poor, and huddled masses. Like the rest of many people of color Americans, Filipinos struggled with immense difficulties – uncaring attitude, alienation, discrimination, inequity, prejudice, and injustice. Nevertheless, Filipinos of yesterday and today will attest that America has been good to them because it is here, they found many kanlungan – a place one can feel at home away from home.
The Tagalog term kanlungan has many meanings in English: a shed; shelter; place to hide in; hideout; a sanctuary; a safe haven; a place of refuge or protection; and a comfort zone. In its action verb form it describes “to cover with oneself or something with or as with oneself,” “to provide somebody with a covering or shelter from sun, rain or wind” and “to put or provide with a shelter.”
The root word of kanlungan is kanlong which is an adjective for being sheltered or covered. But the word kanlong in the Tagalog lexicon is interchanged and very much related with kandong and kalong. Kandong is an “act or manner of carrying something on the front of one’s skirt or dress” or “act of holding a person on one’s lap. Similarly, Kalong is also “a manner of holding or carrying a person or thing on one’s lap” and “act of giving protective support and care for someone.”
The suffix “an” transforms the word into a noun. Hence, Kanlungan, kandungan and kalungan, these three words refer to a space or state that provides support, protection, cover, warmth (from cold weather, excessive sun exposure, and rain) and sincere care to a person in need of support.
America, quoting Emma Lazarus, wishes to be a kanlungan and welcome house (I lift my lamp beside the golden door) for immigrants (tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, wretched refuse, the homeless, and tempest-tossed). But immigration history in America has shown that the immigrants themselves who have created kanlungan for their fellow men and women.
This is absolutely true, and it is indeed inspiring and uplifting to know, that Filipinos have kanlungan, a powerful concept and a cultural practice that encompasses providing shelter and protective support, caring for each other even amidst adversities and in an unfriendly and alienating environment.
Although the term Kanlungan is not commonly employed in everyday Filipino conversation, the tradition of offering kalong or kanlungan, or seeking comfort in another’s kalong or kandungan, is firmly embedded in the cultural values and psyche of Filipinos.
Tina Alejo of the Filipino Education Center-Galing-Bata posits that the closest image of Kanlungan is the mother’s womb which is a life-giving part of the body, encompassing protective hollow or space. In the mother’s womb something is expected to move or generate to grow. The central region of the human torso, encompassing the abdominal and chest areas, plays a vital role in supplying nourishment, energy, and maintaining body warmth. Security and closeness are likened to being held in a warm familial embrace.
In Filipino child-rearing practices, mothers commonly lift their children and hold them close to their bodies, from the belly up to the chest. This action provides comfort, warmth, protection, support, and nourishment. The bosom refers to the chest as an emotional center. Filipino upbringing is maternal, with kanlungan reflecting a mother's instinctive care.
I am reintroducing kanlungan in the Filipino vocabulary in America because the practice has been prevalent for many years and very much alive even today.
Kanlungan came to my mind when I heard the retelling of the story of the members of the Gran Oriente Filipino in purchasing their property in South Park in South of Market in San Francisco that has functioned for many years as a kanlungan con hotel for their members who worked in the California farms, doing odds jobs in the city and in merchant vessels. The Gran Oriente Filipino has recently celebrated their 83rd Anniversary last September 20, 2003.
The Manilatown in Kearny Street was another kanlungan. From the 1920s to 1970s Manilatown has been the center of gravity of Filipino where you find Filipino food, (New Luneta Café, Bataan Restaurant, the Mango’s Smoke Shop, Sampaguita Restaurant, Blanco’s Bar, and Santa Maria Restaurant operated by brothers from Visayas), for stories, gossips and information/referral at Tino’s Barber Shop, at pool halls, and gambling corners. During those times Manilatown was a comfort zone to most Filipinos; it is sanctuary for sojourners, a place where you find connections among compatriots.
The concept of kanlungan – providing care and support to your kapwa (fellow Filipinos) is not new to most Filipinos and it is very much valued practice and popularly accepted among overseas Filipinos and contract workers in the Middle East, Hong-Kong and Europe. In these countries, Kanlungan even stands up as a key word in naming the non-profit service support agencies, (also known as NGOs) and formations such as Kanlungan Centre Foundation / Center for Migrant Workers, Kanlungan Filipino Consortium in London United Kingdom.
Filipinos, like any other migrants when in an unfamiliar and unfriendly country, will seek for his kapwa – mostly relatives, friends and other social connections (i.e. kamag-aral and kaklase ) - for social and emotional support. It is common to find Filipinos congregating in certain nooks and corners, parks and churches, train or bus stations and public places, and in some homes sharing stories, food and resources. Wherever Filipinos are, instinctively they create and continue to replicate kanlungan.
We do not need to go outside the Philippines in order to experience kanlungan. Rural folks migrating to the crowded urban centers, say from Ilocos or Panay to MetroManila or Samar to Cebu City, are in constant search for better life but in the transition they seek refuge in the kanlungan of their relatives and friends. Individuals who are typically economically disadvantaged (i.e. minimally educated and unskilled) find the kanlungan in looban (“interior”) and callejon (side alleys) of certain section in the slum area in the city.
The rural folks recreate their rural or baranganic culture in urban setting in looban and callejon. Like in the rural area and in barangay (village) social relationship ( pakikipag-kapwa-tao) comes first before anything else. The lifeways in the looban is best understood in terms of face-to-face interaction which determines the different people into hindi ibang tao (insiders) and ibang tao (outsiders).
Rural Filipinos have keen sense of pagkatao and kapwa. Kapwa according to Dr. Virgilio Enriquez is “the unity of self and others” and the behavioral word pakikipag-kapwa demonstrates ego’s awareness (i.e. self) of shared identity (with others). While the notion of pagkatao as in the ancient proverb “Madali ang maging tao mahirap magpakatao” (It is easy to be born a man but it is difficult to act like one.) is not totally equivalent to the western notion of personality where in personality is seen “as the expression of the individual in and by himself, in isolation as it were.” The I (self) is obviously disjointed with others. Pagkatao in Philippine setting, especially in the rural communities, individuals do not define themselves apart from each other. Kapwa is an integrating framework.
The kanlungan formation as expressed in looban and callejons in the urban centers also is also prevalent in America, more so in San Francisco. The South of Market area for many decades has been the kanlungan or “home away from home” to most Filipinos. The Callejons are the streets of Natoma, Minna, Tehama and Clementina. The looban or “protective compounds” or “comfort zones” are the Filipino Education Center-Galing Bata, Ed dela Cruz Apartment, the Mint Hall and Mint Mall (address: 953 and 957 Mission Street) and San Lorenzo Ruiz. To Filipino Catholics the St. Patrick’s Church functions as Kanlungan for spiritual, emotional, and social support.
“Hindi ka nag-iisa”(You’re not alone) is the operating principle of kanlungan; articulating the concept of caring family and caring community. Neils Mulder, a Dutch anthropologist who studied the Filipino culture in the Philippines, observes that “belongingness, rootedness and identity, emotional support and security, all are located in deeply felt relationship. The high emotional charge of these ties may lead to the ideas of identity-sharing, of direct participation in each other’s loob (inner being), and thus to the widespread idea that people who are near and dear to each other easily empathize.
The inherent and valued practice of kanlungan among Filipino immigrants can be deduced from Mulder’s poignant observations: “the dependent subjectivity (i.e. dependent experience of the self) makes for a high degree of sensitivity to the quality of interpersonal relationships, fro vulnerability of self and others in those relationships, and thus, for a measure of insecurity and the desire to please the other to be accepted. Dependent subjectivity laso makes people see others as extensions of themselves; this is especially so in the parent-child relationship.”
Kanlungan, although to many Filipinos it is a tuluyan or a welcoming space for migrants or sojourners, is more just a physical space. It is having a familial relationship away from your original family. One’s family is seen by Filipinos as the source of personal identity, the source of emotional and material support, and one’s main commitment and responsibility. And as mentioned in the Shahani Report in the Philippines: “This sense of family results in a feeling of belonging and rootedness and in a basic sense of security.”
In my book SoMa Pilipinas (Archipelago,2002) I wrote that the migration “for the sake of the family” explains the influx of Filipinos in America and in most countries around the world. “It is also the centrifugal force from the rural communities to the cities, from one island to another, from town to town, from generation to generation within the Philippine archipelago. However, to most Filipinos the migration “for the sake of the family” is a double-edged blade; to better the life of the members of the family, they need to leave the family (the core) behind and live in the interface. Thus, migration tremendously impacts the family, both in the core and the interface.”
“However, in the U.S. these immigrant Filipinos in transition and in the interface, in different generations or wave migrations, tend to build a community, creating the strength from among them selves. Like the force of gravity in the universe, it sets the motion to renew their cultural core and reconstruct their families and communities. In the process new communities and interfaces emerge with new characteristics and patterns of development. In the words of Wildflower Institute, there are underlying operating premises of the people in the community that are powerful forces in keeping families and communities together, creating order and relationships. They shape a person’s perception, learning, health and behaviors, and social relationships.”
It is only recently that we uncovered and fully understood that these “recreation” of home (family) away from home, of building “looban” and “barkada” (circle of friends) is inherent in the Filipino notion of kanlungan.
Now I can confidently understand the many things that are happening in our community in San Francisco: the strong determination of parents to keep the Filipino Education Center and their support to the Galing-Bata Program; why the Borja and Sy family (Dr. Mario Borja, Bernadette Sy, and the Filipino American Development Foundation) are determined to rebuild their Delta Hotel into Bayanihan House and Bayanihan Community Center; the displacement of the Manilatown and International Hotel in Kearny Street was major blow and a great loss to our community, and its rebuilding is like “coming back home;” the Mint Mall and Mint Hall play significant role in transitioning families; the rekindling Christmas tradition, the parol, belen, simbang gabi and nochebuena and many others.
It is the kanlungan in our midst.