NEW CLUB FORMED

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13802, 20 November 1942, Page 3

NEW CLUB FORMED

AMERICAN AM) FILIPINO AFFORDS GREAT ENJOYMENT The only one of its kind in the world, is the claim made Cor the Filipino American Literary Club in Stockton, California. Made up of equal numbers of Filipino and American women, there is little doubt that it deserves the distinction, says the Christian Science .Monitor. ' Stockton is the centre of Filipino concentration in the United States. Between four and five thousand make this community their seasonal headquarters. Of the approximately 40,000 Filipinos in our country, the majority are single men or men whose wives are in the Islands. The Filipino workmen move across ' California's great gardens of asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, and other seasonal crops doing the "stoop labour"' for which they seem so well suited. At least this was what they ' were doing when war broke out. But ' as soon as the Filipinos were put in ' the open draft, they swarmed to en- ' list to fight for the country they ' dearly love, our United States. Start Classes for Women But here in Stockton there is a group of Filipino families, some of them of long standing and many transient. It was 17 years ago when Mrs Orville Lacy began working with them in the Filipino Mission. ' As years passed, she felt it; was i the women who needed her most, so she started a week-day Bible class. I Many of the women did not know ! how to read English. Mrs Lacy enlisted American women to teach I them. i The teacher was really a friend 1 who became interested in helping her Filipino sisters in any way she < could to feel more at homo in a 1 foreign land. Besides teaching them i to read, she arranged classes in American cookery and sewing, gar- : dening.and child care. i Three years ago Mrs Lacy realised that the women needed broader in- ( terests. Many of them were high . school graduates from the local j schools. Some of them had been t honour students. So this wide-awake j leader enlisted the help of other American friends. * Meets Once a Month | Out of this has grown the Filipino 1 American Literary Club. It meets once a month, alternating the meetings in an American and a Filipino , home. At each meeting a devotional and a book review are given. The leaders for these are also turnabout, Filipino and American. j To hear Mary Inosanto reveal i "Born in Paradise" by Armine von ; Tempski was a treat, because Mary i is a soft-voiced, well-educated Pill- i pino woman who was born in Hawaii, | the "paradise" of that best seller. Florence Cabellero, born in the I Philippine Islands, who learned to < read under Mrs Lacy's tutelage, cap- i tivates the group with her singing of i native Filipino songs to the strum- • ming of her guitar. i

The Filipinos are a singing people, and like the music of most, of the races that have suffered under tbo yoke of bondage, as they did for nearly 400 years under Spain, their music has a heart-tugging beauty and pathos. The American women who belong to this unusual club feel humble and deeply appreciative. They count it; a privilege to share in the enrichment of the lives of these Filipino women who give back so richly of their own racial beauty.