"There is something about letting go of something you've been working on for so long and putting it out into the world," says Faye Caronan, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies specializing in Asian American Studies, about publishing her first book. Acknowledging the well-known metaphor of a first book being like a child on her first day of school she adds, "You just kind of want to hang on to it a little longer."

Caronan spent nearly a decade working on the research culminating in the publication of her new book from the University of Illinois Press, Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique, How two colonial narratives complicate the mythology of U.S. exceptionalism. During that time her analysis on the comparative histories of the two U.S. territories and their cultural representations became increasingly complex as she progressed through a Masters and then a Doctoral degree in Ethnic Studies, adding layers to her research along the way.

It was during her undergraduate studies as an English major, with a double concentration in Asian American Studies and Asian Studies, that Caronan first stumbled upon the idea of a comparative analysis of the Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican experience. Her interest in Asian American and Asian studies stemmed from her own Filipino heritage and a desire to learn the stories that she did not have a chance to learn from her grandparents. Caronan became cognizant of the complicated social and political relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines in college. Then, as she was doing research one day in the Asian American Studies Center reading about American imperialism in the Philippines, she overheard a group of students in the Latino Studies center next door discussing American imperialism in Puerto Rico. There were too many familiarities in their discussion for her to ignore and she became interested in learning about how the experiences of these two U.S. territories compared.

Puerto Rico and the Philippines (along with Guam) were ceded to the U.S. as territories by Spain under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, as a result of the Spanish-American war. Some cite this era as the beginning of the United States becoming a world power. The first period of U.S. colonization looked comparable in both territories, with democratic governments similar to the one established in the United States. Although there was debate over whether or not to take control of the island territories, the U.S. reconciled the decision by emphasizing that it would become a different kind of empire: one granting democracy to its territories rather than exploiting them in ways that had been common in the past.

When it came to U.S. citizenship, Puerto Rico and the Philippines fared very differently from each other. Though both shared a history of Spanish colonization that predated becoming a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico's racial identity was more closely tied with Spain and they were viewed as being of Spanish-European descent. Filipinos, on the other hand, were racialized as either unassimilable Asians or indigenous Africans, though their actual heritage would place them more in the modern category of Pacific Islanders. Partially due to this racialization and its incongruity with the imagined U.S. identity at the time, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship and Filipinos were not. This decision hinted at future political destinies, which were also determined by geographic and economic factors. The Philippines became an independent nation in 1946, though the U.S. retained rights to hold military bases as well as preferred economic status in the new independent nation, thus extending their imperialism in the Philippines beyond its official independence. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, remains a U.S. territory to date, with U.S. citizenship, though some limited rights.

One of the major similarities resulting from their shared history is the dissonance Filipino Americans and U.S. Puerto Ricans create against their racial stereotypes in American culture. Filipino Americans are now most frequently categorized as racially Asian, though unlike most Asian Americans from Confucian-centered cultures Filipinos have a predominately Christian heritage, as a result of being colonized for so long by Spanish Catholics. Puerto Ricans are considered racially Latino, but unlike many Latinos living in the U.S. the question of legality and documentation does not loom large in their cultural representations.

Both cultures have reason to critique the way that the U.S. has historically represented its "benevolent imperialism," and this critique finds its way into many of the cultural works created by Filipino Americans and U.S. Puerto Ricans. Legitimizing Empire analyzes the way that these two cultures view themselves and their representation in the U.S. through works of popular culture—particularly novels, documentary films, and performance poetry. Caronan's research also explores the differences in these art forms, and the effectiveness of each. She argues that novels are critical because they reach a larger audience, but often less impactful because they must "play" to this more mainstream audience. While performance poetry is perhaps the most powerfully direct and uncensored of the cultural works, she analyzes, it reaches a far smaller audience and is far less likely to fall on "novel" ears – those that are not already at least half way on board with the performer's political and social leanings. All of these cultural representations of race and culture are part of what philosopher Michel Foucault called a genealogy. A genealogy is an alternative history built on a collection of voices that challenge the official or institutional history. A genealogy does not necessarily unseat the institutional history, but certainly adds another layer to it.

As an academic work, Caronan hopes that Legitimizing Empire will lift these genealogies up, and her work on her first book has inspired new avenues of research and analysis for her in the future. Two topics that came up while she was completing research for Legitimizing Empire have become the focus of her current research. One will delve into how the Chinese Exclusion Act affected the lives of Chinese living in all of the territories in the U.S. empire. The second is another comparative analysis—this time among three island nations: Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines, and the factors that led to their different political destinies (one was granted statehood, one was granted independence, and the other was retained as a U.S. territory).

Caronan has some advice for first time academic writers that she took away from her own experience, and again it sounds a bit like the advice that rings true around parenthood: "I had a lot of hang-ups about the book being ready. In the end, getting it to become a book was a lot more straight-forward than I thought it would be. Now I tell other people, 'even if you feel like it's not ready, just get it out there because they are going to tell you if it's not ready and give you comments on how to revise.' After you graduate, you are on your own with revising something, so you might as well send it out and get your comments and get the ball rolling."

Rianna Riegelman is a CU Denver and CLAS alumna (1999) with a BA in English Writing. She works as a freelance writer, editor and graphic designer in Denver and Boulder.