In 1995, scholar-artist Allan Sekula argued that the “sea has been forgotten”¹ in dominant U.S.-based scholarly debates about globalization. Here, globalization broadly refers to the flows of capital, people, goods, images, and ideologies in a capitalist world system, significantly implemented through neoliberal economics and policies.² By extension, Sekula is suggesting that related maritime spaces and places³ in the global economy have also been forgotten, for example, ports, port cities, ships, shipping routes, and maritime trade and, just as importantly, the people who work, live, and move in or through these oceanic/maritime spaces, such as the Filipino seamen who work on...

Dockside. A band in red uniforms plays traditional fanfare music. A small crowd waits eagerly for boats to arrive. A television helicopter flies over-head, apparently broadcasting live. Everyone is excited, full of anticipation, but no boats arrive. Tired of the waiting and playing during false alarms, the band eventually sits down along a ledge to rest. I sit close to the band members and listen to their conversation.¹ “Maybe they’ve hit an iceberg,” a trombone player jokes, speculating on why the boat has been delayed. We laugh at his ironic imagery. We are in tropical latitudes, after all, thousands of...

The “OFWs as bagong bayani” (overseas Filipino/a workers as new heroes or heroines) is a persistent and dominant narrative in the Philippines and in some parts of the diaspora. An illustrative example of this discourse is presented in the videoTagumpay Nating Lahat (The Success, Prosperity, or Victory of All of Us), shown as an audiovisual tribute to Filipino seafarers at the Philippine Manning Convention in Manila, November 12–13, 2007. The film depicts a young Filipino boy staring in contemplation at Manila Bay (near Roxas Boulevard) with two industrial container ships in the distance. Sensual piano music begins to...

During fieldwork in Manila in 1998, I traveled by jeep or taxi from Quezon City (where I lived) to Rizal Park in Ermita (district), to the Teodoro M. Kalaw Street side of the park, near the National Library. There on T. M. Kalaw, Filipino seamen or those aspiring to become seamen gathered, in search of employment on board ships. Rizal Park, formerly known as “Luneta” (“small moon” in Spanish, which describes the area’s shape) or “Bagumbayan” (evoking “new community” in Tagalog) was a location I visited regularly during fieldwork in Manila. Through participant-observation research at the park I learned that...

At 5:00 a.m. it is dark and quiet when I wake up, trying to beat the morning rush hour in Metro Manila. The port should only be about a twenty-minute car ride, but with the arteries of the city becoming increasingly clogged, it could take two hours. Other people have similar ideas, so by the time I reach the street corner where the “Quiapo-Pier” jeepney¹ (or jeep) stops to pick up passengers in need of a ride to the other side of the city, the street is already lined with people. (Jeepneys are a form of low cost transportation in...

It is a cold (20°F) and clear early February morning when I begin writing this epilogue. After several days of light snowfall, the South Minneapolis cityscape is covered again by white powder. Is this poetic in/justice that my task is to put closure on this book as I am literally situated in the middle of the North American continent, far removed from the sea? (This is a first reading of place, location, and water; my second reading comes shortly.)

The sea has been speaking to me since childhood (see preface) and still it reaches and finds me across great expanses...