FilAm History: Listen up! Podcast tells stories of the Filipino diaspora

Journalist Paola Mardo

A Filipina American journalist has launched a podcast series exploring the immigration of Filipinos to the United States.

Paola Mardo, an independent audio reporter and producer, released the first of the "Long Distance" podcasts Sunday (Oct. 15).

"In 2016, I began working on an audio project about Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown," says Mardo. "But after extensive interviews and research, and through my work as a journalist, I saw a great need to tell thoughtful, well-reported audio stories about my community.

"That’s how 'Long Distance' got started," she says.

Filipinos began immigrating to the United States in great numbers in the first years of the American empire. Ever since then, Filipinos have be arriving in greater and greater numbers to the point that they are the third-largest Asian American community behind the Chinese  Americas and Indian Americans. In California and Hawaii, Filipinos form the largest Asian community.

"As a child of the diaspora, I’ve always been interested in stories about people in new places and finding 'home,' wherever that may be'" says Mardo.

Just in time for Filipino American HIstory Month, the podcast's first episode of "Long Distance" (embedded below),  Little Manila Center in Stockton, California is visited by Mardo. The center recently experienced both vandalism and the death of co-founder and activist Dawn Bohulano Mabalon.

The episode highlights Stockton’s longstanding Filipino community and the discrimination immigrants—especially single Filipino men who emigrated for jobs—experienced during the early 20th century. Listen up!