Growing up in New York City, UC Berkeley ethnic studies professor Catherine Ceniza Choy remembers seeing a lot of nurses — dressed in their crisp white uniforms. She and her mom lived in an apartment building near several hospitals, so seeing health workers in the community wasn’t unusual.

But she also noticed that many of the nurses were Filipino.

Her mom was an immigrant from the Philippines. And when they’d go to Filipino events, it was common to see a lot of nurses.

“I think when I was growing up, it was just part of the familiar landscape of home,” she says, “and what it was like to be in New York City. I didn’t really question it as a child. It just seemed natural or normal to me.”

Years later, as a graduate student at UCLA, Choy began to wonder: Why were there so many Filipino nurses in the U.S.? What she found took her back to the early 20th century after the Philippines became a U.S. colony.

Read the story and see photos on Berkeley News.

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