Filipinx Care, Social Proximity, and Social Distance

Abstract

March 25, 2020. It’s four in the morning. Since becoming a father, I’ve intentionally begun to wake up earlier and earlier. I’m trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb my spouse, Martine, and our toddler, both asleep in the next room. With the new demands of parenthood, I’ve had to carve out moments like this. Quiet, early morning moments to get academic work done. A sliver of time before the routines of childcare. But this morning is different. Houston has just issued a stay-at-home order because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonessential workers are to stay at home. I’m a nonessential worker, an assistant professor. I teach in the humanities, a constellation of disciplines already insecure about their continued existence. I’m seated on the worn couch in our one-bedroom apartment’s living room, a split space. Half living area. Sofa, television, low table. Half play area. Our toddler’s toys scattered about the carpet in chaotic disarray. Like so many other people, I have a difficult time imagining how I’m going to work from home for the foreseeable future. In-person classes have been abruptly canceled, and I don’t knowwhere I’mgoing to host my first online seminar meeting in this cramped space. I’m scheduled to teach Jamaica Kincaid’s novella, Lucy (1990), a profound, semiautobiographical narrative that reveals the complicated gendered, racialized, and transnational dynamics of migrant caregivers in the United States. It’s a story about the limits of care. I think it makes the most sense to teach from our kitchen