The question 'Who is the Filipino Malcolm X?' is a powerful lens. Can you trace the intellectual path that led you to formulate such a provocative inquiry, and what does the search for analogous figures reveal about your broader mission to reframe and decolonize historical narratives?
I grew up on ’90s hip‑hop like Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, Paris, and a lot of these artists mentioned Malcolm X. I would open up the cassette tapes or the records, read the lyrics, and then look up in an encyclopedia who these people were—Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, and, of course, Malcolm X. I then read the autobiography of Malcolm X and couldn’t help but internalize that we had a parallel history with Black Americans and Filipinos—colonialism, white supremacy. So I looked and looked to see who the Filipino Malcolm X was.