Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries

On 23 January 2015, Casey Mecija, the former lead singer of the band Ohbijou, gave an impromptu performance of her song “Balikbayan” to a transfixed audience made up primarily of Filipino/a artists, activists, scholars, and community members. Meaning “returnee,” “Balikbayan” evoked the psychic ambivalences effected by diasporic returns. The song traced the movement of goods and bodies between the Global North and the Global South as it pondered the tense pull of belonging – often tenuous, painful, and unresolved – in spaces that could never fully signify “home.” Mecija performed “Balikbayan” during “Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries,” a groundbreaking series