‘Wild and Distrustful Children’: Building an Imagined Philippines During the American Colonial Period

This essay explores how children’s texts written by American authors about the Philippines during the American colonial period (1898 to 1946) used world-building to create an imagined Philippines that introduced the new colony to American children. In particular, I examine how American authors use the child in order to justify the ‘benevolent assimilation’ of the Philippines to young readers, presenting American colonialism as a civilizing force. In examining depictions of the Philippines through these children’s books, I explore how these fictional worlds represented and distorted Filipino children and their childhood experiences, how they were imagined by American writers to reinforce the colonization of the Philippines, and how these children’s texts became part of the American empire-building project.