Juanita Tamayo Lott

Juanita Tamayo Lott (born 1948) is a Filipina-American author and activist. A chronicler of the Filipino experience in America, Lott has authored several popular and scholarly works on Asian Americans. She has also contributed to the establishment of several Asian American studies departments. As a college student in 1969, Lott co-founded the first U.S. Filipino American Studies Program at San Francisco State; in 2007, she developed the Filipino American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Trained as a statistician and demographer, she spent her career as a policy analyst for the federal government.

Education and life Juanita Tamayo Lott moved to San Francisco from the Philippines on June 20, 1951, with her mother, Anicia Lucas Tamayo, and sister, Veronica. Lott's father, Lazaro Lorenza Tamayo, had moved to San Francisco from the Philippines in 1922 as a Filipino national. Lott's brother, William Robert, was born in San Francisco after her family's arrival.

Lott attended San Francisco State College and participated in the 1968 Third World Liberation Front Strikes, which resulted in the establishment of the School of Ethnic Studies. In 1969, still a student, Lott co-founded the first U.S. Filipino American Studies Program at San Francisco State. She graduated with a degree in Sociology in 1970 and went on to graduate school at the University of Chicago.

In 1973 she married Robert Henry Lott (1948-2008) and moved to Washington, D.C. They had two children, David Tamayo Lott and Joseph Henry Lott III.

Career From 1969 to 1971, she was a member of the planning committee for the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State College, co-chair of the Filipino Studies Program, and special assistant to the Dean.

In 1973, Lott took a job with the United States Census Bureau as an analyst. From 1974 to 1977, she directed the Asian American Affairs Division of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare In 2007, she developed the Filipino American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She retired from her government positions in 2008.

Publications

In addition to a number of reports, articles, conference proceedings, and government studies and publications, Lott authored the following books:

Juanita Tamayo Lott, Asian Americans: From Racial Category to Multiple Identities (London: SAGE, 1989). Juanita Tamayo Lott, Common Destiny: Filipino American Generations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Rita M. Cacas and Juanita Tamayo Lott, Filipinos in Washington, D.C. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub, 2009). Juanita Tamayo Lott, Golden Children: Legacy of Ethnic Studies, SF State (Berkeley: Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2018).