Iloko
Ilocano
East Villagehe Ilocano diaspora in the US is concentrated in Hawai'i, where they originally worked in the pineapple plantations alongside Japanese, Native Hawai'ians and others. Ilocanos have been particularly active in literary production and are one of the few lowland Christian groups in the Philippines to have preserved a precolonial epic (Biag ni Lam-ang, The life of Lam-ang). The Ilocano writers association, GUMIL, has active branches both in the Philippines and in Hawai'i. Here in NYC, the Ilocanos form a part of the larger Filipino community in Queens, which is home to the Ilocano-American Association, Inc. in New York (IAAINY), founded in 1982. The current president of the IAAINY has proudly passed on the language to her children in NYC.