Regent

Jeffrey Tangonan Acido

Jeffrey Tangonan Acido is pursuing his PhD at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.

Acido attended Honolulu Community College and did a study abroad in Korea through Kapi‘olani Community College and later transferred to earn a BA in religion at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Acido also earned a masters in theology while studying in a seminary at Berkeley, California.

He worked in varied fields of employment—food service industry, truck delivery, non-profit organizations, community college promoter, DOE part-time teacher and a lecturer at UH Manoa, where Acido continues to teach Philippine Popular Culture for the Ilokano program.

An assistant researcher at AANCART at UH Manoa, Acido has promoted cancer awareness through radio programing to reach out to the broader Filipino community through the use of Ilokano, English and Tagalog language. He writes for the Ilokano Writers Guild and is a columnist for the local newspaper Fil-Am Observer.

Active in the community, he is involved in the issues of language and social equity. Acido is the program director of Nakem Youth, an organization that promotes social justice, faith, community and the use of mother-language in education. He is also a board member of Hawai‘i Peace and Justice and a program director for Rise Up!, a program dedicated to leadership development, inter-generational dialogue and ethnic and indigenous consciousness for the youth of Hawai‘i using critical education.

Acido has written poems and stories, co-edited a book, Kabambannuagan: Our Voices, Our Lives, an anthology of writings of young Ilokano’s in Hawai‘i. He helped collect stories from elders in Kalihi Valley and Waipahu, which were published in Panagtaripato: Parenting Our Stories, Our Stories As Parents.

He has presented papers in numerous academic conferences—“Experiences of Postcolonial Traditioning on Pilgrimage to a Nikkei Concentration Camp” and “Postcolonial Readings on the Ilokano Christian Theology.”

Acido was born in Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, Philippines and moved to Kalihi at the age of 6. Growing up working-class in Kalihi he attend Kalihi Waena/Kai, Kalakaua Middle School and Farrington High School. He played high school football and joined the culinary arts program while in Farrington High School.