Family, Friends Still Trying to Make Sense of Professor Mabalon's Death

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

STOCKTON RECORD -- In addition to her work as a professor, Mabalon was a published author. Little Manila Is In The Heart, published in 2013, is a definitive history of the neighborhood’s rise and fall. Students at San Francisco State created buttons in Mabalon’s memory after learning of her death. The buttons say, “Dawn Mabalon Is in the Heart.”

Mabalon’s mother, 70-year-old Christine Bohulano Bloch, remembered Tuesday the whip-smart young girl who loved books and reading from an early age and grew up to be a professor and a published writer on the Filipino experience.

“She wanted to make changes, she wanted to help people,” Bohulano Bloch said. “She was an activist. She wanted to do whatever she could to help people.”

Allyson Tintiango-Cubales, a fellow professor with Mabalon at California State University, San Francisco, added, “Dawn was more than a best friend to me. She was like my sister. My family is grieving alongside her family.”

Mabalon had been scheduled to be in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights late this week to give a presentation on Filipino-American history and its intersection with civil rights.

“She was at as many events as she possibly could be at if they had to do with Filipino-Americans and people of color,” Tintiango-Cubales said. “She wanted to make sure that people knew what she believed.”

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