This study focuses on the emotional experience of homesickness of propagandists and relates it to the birthing of the Filipino nation in the late nineteenth century. I show that these young migrant men straddled two worlds, where both modern ideas of individualism and “parochial” sentiments of community existed together. Second, I demonstrate the change in the migrants’ gaze as it slowly began to include the larger entity of the nation. In the end, I argue that these points illustrate tensions found in a nascent nation as Filipinos navigated their emotions within the context of colonialism and modernity.