Dialog #2 . “It’s different for everybody.” -Jessica-
Jessica is sitting across me at a caffe’ close to CCSF Ocean Campus on a Sunday morning. From her look I guess she has Filipino origins, so I take the chance and I ask her if she could answer a few questions; she kindly agrees. We introduce each other and then I question her about her life. She tells me her goal is to teach English as a Second Language. She has been a ESL student herself, then did a little bit of teaching in the field here in San Francisco and liked it.
When we start the dialog about being Filipino-American Jessica admits: “it’s different, and I know it’s different for everybody.” She grew up in a small town in central California, surrounded by a Filipino-American Community. The change for her happened after moving to San Francisco: “my personal experience it’s not 100% good. During my undergrad I tried joining a Filipino-American Organization and I was really excited to get to know my culture a little bit more and be around people who were trying to do the same thing. But for whatever reason I just never really felt like I got to make that connection, so it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.”
Jessica had Filipino friends most of her life, but she also enjoys meeting people from different cultures. When it comes to romantic relationships she admits it is easier to communicate with partners from the same culture because of shared values. Although, dating people from a different cultures can work as well, it only requires more communication and understanding.
Then dialog shift subject and we start talking about family. I am curious to know what Jessica experience is about collectivism, a strong component in Filipino culture. Her family seems to be conservative and to follow her father’s lead. A challenge she faced growing up was the “off limits” topics in her family. She wishes there could have been more communication. Now that she is a woman there are new challenges, the one she struggle with the most is not to feel pressure from her family when it comes to her personal life. They expect her to get married and have kids, and when she goes visit she feels overwhelmed by questions about private matters. However Jessica wishes more openness she is also very thankful to her family. There are benefits in having conservative parents, they are more strict, they taught her how to be polite, respectful, and use good manners.
After a lifetime on United States territory Jessica went for the first time to the Philippines. Her family is from the northern part of the island country, where the language spoken is Ilokano. Her parents speak and understand, but she doesn’t. Once there she was greeted with lots of food, every house she entered had food on the table to make her feel welcome. However Jessica says: “I had a weird experience, just like you said, there is a gap. Here I don’t feel American enough and in the Philippines I don’t feel Filipino enough. I don’t know how to speak the language anymore, and so I got teased a lot for that. Even if they didn’t have bad intentions it was hard to try to connect with them. I felt like we were so different.”
Jessica grew up with a collectivistic family, typical of Filipino culture, in a individualistic country, typical of American culture. Her story is an example of how hard it could be to find a cultural identity when language, values, even food differ. It could be confusing, such elements are supposed to define who you are, but experiencing both is enriching. This is where cultures like the Filipino-American’s are born and having the change to live both is not negative. It is just as Jessica said: “different, it’s different from everybody.”
