What does being Filipino mean to me?
(Edited, updated.) Living in between the dash of Filipino and American.
Growing up, my mother told me stories in such vivid detail that I felt a part of it. I basked in the rice patty’s sunshine, smelled the water buffalo’s pungent manure, climbed barefoot up a mango tree that existed before I’ve taken my first breath.
In reality, that life was never for me. No adventures that bound me to the soil, the soles of my feet only knowing the inside of brand name sneakers, and concrete, and beige carpeting.
My mother left her 8 siblings and parents behind to pursue nursing in America once her brief stints in Saudi Arabia ended. She also left me, a 1-year-old, and my father with two nannies as she worked as a babysitter for pocket money before passing the NCLEX in a small border town at the edge of Texas, where most people spoke Spanish or were new Filipino nurses like her.
When my father (who left his own family and the practice of dentistry,) and I joined her a year later, the clouded memories of my early childhood featured indoctrination into American school life. I learned about Thanksgiving, dressed (problematically) as little ‘Indian’ children and Pilgrims, and spent my first Halloween in an adult-sized Porky the Pig costume because my parents had no idea what the holiday was. I didn’t stand out culturally, because I was just as brown as the other Mexican kids –I even have a Spanish last name– but I also endured a lot of pee-accidents because they didn’t know what I was saying when I needed to go to the bathroom.
Most of my Filipino exposure came from these aunts and uncles and cousins that I wasn’t actually related to but seen more often than blood relatives. They karaoke, they line danced, they attended the same church as us and became each other’s families when most of ours were back in the homeland. I still see them during the holidays. The rest of the kids and I spent time in the game room playing Smash Bros. The parties were their time to connect back to something familiar, not mine.
When we moved to a majority white neighborhood, Filipino meant that when the Philippines was mentioned in class, every head would turn toward me as if I was an ambassador to a country as foreign to them as it was for me. Our shoes were to be kept at the doorway, our food was different than pre-made school lunches, and my parents spoke words that felt jumbled on my tongue. I wasn’t quite Filipino enough in the Philippines, or American enough for the classroom. I grasped at straws when it came to presenting the Philippines in class during heritage days, relying mostly on Wikipedia to tell me about my own history; my construction paper “Family tree” would be limited to what my parents can remember in their youth.
During the visits to the Philippines, there was no greater sadness than to re-meet my cousins and extended family, only to leave again in less than a month’s time. Then, when the sadness faded as regular life piled itself onto my consciousness, only a vague recollection of a group of people who exist and love me was left.
Being Filipino in a majority white city also meant my mother often faced racism in the workplace as the breadwinner of the family; a full-time night shift ICU nurse manager. Her salary was slightly better, but her morale was bruised because of the American nurses on the team who refused to lend a helping hand to or who outright subverted the authority of the foreign sounding Asian woman. As a middle schooler, I felt for her but also felt her foreignness, never really ashamed of it, but wanting to assert my own American-ness especially in situations where she or my father had to deal with salespeople, over-the-phone services, or even annual doctor and dentist appointments.
Because of those instances, in High School (when we moved once more, to a more diverse city), my being Filipino was pushed aside to the more accepted Asian of East-Asia’s Anime, boba, and honoring thy parents. This was my sweet spot. I fit in, kind of. For some reason more and more of my Asian friends had “American” names, they went to language classes after school, had churches that were exclusively made up of their ethnicity, and because of my increased exposure to their culture, I learned how to use chopsticks. I wasn’t alone anymore, but I also hadn’t faced the honor it truly is to be born Filipino. At this point, my family was paying off our new home and it took a total of eight years to visit the Philippines again. By the time I came back, those people I’ve met became strangers. I only bonded with them through my own interest in Filipino RomComs.
During college, I was surprised to find out there was specifically a Filipino Student Association. I met lifelong friends, touched upon Tagalog Word of the Week, and was part of events where part of it showcased cultural dances in traditional ‘costume,’ transposed onto modern music. Admittedly, we were more socially connected rather than culturally. I even stepped into the role of being a good Filipina daughter solidifying my major in nursing. However, this was also when I finally started questioning what being Filipino really meant to me.
Am I more Filipino than my friends because I can (brokenly) converse in Tagalog? Why is there whitening soap when I visit my cousins? How do I balance making my parents proud and making their sacrifices “Worth it”? –Which, for the record, I understand is an IMPOSSIBLE task to be able to equate such fundamentally enigmatic and encompassing concepts such as ‘sacrifice’ and ‘success’ against each other. Why are there so many nurses who are Filipino? Is this just the fate I’ve been handed? What does it mean to really share my story as a Filipina woman to you? How do I conjure up the value of stories that for centuries before the Spanish came, was our sole mode of communication, of learning?
I stepped away from what my parents wanted of me, from what I thought could be an ideal, safe life as a nurse in order to do so. After I went through the schooling, humbled myself in the practice, and took on an ICU position to mirror that of what my mother used to be, I am now writing as an avenue to get answers. Now as an adult, I’ve found myself in a group of people asking the same questions, finding the same meaning in these things. I’m walking deeper into the direction of what I feel is how to unravel the mystery of why God brought me upon this earth as a Filipina –trying to connect the dots between what the bloodshed in my history, the resilience of my own bloodline, and the aspirations of my parents can become of me.
So, what does being Filipino mean to me? I think asking that question already highlights the privilege I have to reflect upon something most people consider a fact about themselves. It reminds me that being Filipino is all that I’ve already typed out and a combination of what I can become — because let’s face it — we aren’t simply the identities we choose to embody. I am Filipino and American. I am a Filipino and a woman. Some days I tilt one way more than the other, and I think that’s what it truly means for me; to be able to realize the depth of the DNA stretched inside of us and have the freedom to become more than that.
