Living in the Hyphen
I am Filipino-Canadian. I was born in Manila, Philippines and moved to Toronto, Canada when I was just four years old. I’m in my late twenties now and my life has been a constant tug of war, an ongoing push and pull of these two places, two cultures, two identities. In short, it has been a life of living in between, of living in the hyphen.
I have never felt particularly Filipino. Growing up, I never adhered to cultural traditions. I could never really relate to the Filipino kids at school. I never had a debut or a cotillion. My parents never subscribed to the Filipino Channel to watch the latest teleseryes or variety shows. We barely, if ever, went to church. Up until high school, my closest friends were always Chinese or Vietnamese. When I got to university and started working and dating, I was/am surrounded by white people. I have always worn this difference with pride.
And yet, I have also always felt strongly, inherently, and boldly Filipino. Something about the inextricable bonds between my family. The unwavering gratitude and obligation I feel towards my parents. That soul-wrenching love for song and dance. The natural warmth that I feel and exude. This unnameable spirit of resistance and defiance. I have always worn this essence with pride.
But of course, I’m also proudly Canadian! My progressive values, my welcoming and empathetic nature, my “eh” and my “oh, I’m so soorrry!”, my embrace of multiculturalism and diversity…all this makes me want to shout out like our beer commercials of the 90s that “I. Am. Canadian!!!”
And yet, there are many times when I don’t ever really feel Canadian either. Mostly because I don’t even know what that word means. When you grow up in one of the most ethnically diverse countries and yet only see White “Canadian” faces and voices represented in the media, well then…what’s Canadian? When the ethnic “minorities” are the majority in your school, but you learn in your textbook that the first Canadians were European (never mind the various Indigenous nations who were here long before) and everyone else who came after is an “immigrant”, well…it gets confusing.
That all of these complicated truths could exist at once is something that has boggled me my whole life.
As I’ve opened up about this to people of different ethnicities, I’ve learned that I’m not alone in navigating this ambiguous in-between place. That flash of recognition and connection whenever I described my entanglement of contradictions was like a surge of electricity that fuelled me each time. And so I’ve actively sought out more stories to better understand what it means to be a person with a hyphenated identity. Slowly but surely, I am finding a language for what has been lying inside me all these years.
That’s why I’ve decided to create Living Hyphen — an intimate journal that explores the experiences of hyphenated Canadians. Through short stories, photography, poetry, and illustrations, we uncover what it means to be a part of a diaspora. We examine life in between cultures, as individuals who call Canada home but with roots in different, often faraway places.
The contradictory knots of our identity may never untangle themselves. Maybe they aren’t meant to. But hopefully, together we can come to intimately know all its shapes, curves, and intersections.
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