Allow Us to Introduce Ourselves

Season 1, Episode 1 Transcript

T: Hello! I’m Tamara. I was born in New York City and am now based in London via Tokyo…

V: And I’m Vina. I immigrated from Baguio City in the Philippines to New York in my teens …

T: And we want to welcome you to The Lift Up, a monthly transatlantic conversation between Vina and me, where we talk about books, writing, identity, and representation.

V: We’ve decided to center our conversation on marginalized voices and stories because — even growing up in the Philippines, which inherited its educational system from the American Occupation — the books I read … Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, White Fang, Nancy Drew … were by authors and characters who didn’t look like me or share my experience.

T: You know, I realize that, especially for people growing up in formerly colonized and occupied countries, a lot of the literature you grow up with is based on those inherited experiences. So, based on that, what was the first book you read that spoke to your experience?

V: So, for me, the first book I read about being Pilipino in the US was America Is in The Heart by writer and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan. Actually, the first person in my family who migrated to the US was my paternal grandfather, Lolo Pilong.* And he arrived in California around the same time Bulosan did — so, in the late 1920s — on a college scholarship. But, that didn’t include boarding or living expenses. And like Bulosan, the only jobs he could get as a brown man were in agriculture. So, he ended up picking citrus and cutting sugarcane in the San Joaquin Valley in hundred-degree heat.

T: Wow!

V: My Lolo eventually returned to the Philippines but didn’t speak much about his experience here in the US. He forbid his sons from immigrating, actually, and my dad moved here long after Lolo passed. And, it was only after reading that book that I began to understand what it must have been like for my Lolo. Bulosan told these stories about the discrimination and violence that Pilipino migrant workers faced. And he described these signs all over California that read “No Dogs and No Filipinos Allowed.”

And, so since then, I’ve really been hungering for more stories that explore how, to paraphrase the poet Langston Hughes, for some of us, America —so, the dream, this land of the free — was never our America. But, we’re still committed to making this country what we know it can be, and that starts with sharing our stories.

T: That is so true, Vina. And you know, I mean, it’s really interesting to hear about your grandfather’s experience and how, for you, you could later on be able to more fully understand and empathize with that experience through literature that you were able to read and access.

You know, for me, being first generation American isn’t a new concept for most of us, but I never had the ability to read about that Caribbean American experience from that perspective growing up. My parents came from Jamaica to the US as students, and as many people from the Caribbean tended to do, they built a life in the US, while sharing with us some of the traditional Jamaican literature, like the stories of Anansi and stories about Jamaican history. My love of literature was actually formed by what I would say were two key teachers … So, my fifth grade teacher who introduced us to The Good Earth, which started to pique my interest in the experiences of people in other cultures, and actually, our teacher, Ms. Spencer, at Sacred Heart who introduced us to Chinua Achebe, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and a number of Japanese authors that I’ve come to love. But I think the stories of the Caribbean diaspora resonated with me more once I moved to the UK. My maternal grandparents moved to the UK in the era of Windrush and I remember one of my uncles telling me very bluntly about what they faced back then — “No Black, No Irish, No Dogs.” So, I felt in coming here, I needed to bridge the gap between the Caribbean American and Caribbean Commonwealth experiences in order for me to learn a lot more about myself and my family history, and I would say I’m still working through that. So, many of the books across the years that I’ve read have formed my love of literature, but actually, what’s interesting is that a more recent book had me screaming — “yes! I understand,” and that was actually reading Queenie, which came out last year.

So yeah, Vina, maybe this might be a good segway into letting everyone know what this podcast is and what it isn’t.

V: Yes. So, we’re looking at international writers, writers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, from various diasporas. And maybe their work is about their experiences, or a shared experience. It could be poetry, fiction, nonfiction. Maybe it’s a genre that doesn’t have diverse representation, like sci-fi, crime fiction, or even graphic novels. We’ll try to bucket these into themes each month for a, hopefully, spirited conversation. And we’ll look at authors across a span of time — mostly focusing on current authors, but also not losing that reverence for the trailblazers who constantly remind us that we have a voice, that we have a story to tell.

T: Exactly, exactly! And I think it’s also key for us to note that we aren’t literary critics. We are just two people who love literature. We love to read, and we are amazed that there are so many voices out there not getting enough airtime. So, we want to help, in our own small way, to change that by introducing and talking about the books we have read — whether we loved them or not; but more importantly, that it introduces our audience to someone new, who they might not have thought to read, and I guess that’s a win for us, right?

V: Yeah! And also, I mean, this podcast is evolving. We want your feedback … We want to know what you’re reading … We also want to be introduced to authors that we’ve never come across.

You can interact with us on Instagram (@theliftuppod) and through our blog on Medium.com/the-lift-up-podcast. So, if you’re looking to discover empowering reads by marginalized writers, then we hope you’ll join our conversation on the first Wednesday of every month!

*To learn more about Lolo Pilong’s story and a reflection of im/migrant labor across generations, read co-host Vina Orden’s essay “The Little Brown Brother’s Burden” in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Open City magazine.

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