re-published from my tumblr.
is there a word for coming from a non-"american" (non-white) heritage and just... not being connected to it at all? outside of calling my relatives lolo, lola, tio, tia, etc., i don't think i've ever felt, like, culturally filipino in my life. and not to mention my indian side -- i was a surrogate kid, so i never knew my birth mother, and my own mom's very white (think WASP).
my lolo and lola came to the States in the '60s, and we've been here ever since. my dad calls my lolo his papang, but i've never called my dad that. i didn't even know filipino food outside bagoong until i was 10, when my lolo got us a book that talked about lumpia and longanisa. but i don't eat those foods regularly. i don't speak cebuano, even though everyone expects tagalog when they hear "filipino" -- if they even know that the philippines exist -- i grew up with america. i idolized Pocahontas because she had skin that was close to mine, mulan because she was asian, and i was told that i was also.
there were never kids that looked like me growing up (don't get me wrong, my neighborhood was diverse, but no asian kids) and when i finally did meet another filipino kid, she was pale and called her dad papang and spoke in tagalog to him. my first language is english, even though i get asked if i can read hindu or tagalog off store labels by well-meaning mothers. sometimes i get praised for how well i speak english. (i do speak english well, but perhaps not in the way they're thinking -- i was consistently one of the top scorers in english tests in my classes.)
my favorite food is the cheeseburger. when i get asked what my culture's like, i reply "american." because what else would i say? if my skin were white i'd be a true american. i saw raya in theatres and she was supposed to be the first filipino disney princess and i didn't feel any kind of connection. i don't think she would have even been a favorite if it came out while i was little. are you supposed to feel connection?
my african-american, my jewish, my latino friends talk about their culture and their traditions like they're nothing. one of my closest friends, who is korean, talks to their parents, rapid-fire, having to translate when they see me lost. one of my other friends can speak and understand spanish extremely well when he's with his mother, but got a lower score than i did on the tests.
i'm a diligent student because my father told me to be one, but everyone assumes it's because i'm asian. they assume that my father taught me to only get As because of some half-baked notion of being a "model minority".
it feels like a mask, sometimes. behind the filipino/indian part everyone sees, i'm just american. there is no tie between me and my ethnicity, nothing real keeping me tethered. is "assimilationist" the wrong thing to call me, considering there was nothing to assimilate from?
june 18 2023
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