Filipino food - Mom and Lola came over tonight for dinner. Ok, that means they cooked Filipino food (bittermelon and pork and noodles and a dessert that I have no idea the name of but it has rice dumplings and jackfruit and coconut gelatin-y things and is generally yummy) and I ate (mmmm....).
I got to thinking about whether other kids of immigrant parents, or kids who are half one thing/half another sort of get the complex like I do - I feel guilty about not being Filipina enough, but have no desire to be other than the completely Americanized way that I grew up. I don't know much about the culture (admittedly because I haven't taken much time to learn about it), and am not sure that I want to know. While for my mom and grandmother the idea of being Filipino is very real (it's in what they eat, and how they speak, and how they live and how they think), it's sort of a foreign concept to me (as much as being a guy would be foreign to me).
I feel vaguely guilty (like survivor's guilt?) about having had a better life than they did, but also grateful that I have had opportunities that they haven't. I don't know what to say when they talk about cousins I don't know and have no desire to meet who want to come to this country. We all dance around the fact that I have so much while they have nothing, that it would be "such a small thing" for me to help them. And I feel like a selfish shit when I don't want to help them - when, to the contrary, helping them would mean that I could no longer afford the fabulous life that I have.
I know that in many ways my cultural background has helped me in many ways. Some of my drive and ambition have come from the fact that my mom was always drilling into my head how lucky I am and how far you can go from very little if you apply yourself. And frankly, some of my drive to be even slightly non-traditional in any ways comes from having a very straight-laced background (growing up Roman Catholic). The fact that I want to do exactly what you tell me I can't comes from the idea that girls can't do that, or people who look like me aren't supposed to be assertive, or that people who look like me can't drive. Whatever fucked up perception or notion of me that other people have based on things I can't help but wouldn't trade (my sex, my skin color) are the exact things that make me stronger, and give me the drive to grind their faces in my triumphs.
And yes, I will admit with my eyes downcast, that I am also in some ways ashamed of my background. I didn't like having to explain to all of my white friends what lumpia was, or I wanted to hide that we ate rice with most meals instead of pasta or potatoes. And while my friends thought it cool that I tanned so quickly and have curly hair, that all I wanted when I was a little girl was to look like the blond-haired/blue-eyed icons of feminity that I couldn't hope to even approximate. And while I never felt white enough, I was also never Filipino enough for the occasional friends of my mom that I met, or people from school that I met. And my mom gives me a hard time sometimes about not knowing how to speak Ilucano or Tagolog, but she also never spoke it at home (wanting me to speak English), and she worked very hard so that she has very little trace of an accent (except when she's mad).
And I have a particularly strange aversion to Asian woman/white man couples that I see - my immediate stereotype is that he wanted an obediant little Asian wife (sweet and demure, and great at cooking and cleaning, and a hellion who "love you long time"), and she saw him as her ticket to a better life. I hate myself for thinking that, but I also hate how often that that stereotype is true. If not for such a pairing, I wouldn't be here. But I also know that both my parents are real people, with more behind them than a stereotype could accurately convey, even if on the surface it's true. I also think that much of my aversion to that stereotype comes from my seeing that my step-dad lived it - as soon as he broke up with my mom he moved on to a Korean woman who could barely speak Engrish, and that he showed off like some prize pig at the county fair - and all I could think was how could he stand to be with a stupid, kowtowing little nothing when he had had a great woman like my mom.
I know that because I think of such things that they come up in conversation probably more than other people are comfortable with. That's a bit because I'm trying to make some kind of peace with how I feel about being 2nd generation. But it's also because by asking questions of my friends I also find that maybe I'm not the only one who feels that way, or that if any particular thing is really only my hangup, that it's at least understandable. I also learn things about my culture from friends that I don't feel comfortable asking my mom about. And maybe if I get it all out of my system, I can let go of it someday and move on. But at 35 years and counting, I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by cshell at August 26, 2003 09:03 PM