What does being Filipino really mean?

A conversation to myself on growing up Filipino in a small town outside London.

When I found out about Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, I was in shock. From the many Jubilee celebrations filled with tea parties on the streets and in the neighbor’s houses, I’ve always seen Queen Elizabeth II as resilient and immortal - I mean, she lived until 96 years and reigned for over 70 years, making her the longest reigning monarch. I’ve never met the Queen, but what she symbolized and embodied as a representative of the UK was a part of my identity as an immigrant from a colonized country who grew up in heavily British culture.

What does being Filipino mean? I’ve always asked this question to myself growing up, as I was learning more about who I am and where I come from. As my Tagalog got worse and my distance from Catholicism widened, as I began entering my teenage years exposed to French films about sexual awakenings, art and film photography, and the sad melodies of Lana del Rey and Marina and the Diamonds, I started to wonder about myself and who I really was.

The first time I flew back to the Philippines since I left at just two years old was a little over ten years ago— 2011 or 2012. I flew with my younger sister and mother and we stayed at my mother’s cousin’s house in Manila. The Philippines is the country I was born, where my culture and my parents and their families came from, and yet I felt like a foreigner traveling someplace beyond my own comforts of western Europe. It became difficult to speak Tagalog fluently to the people there and I didn’t fully understand some of the customs - such as gesturing the mano po to the elders, or eating with your kamay (hands).

Laurence had a similar experience moving to the US from the Philippines, in which she described it as a “culture shock”.

“Those months [before school started], I was so lonesome; I had nothing to do, I was so depressed, I had no friends. Those were the times when I was so lost, like, what am I going to do?”

Laurence is an aspiring actress and currently a background dancer. She moved to New York in 2015, where she’s lived in Manhattan since. Despite moving into and living in a completely different country with a different language and culture, Laurence says she feels more at home in New York City. “I resonate more with my friends [in the city] because I feel more accepted. I feel more like I could talk to them,” she answered when I asked her who in her circles she feels more connected with. “Whereas in my family, in Filipino families, they still have toxic beliefs and old-school mindsets.”

In talking more about Filipino families, Laurence identifies as pansexual and described her first relationship as a lesbian relationship. “My aunts and uncles have homophobic mindsets about the LGBTQ community. It makes me closed up like how am I going to tell them? When am I going to open up to them?”.

With the many cultural and political influences and the vast diversity of the Filipino diaspora, many Filipinos (particularly Filipino-Americans) are experiencing an identity crisis. Who are we really? Whenever someone asks me where I’m from (they usually notice the accent and my appearance and become curious), I tend to never take less than two minutes to outline my backstory like the nakaraan portion of a Filipino teleserye, where they summarized the previous episode. However, when I spoke with Dr. Joanna Rondilla, an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San Jose State University, she described this as the ‘elevator pitch’.

“It’s okay to take your time to establish your genealogy because it says something about not just who you are, but how you approach things in life. This is how their ancestors did it. You’re establishing who you are.” — From a story Dr. Rondilla told me when she went to conference in Brigham-Young University (BYU) in Laie, Hawaii.

I came across an article during my capstone research that mentioned only 47 percent of Filipinos identify as Asian. I thought it was such a fascinating statistic and looked more into it - only to discover that it was a study conducted in California. When I asked for an elaboration from Dr. Anthony Ocampo, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona who analyzed the data, he said this was because “California has many racial groups” and the area in which they conducted the survey is rich with the Latinx community. Because of the Hispanic influences on Filipino culture, Filipino-Americans in the survey felt more of a connection with the Latinxs.

So, gathering from all this, what does being Filipino really mean? What does it mean to be Filipino? These questions are constantly bouncing around in my head as I navigate the ways of life and culture and politics, but I’ve come to realize that identity is fluid like a river - it shifts directions, changes shape and form, erodes or brings along items. We are constantly evolving beings, changing as we’re learning, as we’re hustling, as we’re moving, as we’re living. Throughout my life so far, I had wanted to become a pediatrician, a nurse, a writer, a teacher, a fashion designer, illustrator, lawyer, a photographer, a gymnast, a dancer, a journalist. And I’m still figuring out what I want to do.

It can be confusing and anxiety-ridden, especially as I just graduated from college and still working my unfulfilling part-time job as an administrative assistant, wanting to do more in making a difference in the world and wanting to work full-time as a professional journalist - or whatever opportunity springs in my pathway. You’re slumped into a cycle of feeling like you’re not good enough for not choosing a path and striving to become successful in that pursuit. Particularly when you feel like you’re not living up to your parent’s expectations of getting a full-time job straight after undergrad.

As I’m learning to relieve myself of this unnecessary pressure, I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that I’m still young. I remember during my capstone project, I wanted to be ambitious and publish the newsletter in the form of zines (which I somehow eventually managed three days before my final presentations) and I remember my capstone professor, Anjali Khosla, shaking my shoulders and crying out “Nicole, you have so much time to do this! Relax, you’ll be fine.”

I recently watched a great Norwegian film called The Worst Person in the World, directed by Joachim Trier, that explores the complexities of a woman traversing through flings and romantic relationships and figuring herself out and her pathway. It was mind-opening, where I related to the protagonist Julie, played by Renate Reinsve, and her fluctuating journey of trying to define who she is. The lesson I learned from the movie which, for me, is actually a revelation from accumulating thoughts and self-conversations, is that you cannot be defined and you cannot define yourself. You are a complex creature filled with nuance and many personalities and goals and desires and experiences and knowledge and different people you know and love and history and stories and life.

So what does it mean to be Filipino? Don’t expect everyone to understand, as it’s something for you to define for yourself.

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