Maligayang Pagbabalik

‘Welcome Home’

Hayley Tang

Global Studies Capstone - Purdue University 2022

Kumusta! Hello!

‘Welcome Home’ is a project centering on one of the most eye-opening experiences of my young adulthood as well as my only real experience abroad before graduating college.

Just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was in the Philippines for the first time in my life for a long overdue trip to our family’s home. We traveled to multiple islands (Boracay, Cebu, and Iloilo) and a few cultural epicenters: Magellan's Cross and the Shrine of Sibunga.

My Lola (grandmother) and Lolo (grandfather) had taken me and a friend to spend the winter holiday abroad. They both immigrated to the Chicago area in 1967 and ‘68, and raised my dad and I there. They both had successful careers to live a comfortable life in American while supporting the family they never forgot about back in the Philippines.

Although they spent much of their adulthoods in America following better opportunities, they made trips whenever possible back to the Philippines. When I was a kid, they always explained these trips for them as ‘going back home’.

I find that I am able to engage and feel present during experiences best through photography. During this trip, I carried my Lolo's old film camera and half a dozen exposures of film. I had the intent to document what I saw so as to relive the trip when I developed the film rolls at home. I ended up shooting 64 exposures of friends, family, strangers, architeture, and landscapes of this experience. After the COVID-19 virus turned into a global pandemic, and travel became an impossible dream for the foreseeable future, I realized this trip would be my last for a while, and I would not see this family for years at the very least.

This project is multimedia in nature. In order for me to tell this story right, I’ve provided my eyes and ears. This project consists of the following…

Film Archives.

I documented all that I could there through dozens of 35mm color prints on my Lolo’s old camera.

My Family’s Narrative & My Art.

I started conversations with my grandparents about our large family line and history, which I’ve included the audio of.

Emotions, for me, are best shown through projects. Here, I’ve compiled some work that I hope touches on the experiences and emotions of a descendant of immigrants.

I am

Filipino-American.

To me, this statement means that I am the rift between my family’s ancestral past and their intended future of my generation.

I don’t speak the Tagalog language that my family knows. In fact, many members of my generation are growing up without the Filipino language. Therefore, I participated with my family’s culture through food and celebration growing up. I reap the benefits of being an American and growing up in what my family believes is the ‘land of opportunity’. Yet part of me wondered what it meant to my grandparents to return ‘home’ to the islands of the Philippines.

What is the Filipino-American Experience?

Underrepresentation

Filipinos make up the second-largest group among all Asian-Americans, with 4 million living in the United States. However, Filipino-Americans and Filipino culture severely lack in visibility in comparison to these large numbers.
Strong Values

According to Pew Research, Filipinos statistically have as high, if not higher, views on having a strong marriage and being a good parent then Asians in general, and much more than the general public. Filipinos also statistically have higher educational attainments and median household incomes over these two groups.
Internalized Colonialism Effects

Due to the long history of the Philippines being both colonized and occupied, many Filipinos will sometimes attempt to assimilate completely into Western cultures. This can lead to the decrease in Tagalog speakers and a disconnect to one’s traditions among younger generations.

Growing up in a small midwestern town, I once believed I was the only Filipino in all of Indiana for a time because I had not met a single other person who shared my cultural identity. There were no Filipino grocers or restaurants, no Filipino church groups or Filipinos in media I consumed in my small circle of life.

Due to my parent’s divorce, custody stated that I visit my Lola’s house one weekend out of every two. They spoke Tagalog to each other but never to me, and my Lola would cook traditional Filipino dishes for me but always give them different, or simpler, names: ‘beef’ for ‘bistek’ and ‘noodles’ for ‘pancit’.

When we had to pick a country to write an essay about in 8th grade, I jumped at the chance to pick the Philippines in an attempt to grow my knowledge. When my classmates asked where my dad’s side was from, I would simply point to the small group of islands somewhere below China on the globe. I had no idea what was there, though. I had no idea what the Philippines was like.

Filipino-American Pressures

A collage made from found & fragmented paper.

Being Filipino-American, or Fil-Am, but disconnected from much of my culture until my college years, I didn’t discover until later in life about specific Fil-Am pressures.

There can be pressures of the guilt one feels for having better opportunities than our elders, or even cousins and family that may still reside abroad. There is the pressure to always show gratefulness for this too, which many Fil-Ams are as we acknowledge the sacrifices our ancestors made for us. But this is almost to a fault, where mental health is still heavily stigmatized within the Filipino community, and struggling with mental health, difficult school work, or a demanding job can be seen as being ungrateful.

Because of the previously aforementioned strong values in our community, Fil-Ams can feel the stresses of performing well in academics and choosing STEM fields for higher education. Getting a high-paying job means being able to support family in high numbers, including those back in the Philippines, or being able to provide extra care for your elders. There can also be a level of guilt for being distanced from or unable to help the problems within the Philippines nation, such as national elections and social reform.

There are social pressures in Fil-Am communities as well. Gossip is famous for being ingrained in Filipino culture, some even refer to it as ‘The Filipino Favorite Pastime’. Though fun sometimes, gossip can be destructive to others or their reputations and lead to harsh comparisons among others. Topics for gossip can be anything from others’ grades, financial status, sins, or relationship issues.

As mentioned, there can be the guilt for feeling distanced from the problems of the Philippines at times.

While I was working on compiling this project in the spring of 2022, Typhoon Odette hit my family’s hometown in Cebu. Their city I had visited those few years ago took a direct hit and thus disrupted the lives of everyone living there. This is an image I was sent from the home after the storm.

My Lola was quick to send aid and support to the family back in Cebu. The whole situation made me wonder how residents could handle such hardships so frequently. Severe tropical storms can hit the Philippines up to 20 or so times a year, and many homes that are not strongly reinforced are completely lost. This places a emotional and financial burden on those affected, even those with aid from Fil-Am relatives in the US.

Unfortunately, severe tropical storms can only be expected to increase as climate change continues. Yet, as Filipinos do, there is always found the spirit to rebuild.

A warm summer night in July. Seeing my grandparents in their home again.

Sitting in the living room under dim light, I ask my Lolo to tell me about our family as my Lola puts away dinner. We talk of both sides, my White side and my Filipino side, and what it was like for them to move from the Philippines to the city of Chicago in the 1960s.

In the winter of 2019,

I ‘went home’ for

the first time.

The Philippines was truly one of the most beautiful places I’d seen so far.

I attempted to capture everything I saw in the two rolls of film I brought. Below are some of the scenes I captured.

I am multiracial.

I worried that I would stick out the moment I stepped out of the airport into the tropical air. My Dutch heritage on my mother’s side lended me a semi-fair complexion and added height, traits uncommon for full Filipinos. I was worried my clear racial mix would make others treat me like an outsider.

The reality was many Filipinos didn’t even recognize I was of their same background. Others would ask about my ethnic makeup and compliment my European features. Flattered as I was, I felt confusion as I looked at local billboards advertising various drinks and beauty products. All of the fair-skinned models looked more like myself than the local population. Years of colonialism have set a beauty standard in the country, one that pays favor to European complexions, and one that is unaccommodating for traditional Filipino features.

Pictured above is my American friend I brought with me on the trip and my Filipino family at the shared house many of them live in or near. Everyone welcomed me with open arms, excited to meet me after stories they heard of my growing up in America for nearly two decades. Through the ability to stay connected through social media, we continue to watch each other’s lives even through we are separated by different continents.

Below is the final picture I got to take with my family before we left. Many of those pictured are people I had just met days prior. Although I promised I would try to come back in a year, the pandemic hit the world only about a month later. Travel to the Philippines was difficult in the following years as the pandemic continued to affect nations like the Philippines disproportionately compared to the US in terms of vaccine availability and income or job losses.

I reflected on my childhood as I viewed theirs.

Family life in the Philippines was different from what I was used to. While I grew up caught amongst a custody divide, these little cousins of mine lived in one big group together. Three different houses sat on one plot of land. The family shared almost everything. Other relatives lived just a walk down the road. On nights there was laughter, music, togetherness.

I still reflect on this experience often. Mostly when I think about who I am and who I’m becoming.

There doesn’t feel like a right way to end this story. I traveled abroad, the world shut down, and I suddenly had a lot of time to reflect about my family and our experiences. I share messages with my older cousins on social media. I get Facebook requests each month from what I can only assume are more distant relatives I’ve haven’t met yet. I wish to go back someday.

My Lolo and Lola will return soon. They’ve lived out much of their lives in America. Now, Illinois weather is harsh in old age, and I, their only grandchild, am finished with college. I know there is so much love and life waiting for them back in the Philippines.

I also know America is more home to me then there. I know that I have a future for me here, in this country, at least for a while. Following graduation, I felt restless, indecisive, and uncertain about what to do next here, in a future that had already begun to be written for me before I was born. Sometimes I wonder if there is a unique burden for third generation immigrants. Do we commit to the new lives we’ve grown here, or do we work to maintain the bonds between nations that we may not entirely understand? Is that a choice we have to make?

I’ll build a life here, without forgetting my family abroad, and I’ll probably have a family someday of my own. I wonder if my kids will have even less Filipino blood in them than I. I wonder if that will matter, what cultures within them they will learn to identify with. Someday I hope return to the Philippines, and I’ll share that part of my heritage with my family of my own.

Then maybe we’ll all wonder what our lives would have been like if our family never left the Philippines, but we’ll also be appreciative in some ways that they did.