spoilerparty:

This is an excellent book that hits on a number of good discussion topics. It’d be great if you guys could join in. You can leave messages here on the blog. Or you can email us at spoilerparty@outlook.com or track us down any way you see fit. Since we are going to WisCon this year we will most likely be releasing the podcast before the 22nd.

sociolab:

Do you ever think about the fact that the US has created and legitimized a system of institutionalized inequality by funding schools through property taxes?  That basically a child’s education is only as good as the value of the property in their neighborhood.  Funny how education is so often viewed as an equalizing factor when there is nothing equal about it.

dadfighter:

if they tell you their heritage in percentages, they’re too white for you

There was nothing strange to me about how my parents (hadn’t) met

When I believed my mother chose to come here

When I had a child’s understanding of choice

As a child in the American South

White children appraised my hair 

And passed me the black crayon

But I knew my hair was brown, dark brown

Because black was my mother’s hair

And my grandmother’s hair

(I didn’t know she dyed it)

And the hair of all the Filipina mothers

With American children in tow.

In the South, finding a Filipino was an event

Now that I have moved to California

I search for myself in the faces of the many Filipinos

So common here

I look for myself in the broad noses

I listen for snatches of Tagalog, Ilongo

I look for a spark of recognition, acceptance

But despite myself, I pass effortlessly

For White.

My White father named me

For his mother, and his own family

And it is easy to see him in my features

Small nose, dark thick eyebrows

That remind me of my Scots-Irish grandmother

She came over the hills from Tennessee

At the turn-of-the-century, in a covered wagon

With hot bricks to warm her feet

So her uncle could work at the Champion paper mill

Her parents dead, of pellagra.

I take pride

In my father’s roots

In the mill-town heritage of working class Appalachia

And the round, rich vowels of Blue Ridge folk

But I long to have more of me recognizable

So that I can honor the colonized, the surviving

The diaspora-spread Filipino.

In California, I went to a Filipino restaurant

I felt looming, gangly, and pale

And I couldn’t understand the cashier’s Taglish

I ordered adobo

And lumpia

(I knew these words)

I didn’t ask for rice

Because I was too embarrassed

And I didn’t know how.

Outside, I roll up my sleeves

So the sun can summon forth my brownest pigment

Will I look more Filipino?

In the mirror, pale white stripes

Across my breasts and thighs

Remind me that I am my father’s child

And privilege is my default

Sunbathing, frivolous, doesn’t really address that.

The world grows smaller.

A Filipino cousin I have never met

Who looks like my mom

With the click of a mouse, crosses the Pacific

Messages me.

I think of my mother’s 100-lb. balikbayan boxes

Packed full with Spam, Dove soap, tiny hotel shampoos

Wal-mart shirts and pants for my uncle to re-sell.

Wrapped ‘round with clear tape, and then with rope

Because it’s a long way from North Carolina

From the United States

To the island of Negros.

I think of all the things I have

That my cousin might want

And all the things she might want that I can’t give.

Suddenly, my arms feel heavy.

I don’t respond.

In California,

My Filipino clients, mostly women

Talk loudly, stare boldly

Wave their hands, touch without invitation

Scold and boss their husbands, children

And say what’s on their minds

I look differently at my mother now.

I was an introverted child

Quiet, bookish—“sensitive”

My mother’s seeming opposite

She talked, loudly, with food in her mouth

She scolded, full volume, with dramatic face and hands

She fell asleep with the television on.

I didn’t realize until recently

That this is more than my mother’s personality

That this is also my mother’s culture

This is what Filipinos are like

This is how Filipinos survive

And that in our too-quiet house

Where I, only child

Crept around the edges of my parents’ many conflicts

Sympathizing with one, then the other

That my discomfort with my mother

Was not just personal, but cultural.

So whose side am I on?

My childhood playmate

The son of an American father, Filipina mother

Straight dark hair, liquid black eyes

(A nose like my mother’s, unlike mine)

We ran and played with others like us

In his mother’s vegetable garden

Full of tomatoes, Chinese eggplant, bittermelon

Or played Nintendo inside, beneath the gaze of a Santo Niño

Beneficent and golden-haired

His mother hollering, “Anak! Come here!”

I knew what “anak” meant

(It meant he was in trouble)

But I didn’t even know how to say “Salamat po”

For the heaping plates of pancit, skewered pork, and rice

Featured in abundance at his mother’s parties

Where Filipina mothers congregated, chattering in many tongues

While their White husbands lounged in folding chairs in the shade

Or flipped burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

We children ate everything.

To this day, parties disappoint me unless

There are at least three groaning tables of food.

When we were older,

I asked my playmate how he saw himself

Because his family mirrored mine.

Filipino? Half-Filipino?

“Just White,” he said.

His White father had named him

His White grandparents lived next door

And though his mother brought him every summer

For three weeks to Manila

And his broad nose and black eyes

Were far more Filipino than mine

He was an American, he could pass for White

He felt White

And he saw no reason not to.

When I asked my mother

If she saw me as Filipino

She laughed.

“If I had wanted a Filipino child,” she said

“I would have married a Filipino man.”

That answer would have satisfied me

When I believed my mother chose to come here

When I had a child’s understanding of choice