This essay was originally published in in Geez Magazine, Issue 70: Ancestors, Remembering for the Future, Fall 2023.
I search for my ancestors everywhere. Anywhere. Even nowhere. I have been living in this foreign land for eight years, where voices like those of my ancestors have been forced silent. When my family and I moved to the United States from the Philippines in 2015, we sought to find a better home — a different place where we could find rest, comfort, and financial security. Many have called it the pursuit of the “American Dream,” some kind of striving for an idealist utopia, a place of refuge away from the troubles of our homelands that could only be found within the confines of U.S. borders.
On our very first evening in the U.S., a car driven by a handful of teenage white boys screeched to a halt on the parkway and kept my family from crossing the street. They stared at us for a moment, and then they bellowed what seemed like a racially motivated, guttural imitation of Native American tribal chants. My dad remarked, “They probably think we’re Indians.” And I thought to myself, “Americans are so weird.”
That was my first introduction to what the racial order looked like when you were finally inside the U.S. empire.