Seeking community

I just got back from lunch break. I ate takeout adobo and rice from a tiny mom&pop kitchen. Whenever I'm working in Delano I take advantage of the fact that there is a Filipino place nearby because until this week, I hardly ever ate Filipino food at home. Here in Delano, the Filipino community is generations old. Last month, they held their annual festival. Perhaps my family should endure the searing temperatures and sign up for the baby beauty pageant? Or maybe not. We all choose which parts of our cultures to embrace and which to admire from a distance, right?

Mom2Amara and Pinaynewyorker started me thinking about what traditions I can pass on to my daughter about being Filipino. If I don't teach her the language or feed her the foods at home everyday, how is she going to know that she's Filipino? Even her Filipino grandparents only speak to her in English. Is it my sole responsibility? Is this how it happens? Is this the melting into the 'Great American Melting Pot'?"

But then again, my daughter has a whole set of other resources on hand that I never had growing up. As a kid, the only mirror I had was my family and the random "aunts" I met while being dragged to various parties or novenas. My baby, on the other hand, already has 6 books about Filipino kids like these. But that's not going to be enough, right?

Earlier this month we attended the wedding of a "cousin" of mine. Well, her parents and my parents went to high school in the Philippines together and we visited each other every summer. So we kind of grew up together though we're not related by blood (my sister and I even made the slide show shown at the reception). Well, I couldn't help but notice how the wedding party and other participants in the Mass were all Filipino. Unlike our family, nearly all of their dad's family did immigrate to the U.S. so she grew up with real aunts and uncles and cousins. But also she had a bunch of Filipino friends because she grew up in the Bay Area. How different would my life have been if I'd had this richness and diversity of resources to help define my Filipino identity? For me, my pride and awareness in Filipino identity mainly came to me during college. There, my eyes were opened by Filipino Americans who grew up in large Filipino communities, some with cultural schools that taught language, dance and music!

Do I want my daughter to grow up the way I did? Or should I be trying to live around more Filipinos and make more Filipino friends? Maybe we should move to Eagle Rock? I don't think these are simple questions. If I make friends with recent immigrants, I feel like I'm trying to force a connection there. Of friends my own age, none of us really know the language that well or celebrate particularly Filipino traditions. And then of course, my baby is not just Filipina, she is also Japanese American (4th generation) and Jewish American (secular, not religious). Of course, everyone will have their own very personal answers but what if we started to think beyond the personal level? When do we take responsibility for building Filipino communities for the future generations? Once the generations of American-born Filipinos blend in more with American mainstream or even Asian America, what can my generation pass on to continue to build community and pride?