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7/16/2018

Litany Esguerra

Belonging

                I had a wonderful time in New York this week. Our seminars and activities were centered on immigration through hearing other people’s stories, Bible study, and discussion. We visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and learned a bit about the plight of some immigrants to New York.

During an activity, a question that got me thinking during this trip was what our immigrant stories were. I have been detached from the story of my parent’s moving from the Philippines to the United States. I have always heard bits of their stories about my parent’s lives, but never a complete story. While I never asked, it never occurred to me either to ask.  I know that my parents wanted to encourage assimilation forus, as many do especially in school, and perhaps that’s why I started to become detached from that story.

                However, one recent memory related to this topic was when I told my dad that I was coming to D.C. and had plans to go to India and even London. My dad asked: “Why are you leaving me?” partly as a joke. I replied with a question: “How old were you when you moved away from the Philippines?” He replied, “22.” Then I told him, “See, now it’s my turn.” “But I left for a big reason and opportunity.” “I’ll be back eventually, dad, I’m not moving away permanently.”

                This conversation relates to one of our guest speakers who made me think about the idea of going “home.” Often, my parents would say that they’re going home whenever they say they’re going to the Philippines. Our guest speaker analogously said that she went back to the village where she was born and raised, and felt like she belonged because she was home. It’s bittersweet because I don’t think I have that same sense of home whenever I do go to the Philippines. I love Chicago and coming back to my family, but Chicago is not entirely my home either. I am both Filipino and American, never one over the other, and there’s always an in-between feeling.

                I found that I was fairly satisfied with this thought when all of us EYAs went to eat at a Filipino restaurant in Brooklyn. While my Tagalog was sparse, I still found enjoyment in speaking to the waitress for what we should order. I immediately had a sense of home and of belonging within the time we all shared the meal together. The familiarity of the food made me realize that I can belong anywhere in the world through the unique sense of taste. Excited the entire time, I explained the food that came out- the garlic fried rice, the melt-in-your-mouth fatty crispy pata, the comfort food of arroz caldo, or the custard-like consistency of leche flan. I was sharing my culture with others who perhaps felt similar to the (sometimes) uneasy feeling of being “in-between.” I think they also mutually reciprocated their appreciation for the food and their willingness to try something different. I realized that there, we belonged with each other in those very moments -even in nuanced ways- through sharing of culture, food, and time.

                Perhaps this overall connects to the concept of what change can mean, or how change occurs. Changing attitudes sometimes is not always deliberate through political action, but can be done so simply through fellowship and sharing culture. Sometimes just the exposure alone is good enough to start a chain of thoughts about how we look at the world, or at how other people look at the world, and how we connect cultures and experiences to the world. It might be through how we define the concept of home, which for me, sometimes travels around and finds itself on a plate in Queens, New York. For others, it’s finding a place with each other. For others, it’s entirely different. Let’s see where home can take us next in terms of change.