What are you?

A brown kid in the 90s.

Last week, as I was putting on my son’s boots in the schoolyard, I saw my daughter’s classmate standing by my side waiting to talk to me.

“Are you Asian?” her curious light brown eyes shone in the morning sun.

“Hi,” I smiled, then kneeled down for a better face to face chat with this 2nd grader. “I’m Filipino.”

We continued to get to know each other for the next two minutes. Her voice is soft but, with each question, she answered with confidence and a smile. We chatted about how her mom is Chinese, how she speaks a little Chinese at home, and that my daughter tells me she loves playing with her at recess.

I walked back to my car that morning remembering being asked a similar question as a kid.

“What are you?” 

In my earlier years of elementary school, my classmates didn’t look like me, at a school predominantly white, hispanic/latinx, and growing other Asian communities. Filipinos were barely a sprinkle here.

I’d respond with a mutter, hoping the words would dissipate in the air as they came out of my mouth, “I’m Filipino.”

Divulging this information about my ethnicity was often met with confusion.

I appeared Asian but the people I descended from were not, at the time, what I’d call mainstream Asian in the US (think of the movie The Joy Luck Club or the TV show All American Girl with Margaret Cho). I'm not Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese. My parent’s cuisine was not enjoyed and sold at a restaurant down the street. We didn’t serve familiar dishes, the takeout staples of Korean BBQ or sushi or orange chicken. My foods of fermented tiny shrimps and fish soups were practically from Mars. 

Then there was another issue. I have dark brown skin, one that mirrored my dad’s deep complexion. I was a girl who soaked up the sun, riding my bike and helping my mom pick vegetables in her garden. It was at this age I started to feel self conscious about getting more tanned, my brown skin and its darkness.

I’d get commentary:

“You look Chinese but you’re black.” What?

“You must be Hawaiian.” Well, no. But sometimes I wish this was the answer because it wasn’t such a strange place to be from. 

Being called something I’m not, and not being confident in where I came from, was an odder place to be at age 8. 

When filling out personal information forms, the options for ethnicity were either Asian or Pacific Islander, which one am I a part of? Seems like a little bit of both and neither. I guess “Other” is a safe one, check.

When I visited extended family or attended my parents’ friends parties, I also didn’t feel quite like I belonged either. My sisters and I weren’t taught my parent’s dialect, Ilocano. The Philippines’ national language is Tagalog, but my parents didn’t speak it well. They didn’t teach me their native language that isn’t widely spoken nor did they want to teach us a language, although more widely used, that they didn’t feel confident in speaking. My parents immigrated here, became US citizens, and raised us to be American. But raised us in the only way they knew how, Filipino.

So. “What are you?”

As an 8-year-old, at school, I thought I was no one of significance, embarrassingly saying the word and the strangeness of its sounds Fi-Li-Pi-No. I’m Asian but not quite because some thought I’m mysteriously too dark. With my family, I also didn’t feel like I really fit in, unable to speak the language of my parents’ home country, too American to understand. 

But I grew up. I made more Filipino friends as I changed schools. I moved to different places and found so many folks considered “Other.” I love to hear their stories and read memoirs from people like me who felt puzzled about our place in the world. We were alone, together. We just didn’t know it yet.

I see some progress where shades of brown are more celebrated and that Jo Koy and Bruno Mars sent us all on stage with them. I can buy children’s books for my kids with illustrations of characters with brown skin like me, with beautiful stories about cooking and eating lumpia (eggrolls) and pancit (noodles) with their family.

As a 39-year-old in 2022, I know my skin is beautiful and so is the shape of my eyes and nose. I’ve picked up more books to learn about where I came from. I’m enticed all over again hearing my mom tell stories about her childhood; I took these for granted when I was a kid. When I get asked “What are you?”, a little girl last week reminded me how I naturally respond now. Not a reply under my breath this time, just a firm, “I’m Filipino.”