Kuwento Kuwento

re:Kuwento: Applause to you for trying to unravel our people's stories. Boying, just a little note....what about the experiences of the Filipinos who moved to the South? Our experiences are quite different from the Filipinos who moved to the West like you. Also, consider their stage of life when they moved to the USA...i.e., when we moved to Florida in the late 70's, straight from Quezon City...back home (yes, the Phlippines will always be my homeland though I know I can never really return for good), back then, I felt I was on top of the world...believing in my fairy tale books....anyway, my brothers and I were the only Filipinos in the entire school system in the little Florida town we moved in..in fact, we were the only "Others" and our classmates and teachers didn't really know what we were...we were the first "Others" that they have met. Anyway, the only choice back then when the school wants to know your race was either Black or White. Guess what I did? I always crossed both of them out and wrote Filipino and my teachers always got upset with me. They always corrected it and placed "White...yes, they always placed us in the "White" category though we were really not treated as "White"...anyway, I still remember, when I turned 16 and passed the test to get your driver's license, my mom argued with the lady to change my race as either "Asian" or "Pacific Islander" like they have in Chicago, but the poor lady said the only choices are "White" or "Black" and my only choice is to pick "White" because we are definitely not "Black". Back then (and still somewhat is), Florida was really hillbilly...it is changing, as I can see in my son's elementary school...he has Jewish, Pakistanian, Indian, and lots of Spanish classmates...but still, beside from my son (who is irish, french and of course filipino), there is only one other boy who has filipino blood running in his veins attending his elementary school. But we are still fighting ignorance over here and I get frustrated with some "filipinos" that i meet here who are new to the US because they choose "not to make waves".....and yes, there are times, that i feel out of place when I am in a flip party because most of them say "amerikana ka kasi matagal ka na ditio at wala kang accent"...i do admit that i have forgot to speak the language (i am trying though) but I have no problem understanding or reading tagalog but that does not make me any less filipino....chrissa victorino