The Power Within Empowerment

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belie e e canno be i ho each o her. e leaned on m caring comm ni and he hear ha is embedded i hin, as i has helped me crea e m o n personal philosophies of m life and learn o in er ea e m c l re i hin i . Vir all , i has been diffic l for me o connec i h m comm ni , b i h he se of s or elling and ords ha sa a ho sand messages, hear hem. feel hem. see hem. As e are all being q aran ined in o r homes and are nable o connec ph sicall i h h gs, la gh er, and cries, hro gh and hro gh, m comm ni has ne er failed o lea e me in he dark o na iga e hese npreceden ed imes.

There ha e been so man Pilipin in m life ha ha e helped me gro more in lo e i h m c l re, and redisco ering ha i means o be a Pilipin . The reason h his p blica ion is en i led The Po er Wi hin Empo ermen is beca se of he po er e gained hro gh decoloni ing, des igma i ing, ed ca ing, and empo ering m self, b m fello comm ni members.

Thro gh his projec , e seen ha Empo ermen has come in differen forms, and his p blica ion encaps la es man differen a s on ho ha has aken shape for man differen Pilipin in America. We ha e so man s ories o share, and sing his pla form o shed ligh on ha is some hing ha is r l an honor and a pri ilege. e fallen in lo e all o er again reading all of hese differen s ories. These are onl a handf l of indi id als, onl sharing one of heir s ories ha he e re old in heir hole life ime. There are so man opics ha e can encompass i h his p blica ion, and i h his marking he firs , i feels me i h so m ch pride and lo e.

Pro iding access o Pilipin ed ca ion is some hing s ri e for, no onl i hin o r Pilipin comm ni b o e er one ha o r comm ni o ches.

Whe her i o ld be o r food, lang age, c l re, here are so man hings ha he orld has e o see. Thank o o m comm ni for gi ing me he oppor ni ies o learn more abo m c l ral iden i , comm ni condi ions ha affec s in so man differen a s, and he in ersec ionali of his ories amongs o her people of color comm ni ies. belie e no more han e er, e m s pro ide more access o his rele an ed ca ion, and se his o gro deeper i hin o r comm ni ies, and con in e o figh for ha is righ .

Thank o for being. am beca se o are.

- Josh a Cole Sanche

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Empowerment is difficult for me to define. It’s noticeable in other people, but I can hardly find it in myself. I wouldn’t use empowered as one of three introductory words to describe myself, and here’s why.

I’ve been blessed to be in student leadership for all four years of my undergraduate career. In each of those four years, there was always an end goal - a one-night show held in Royce Hall, the Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night (SPCN). Year after year, that light at the end of a tunnel of tribulations always guided my work responsibilities, and my career goals started to align with what I did for the show(s). From the summer after my second year until the spring of my fourth year, I’ve been occupied by coordinating aspects of the show. All the while, focusing on the future.

There’s merit in being forward-focused. Looking ahead keeps you aligned with a vision, guides you along a specific path, and can help you make decisions that best serve your goals. But, I’ve learned that there has to be a balance - as much as you look to the future, you have to reflect on the past. And in order to do so, you have to be grounded in the present. This is my biggest struggle as a student leader, and as a person in general.

And so, this is why empowerment is hard for me to embrace. I love witnessing my peers’ development and realize their phenomenal accomplishments - but when it comes to my own work, I don’t make time to do the same, because there’s always something else to focus on, something new that’s coming up. But now, as the outgoing SPCN Coordinator, finally ending my 2017-2020 student leadership experience amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I finally have time to reflect on my work - I’ve made time to think about my past.

After being elected as the 2019-2020 SPCN Coordinator, I formulated a vision for what my SPCN would be. As the school year progressed, this vision disseminated and evolved - it was no longer my own, but it became the vision of the 29-person strong SPCN Committee. This production was no longer mine - it never actually was mine, but when we canceled it because of COVID-19 I felt like I was mourning my lost child. My heart was extremely heavy with the loss of the 43rd SPCN loss of what I planned for, what I had worked for, what I had envisioned as the cherry on top of my senior year. My short-term future crumbled and in place of it, I pulled together a new plan: SPCN would look different this year, but we (the Committee) would still finish the year strong.

And we did. We conducted virtual programming, revamped our website, and have an upcoming documentary series. Now, having officially completed my term, I realize that what we did was no easy feat. We adapted to unprecedented circumstances, and kept building a community during a time that we needed each other most. In the face of ultimate adversity, our production - our community, was resilient.

Empowerment is easy to celebrate as a community, but complicated to nurture as an individual. I don’t want to take credit for what we did - I did not act alone, I had 28 other people along for the ride, and dozens more supporting us. But what I can take credit for is spearheading efforts that revitalized SPCN in a way that we didn’t want, but definitely needed.

Empowerment is a process of realization. Distinguishing where and when to act, and how to proceed. But sometimes, proceeding doesn’t actually mean moving forward right away. Celebrate when celebrations are due. Take time to look back at your journey, and recognize how far you’ve come - even when you think you haven’t covered much distance, you’d be surprised. A lot can change in a month, a year and certainly in three years. As a graduating senior, empowerment is identifying my growth, and being able to finally say, yeah, I did that.

IRTUALL

AND CULTURALL

PASSING THE TORCH

Growing up in a predominantly Hispanic area, my Filipino heritage had been nothing more than just a bubble I checked on standardized testing. It wasn’t until entering my first year of college that I realized there was a large Filipino community waiting to welcome me with open arms. My journey within Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night has been unforgettable, exciting, and most of all empowering.

As a Filipina born in the states, I didn’t have much opportunity to explore what my Filipino identity actually meant. And before being involved in SPCN, I had a general idea that it was just a show that college students usually put on to celebrate Filipino culture. But soon after joining, I realized it was so much more than just that. To say that SPCN is just a show would be an understatement. It’s rooted in the experience of learning about your identity, creating critical thinkers, fostering empowerment, and building community. SPCN is love. SPCN is home. SPCN is family.

I’ve been blessed to experience SPCN first as an audience member watching my brother perform on Royce’s, then the following year I joined as a cast member and was able to perform on that very stage, and finally joined Committee the past two years. I really didn’t know what to expect coming into the space because I’ve never been surrounded by this many Filipinos. Overwhelmed and excited by this new feeling, SPCN gave me a home my first year, and I’ve never left it since.

SPCN has not only made me a better person, but it’s shown me a deeper appreciation for Filipino culture. Through years of oppression and colonization, Filipino culture remains a hidden gem that needs to be shared more. For Filipino Americans like me, I think it’s important that we get to know our roots. The tricky part about PCN’s in general is that some may think certain parts of it are forms of appropriation instead of appreciation. Personally, I think this is really interesting because many real Filipinos from the Philippines think that we’re whitewashed because we don’t know Filipino culture. But at the same time, we have the same Filipinos calling us out for appropriation when we do try to reclaim a culture that was never really taught to us. Just because I don’t know Tagalog doesn’t mean I’m not as Filipino as anyone else. The truth to this all is that no one should be judged for not being Filipino enough.

With the recent pandemic, this year’s SPCN has been cancelled. Though it is disheartening, I’m proud of the passion that lies within the community. Despite not having a show, we can see that our community extend beyond just Royce’s stage. If this is how strong we are separated, just imagine what more when our community is reunited. I'm so proud to be able to identify myself as a Pilipina and have such an empowering community behind me to support me.

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By Maxine Dimalanta you re not filipina my uber driver said i look like nothing he s ever seen before. i swear i'm a filipina, even though my hair grows outward like the sampaguita flower yearning for sun even though my strands loop & dance & curl like the ocean waves that moved my people and fed my people and gave life to my people.

but after centuries of colonization & americanization & assimilation

you re not a true filipina they say alk like a hi e gi l and the words of the motherland do not sound natural you re not a real filipina rolling off my tongue.

they say if only your hair was straighter but i promise i'm a filipina, and your skin was lighter i can name the barrio but until then, my lolos & lolas danced across i am only a negrita, a baluga. and the provinces they ran upon. would they claim me if i looked like the model mestiza? i can prove i m a filipina, the blood that courses through my veins is that of my ancestors — the ones that cultivated our islands long before the invaders arrived. i hear them calling to me telling me to stay grounded like the coconut trees; telling me to protect my soul and wrap it in banana leaves.

i swear i'm a filipina, believe me or don t. you validation isn t needed anymore.

Mom's Lo e B Irene Bantig e

For better or worse, we are naive to love s complexities in our early youth.

In the case of my childhood, it felt like the freedom of my arms gliding through the wind as my brother and I played under the sun. It smelled like the pungent aroma of my dad s adobo calling us back inside to eat, and it looked like the absence of O.T. penciled onto my family s calendar.

O.T. stood for overtime, and when it was missing, it meant that the whole family could be together at last.

As a nurse, my mom was at times required to care for others more than she could be physically at home, much less mentally present. As I grew older, I learned that mom s entanglement in this paradox preceded my birth. And that this narrative at large certainly did not begin with her generation. It is instead a common denominator in the stories of many Filipino first-generation immigrants across the world; one that would deepen both my understanding and appreciation of love in all its layers as I continued to move through it.

My mom s expression of love, and the one that I first inherited, was intrinsically connected with selfsacrifice. My mom s love was grounded in a desire to protect my siblings and I from the prospect of economic insecurities she came to know so intimately in her own, largely unspoken upbringing. It meant departing from familiarity to settle thousands of miles elsewhere, encouraged by the promise of a brighter future for her family s future. And finally, perhaps also ironically, it meant swaying your children away from becoming trailblazers themselves, because allowing so would only rock the foundation of stability and predictability that took so long to build.

I grew to know my mom as the embodiment of strength--her sacrifices were evident in her chronic fatigue, but she would often push through it anyway if it meant ensuring our family s financial wellbeing.

Recognizing this also created an inner tension as I knew my creative passions would in her eyes, move me into the realm of uncertainty that she worked so hard to safeguard us from. As a result, my early conceptualization of love--coupled with a dose of internalized guilt--prompted me to sacrifice parts of myself in order to meet her vision, in the same way that she gave up her health for ours.

Yet the more I continued to honor my mom s wishes, the further I moved away from my inner truth. I became increasingly desperate to assert my individuality, independent of what I felt was required of me.

This hope motivated my own move from state-to-state, a microcosm of my mom s global migration. Settling elsewhere, I found myself thinking about what starting afresh must have felt like for her. We never spoke much about her struggles in finding her way in this world, if at all. But as I paved my own path, ideas of what they might have looked like began to speak louder. It was then I realized that perhaps our respective dreams were not as different as I first thought.

At years old, I am still formulating my understanding of love, as I anticipate will be the case for the breadth of my remaining existence. My mom s love taught me that it is often woven with challenges and contradictions, and they will inevitably look different for everyone. On the bright side, this reminds us that we get to make choices everyday on what constitutes our unique definitions. Perhaps then they are hard to explain for a reason, because they are ultimately not for others to understand.

My mom s version of love centering on familial health afforded me the privilege of shifting the locus of my own conceptualization back to myself. And in learning self-love and realigning with my inner truth, I am granted the honor of recalibrating my ancestors legacy beyond survival into real freedom.

I am B J s ine Ramos too big, too bulky My family says, When I was your age, I was petite!

Light enough so that men could swallow me whole.

So I can be safe in the pits of their inflated bellies that matched their inflated prideI was small enough to be wanted, to be an appetizer for their patriarchal hunger.

While you, they mock, you are too big to fit into their mouths .You rip through their arrogant intestines.

You are not weak enough. You must be weak enough.

But I am and I know two things . Yes, my body is too big for my dwarfed confidence. but . The tallest building in the world is not the Burj Khalifa, , .

It is me.

and unable to be swallowed whole.

Papa a Faces A little girl lathers on papaya soap at the bathroom sink, Touching her nose, she wishes she could pinch her heritage away Muttering her beauty into deleterious complaints I begin to wonder if calling her dark skin pretty Would change her disposition?

I would say: Brown flattened noses can still smell the roses Even though society opposes Glutathione shouldn t be a thing and Brown flattened noses shouldn t mute… our voices…

-s.e

ROOTS

B Kalea Ma in

I remember er i idl the first time I bleached m hair I as and m mom bro ght me to Walgreens to b cheapo bo d e As I stood in the hair aisle e al ating all the different shades of blonde m mom cas all chatted ith an emplo ee ho also happened to be Filipina The ere lightheartedl teasing me for anting to look more American E cept I as alread American I j st anted so desperatel for e er one else to see the Americanness I felt so strongl on the inside and according to m ear old logic that co ld onl be possible if I d ed m hair an American color so the o tside co ld finall match the inside That night hile I DIY d m o n hair I remember m dad emerging from his office and e claiming Wo anak Yo re going to be a blonde M parents ere am sed and ent along ith m decision The eren t taking it as serio sl as I as B t I tr l belie ed that stripping a a the black from m hair meant stripping a a e er trace of m Asianness and that meant e er thing to me M classmates at m predominantl hite Ari ona school o ld finall look past m Asianness m flat Filipino nose m e otic looks and see me as a real person B t the didn t Come Monda morning all I got as Wh d o p t orange in o r hair Did o get a ea e

and

This memor brings me a great deal of sadness beca se I kno that the little girl bleaching her hair for the rong reasons is still some here inside me and beca se fig ring o t hat it means to be Filipina American nderstanding ho to gracef ll na igate this identit ne er tr l ends So letting m dark roots gro o t from the bleach is more than j st that It s letting m c lt ral roots gro o t It s an act of defiance against estern E rocentric standards of bea t It s proof that I ha e po er o er the b rden of constantl American or not eno gh of either To ref se to let that to icit

orr ing abo t being too pino or too

in

o ref se to conform to the s perficial confines of hat is considered American to accept and embrace the comple ities of m identit and those of m fello Fil Ams

ha is precisel

ha

find he mos empo ermen hro gh.

S eechle

I i

I d rather be an Ipis (Yes, I don t know Tagalog fluently, but I do know what Ipis is, and also mataba but I digress) But I feel like as I grow up and become more accepting of myself in terms of my ethnicity, more positive connotations envelop: It s the fact that Filipino mothers cut fruit in displays of love and affection It s the smell of vinegar and garlic on the glazed barbecue before you dive into Seafood City It s offering/cooking food, regardless if the other party is hungry or not, because that s how we show that we care.

It s majoring in Nursing (all jokes, but seriously I encourage you to choose a career that makes YOU happy if the privilege/opportunity/your own decisions allow) Being Filipino is many things.

Yet I hope we: Address the anti-blackness within our community; educating ourselves to not mask our identity by culturally appropriating black culture (cornrows, fake grills, etc.) or allowing our fellow Asian brothers and sister to blurt the N-word during rap songs or referring to the Black/African American community.

I hope that we also educate ourselves that despite the fact that many of our parents may have immigrated correctly to this country, we should not look down on the Latinx/Hispanic community as lazy as a whole.

I am not here to stand on a bitter SJW soapbox, and although I do not have the perfect formula of accepting oneself. I do believe being Filipino-American has its struggles whether it be in the healthcare system that many of us reside in or within our own loud and criticizing families. Yet, being a Filipino-American comes with many blessings. So, it is with that contemplation that I encourage you (well, mostly a reminder to myself eek) to ponder and celebrate what the power we have to be Asian-American amidst all this chaos that the pandemic has brought.

-s.e