lowquality.net

I have been trying to get Kim to blog almost as long as I have been doing it myself. She is a wealth of knowledge about a broad range of topics and, I, being a believer in the power of the internet and of the free distribution of information, think her thoughts could be enlightening to others. Her response is usually the same: something like “I don’t read for anyone else but myself.” Which I completely understand, but the internet being what it is and there is enough on the web of homeless people fighting or drunk teenagers “ghost riding the whip” or fat gay men slagging on their favorite celebrities’ unfortunate paparazzi photos. I think the world can always benefit from intellectuals (or even pseudo intellectuals) with unique perspectives. Kim and her cousins have their own myspace group where they talk trash about each other and goof around. Occasionally they get into some interesting discussions but most often it is used as an info board for them to keep tabs on each other. I am encouraging one her cousins to open a wordpress.com account (and maybe later an actual stand-alone install) and start a, legitimate, “Kabute Blog” for the KabKids to converge on a more technologically mature and featured platform where they can distribute media and photos and make anything that gets posted as public or private as necessary. Until then, I really feel like I need to share the following post with the internet. Kim sometimes gets mad when I tell people “our business,” but I think this is something that needs to be said, something that I strongly agree with but am not qualified to say myself. She has been long frustrated with the status quo among Filipino-American cultural groups (specifically those found in colleges and high schools) and has expressed her frustration to me on numerous occasions. The follow are Kim’s words:

If you haven’t yet read it, you should read Noli Me Tangere. I’m looking at it right now on my desk. I don’t think it was [Jose] Rizal’s intention to be a martyr. To be honest, his death made more of an impact than his life…let me rephrase, his death made people go back and examine his life and his work. Most of his work was done in Castilian Spanish and not Tagalog. Tagalog was just sprinkled in here and there. He pretty much led the charmed life of an intellectual with good schools going back between Asia and Europe to get the best of both worlds…it was his quest for an education free from the strict Catholic friars that led him to become somewhat of a revolutionary. It’s a little funny to know that seeing as how he was initially educated at Universidad de Santo Thomas (the oldest university in Asia and the same place my mom got her degrees). The Spanish friars must have done something right…at least, at first. At any rate, he wasn’t the only one. There are people who did more than just write novels to try and spur a revolution. Try reading about Bonificacio sometime. Not to downplay Rizal in any way, but Bonificacio may be the true father of the Philippine revolution. Writing about injustices is one thing, but trying to act on it is quite another.

On another note, Returning a Borrowed Tongue is worth some time. [...] There’s a whole world of Filipino poetry that isn’t rapping and doesn’t require ass shaking.

[Since] high school I’ve been trying to find my way through all the oversimplified and watered down versions of culture that the supposed culture events tried to produce. I’ve seen enough tinikling and the girls who think they can sing and play piano to last my whole life. I’d like to say I’m not knocking anything those groups did, but in a way I am. I can’t even tell you how many times I had to sit and listen to some high-voiced girl talk about how her dad was in the navy and brought her mom to the states and then follow it up with a hip hop dance in booty shorts. It’s all well and good, but that’s MY story. That’s almost everyone’s story. Tell me something different. Tell me what obstacles YOU faced. What struggles do YOU have as a first generation American? What are your feelings when you hear stories like this and what will it lead you to do differently with you life? In what ways will you educate yourself about history and what do you want your own kids to know about a country from which they are 2, 3, or 4 generations removed.

Yes, food is a part of our culture.

Yes, dance is a part of our culture.

Yes, in this area navy is a part of our culture. But what will you tell your kids about comfort women? Will you tell them about your grandmother smoking cigarettes with the ashes in her mouth? Will you encourage them to read Nick Joaquin along with their Vonnegut or Capote? Will you explain to them why our food tastes the way it does and why we use the ingredients we use? There are answers to all of these questions that aren’t being presented in a way that’s original or thought provoking. These are things I’d love to see. I’ve eaten pancit and adobo, danced all the line dances, and heard that the navy stories. There is always something more that people aren’t saying. Things that they are too lazy to research or think about for themselves. Søren Kierkegaard once said that “no is is an ought” and he was right. This is the way it is right now, but it ought not be that way. We can be more informed and enlightened. Jose Rizal always taught that “ignorance is slavery.” I for one don’t want to live in ignorance of my culture. One thing I do know for sure about my culture is that it starts with my family. I would have no culture were it not for my family. This presses me to read and learn all I can about my history, so I can finally realize why my family acts as it does. I can’t simply say it’s the Pinoy way. There are cultural events that lead to ideologies, superstitions, taboos, foods, music…everything. I want to know what they are and they surely don’t stop with my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so on. All of these things take root in a time that I cannot even fathom. I want to embrace my culture, but before that can really be done we have to find out why it is what it is. You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’ve been…it’s cliche, but it’s the truth. Filipino culture doesn’t start with any of us now breathing. It’s way deeper than that.

I personally empathize with Kim’s frustration in my own different way as an American who is eagerly trying to learn more about his girlfriend’s culture and her parents’ culture– which, as Kim points out, really are not the same even though they are separated by only a generation. There is a Philippine Cultural Center blocks from where I work and they offer nothing to the outside community to promote their culture. They offer a lot of what Kim talks about in her post: line-dancing, karaoke, parties– really its more like a Shriner’s Club or a Knights of Columbus. As Kim says, there’s nothing wrong with this, but the name is a misnomer. It doesn’t centralize the promotion of a culture so much as it isolates those not of the same ethnic background. I would love to take a beginner Tagalog course, or watch a traditional performance or educational cooking course. We live in one of the largest concentrations of Filipinos on the east coast and most of the non-Filipino locals don’t even know where the Philippines is on the map. Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American group and my white friends, who grew up in the same neighborhoods and went to the same schools as me, seem just as ignorant to this culture that has literally been surrounding us and looking us right in the face for much of our lives. They get confused when I tell them I am trying to learn Tagalog. “What’s that?” they say. My friends didn’t know that the yo-yo was invented in the Philippines as a weapon, that the expression “Lives in the boondocks” comes from the Tagalog word for mountains (bundok), that the Green Hornet’s assistant was originally a Filipino on the old radio shows (look I love Bruce Lee and all but how many Chinese people do you know named Kato?). They don’t realize the culture has already permeated their own and it really isn’t their fault. Culture is dying in the country– in this world! If you have one, people need to know about it.