Reclaiming my heritage

I spent the last week in the Philippines visiting family and celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday. I found it rather serendipitous that it also happens to be Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Naturally, I considered writing about what my own Asian heritage means to me.

I started to put some words down, but found myself unsatisfied, even uncomfortable with the results. It’s a topic I’ve never written about seriously, and the continuous deleting and starting over reminded me why: I’m still figuring it out.

Most of my life, I’ve tried to distance myself from my Asian heritage. I couldn’t deny that my DNA was half Filipino, but I could try and put myself as far away from the culture as possible. In my heart, I loved my heritage. I loved hearing the stories of my family there and hearing my mom talk about growing up. I loved the food, the traditional costumes we wore to special events, listening to my mom chat away to her friends in Tagalog and hearing her call me “anak,” which means “my child.”

Somewhere along the way, though, I realized that I wasn’t like the other kids. They said I brought weird food. In drawings they always used a different color crayon for me. Teachers assumed I didn’t speak English. Other parents didn’t like becoming friends with my mom. So I changed. I fought hard to prove everyone’s expectations of me wrong. Being biracial, I decided that my white side was the only one worth keeping because it’s what everyone wanted — total assimilation.

Today I embrace that part of my identity. I love it, treasure it. My Filipino family is incredible. They are funny, smart and the hardest working people I know. I am privileged to be considered one of them, and to have the opportunity to bring those values and culture with me in my professional and personal life.

Having Asian heritage is important to me. It’s a huge part of my identity, and it took a long time for me to re-learn to love it. What was once a source of weakness for me has become what I see as a great strength. My heritage and the legacy of my ancestors has made me who I am and given me insights, strengths and experiences that are priceless.

Having a diverse, exotic background and heritage is not something to be ashamed of. It is a source of rich, precious knowledge and history that others aren’t lucky enough to be able to draw from.

Maybe Asian Pacific American Heritage Month isn’t the reminder or observance that you need, and that’s OK. For millions of Americans, though, it does matter.

For others like myself, who have found themselves wishing they could be the same as anyone else, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is a reminder that our differences are beautiful — not broken — and that the contributions from these cultures are valuable and worthy of recognition.

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