responding to myself from nine years ago

This is a response to a post I originally wrote in 2016 and then edited and posted on Medium in 2020. The original post can be found HERE

I am a Filipino writing in English, and after years of post-colonial guilt and self-flagellation, I’m OK with that.

I have come to terms with the fact that English is the lingua franca of our age, and that as a Filipino –and therefore a product of the United States’ early 20th Century attempts at old-fashioned European colonialism- I have a head start.

I was born in 1987, at the cusp of a new age in the globalization of American music and television. And the USA’s soft power was unparalleled even then: I, in my Southeast Asian hinterland, 300 kilometers away from even the Philippines’ capital city of Manila, grew up on US-dominated cable TV. I grew up on Hanna Barbera and Looney Tunes. My favorite TV show as a child was Ghostbusters, both the original Ghostbusters and the “Extreme”. I could sing the entire Sesame Street song from memory, and my favorite character was Maria.

I wasn’t just an English speaker growing up, I was an American English speaker. Today, unless I’m feeling particularly self-conscious, I speak with an American accent. I think in English. I dream in English. I speak to my partner in English, even though both of us are very much Filipino. 

Which is to say that I am not alone.

Others of my generation and general socio-economic class have had the same experiences. Many of my peers are only comfortable reading and writing in English. Reading in Hiligaynon or Tagalog is a slow, painful effort, often done with lips moving to orally shape the words our brains struggle to process visually. Those languages are far more comfortable heard or spoken rather than read or written.

But It’s still embarrassing. What kind of sad sack can barely read and write in their native language?

At least, that’s what I had thought for a long time.

Then I realized: no, English is my native language. It’s the one that my education, media consumption, and cultural conditioning had prioritized growing up. Yes, I have other native languages, but they’ve been relegated to certain parts of my world, and certain parts only. The rest is dominated by English.

It is not my fault. I am a product of a long and continuing colonial history, and that’s fine.

Yes, I am impoverished by my lack of facility with Hiligaynon and Tagalog (although don’t get me wrong, when I get going, I can be a real chatterbox in those languages, and I’m not afraid to throw in some thousand peso words when the situation suits them). There is a richness and a cultural depth I no longer have significant contact with. And yes, this is because I have been so shaped by the English language and all the cultural touchstones that American English in particular have ingrained in me.

I am fully, physically Filipino, but like many in my generation and the generations after us, I am a mongrel, an Americanized bastard. And it’s all down to the content we consume. After all, “we are what we eat,” right? 

So what if I actively don’t like much of local television and social media content?

(Besides, as someone who isn’t from Manila, I have so much to say about the ways that the urban centers of Metro Manila dominate those worlds and drown out all others. Also because so much of the media coming out of those big centers are poorly paced, sensationalized slop meant to appeal to the “lowest common denominator” –the much-maligned and condescended-upon “masa,” who frankly deserve SO MUCH MORE)

Does that make me a traitor to my own people(s)? After much aforementioned self-flagellation, I have come to the conclusion that, “no, I am not a traitor.”

I am what my environment has made of me: an over-educated, under-Filipinized Inglisyera.

If I want to become more than just an inglisyera though, I need to exert more effort. Because tragically, it’s far easier to prioritize the voices of the colonizer (English) because the colonizer is being prioritized around me.

Local voices, local art, local literature and local film are gatekept by local intelligentsia at best, or actively being silenced and stamped out at worst. I have to do more than just scroll through my feeds hoping for the best. I actually have to go outside and (shudder) meet people and (gag) try new things.

Poor me. What a tragedy I am: I want to honor my roots, but I’m too shy and easily spooked to go out and put down those roots.

What’s a Twenty-First Century nomad to do?