Category Archives: Filipino Heritage

Know your heritage

June 12, 1898: Philippine Independence Day declared

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The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
 – John Philpot Curran, Irish lawyer and politician

An outfit that reminds me a little of traditional Filipina fashion - the embroidered flowered blouse with stiff sleeves and scalloped edges.

An outfit reminiscent of traditional Filipina fashion – the embroidered flowered blouse with stiff sleeves.

Today is Independence Day in the Philippines. On this day in 1898, Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence from 300 years of Spanish rule during the Spanish-American War. The Americans came to the islands to expel the Spaniards, but turned around to become the Filipinos’ next colonial ruler and exporter of the island country’s rich natural resources. Despite the declaration of independence, Filipino rebels fought for their country in 1899, in what was to become the Philippine-American War, with which few Americans are familiar. In the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. It was not until after World War II that the Philippines finally gained their independence.

Floral accessories for an embroidered blouse with scalloped edges.

Floral accessories for an embroidered blouse with scalloped edges.

I first read about the little-known Philippine-American War when I was researching the history of the Philippines for my first novel-in-progress, A Village in the Fields. My main character, Filipino farm worker Fausto Empleo, left his homeland to come to America to “change his luck,” which is what my father wanted to do when he left his coastal hometown of San Esteban, Ilocos Sur, in the early 1920s. The turn of the century in the Philippines was and still is an incredibly fascinating time. The exhilaration of freedom was soon stamped out by shock and betrayal. This was a war that was not acknowledged, an unofficial war. It was a war that helped determine the 1900 presidential election of incumbent William McKinley and anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan. It has been later called the first Vietnam War for the torture that American soldiers inflicted on innocent civilians. It is a war that I will be returning to in my fiction writing.

Colors of the Pacific Ocean.

Colors of the Pacific Ocean.

In honor of Philippine Independence Day, here is an excerpt from Chapter 2, “What was left behind,” of A Village in the Fields:

When Fausto reached the second floor, he saw a candle glowing in his lelang‘s bedroom. She was usually asleep by this time. He hesitated before pulling the crocheted curtain aside, but she was sitting up, waiting for him. He sat on her bed, inhaling the musty, bitter scent of betel nut mixed with lime from her lips and red-stained teeth.

“Lelang Purificacion,” he said, “Pa will not give me his blessing.”

“If he did not love you, he would let you go without a care. You should be honored by the burden of his love,” she said, and sighing, stared out her window, the capiz-shell shutters wide open. “When you are in America, you must remember him and forgive him. Better to be hurt by his love than to be all alone with nothing.”

“What about you, Lelang? Will you try to change my mind?”

She pursed her lips as if she had swallowed something more bitter than betel nut juice. Tiny wrinkles fanned out from her mouth. “I have a story to tell you. It is not my intent to change your mind. I tell you this now because I do not want you to be ignorant.”

He laughed. “Lelang, I am going to America to gain knowledge.”

She kneaded her fingers. Veins, like thick twine wrapped around her fist, warped the shape of her hands. “Do you know the date June twelfth, eighteen ninety-eight?”

“Independence Day,” Fausto answered. “The Americans helped us defeat the Spaniards. Miss Arnold taught me about the Americans’ involvement.”

She pulled her shawl over her shoulders. “There was another war after the Spaniards were removed, but you will not find it in any American history books. Your father was too young to know what was happening in the lower provinces and on the other islands – we do not talk of the bad times – but I told him years later, when he could understand. He never forgot, but now you will make him think of it all the time.”

“Remember what?” Fausto’s voice was as taut as the woven mat stretched across his lelang‘s bed.

“The war with the Americans,” she said softly. “I had received word that my parents and sisters and brothers were being sent to a detention camp set up by American troops in our hometown of Batangas. We thought the news was false, but your lelong, Cirilo, went down there to bring them here. When he left, your father was only ten years old. More than a year and a half passed before your lelong came back alone. He had lost so much weight. He would not say what became of my family. The day he came back was the day my family ceased to exist. It was also the day your lelong ceased to exist.”

Fausto’s Lelong Cirilo, who before his long absence had welcomed the removal of the Spanish government from the Philippines, kept his sons from attending the American schools that were cropping up across the islands and swore under his breath at the American soldiers who passed through town. Two American Negroes arrived one day and settled in San Esteban. He befriended them, welcoming them into his home for meals and accepting their dinner invitations. When he returned late one evening, he confided to Purificacion that they were American soldiers who had deserted the army. “They will never return to the States. They said they are freer in our country than in their own,” he insisted, though she didn’t believe him. He told her the white American soldiers had called him “nigger” and “savage,” words that they also hurled at the Negroes. “My friends call me brother, and there is great truth to that,” he said.

Fausto had no recollection of visits to their house by Negro soldiers, though he remembered seeing two Negro men at his lelong‘s funeral. When his lelang died, he looked older than his sixty years. He always had snowy white hair as far as Fausto could recall. Each year had separated him farther from Batangas, but keeping a secret from his family for so many years had aged him, kept the memories fresh.

When Fausto’s lelong was dying, he took his wife’s hand and said, “Forgive me, Purificacion, for burdening you with silence and now the truth about your family.”

He spoke as if he’d just arrived amid the makeshift detention camps in Batangas. He was labeled an insurrecto, an insurgent, by American soldiers who found him outside the hastily drawn boundaries. Everywhere soldiers confiscated possessions and destroyed crops, torched houses and rice-filled granaries. Black clouds blotted out the sun, and rolling green fields turned to gray as ash rained down on the camp. Ash clung to their hair and eyelashes, their bare arms and legs. Cirilo tasted smoke in the rotten mangos they were being fed. Exhausted and starving, he fell asleep to the squeal of pigs that were being slaughtered nightly and left to rot in their pens. When Cirilo asked what they had done wrong, an American commander accused the villagers of being guerrilla supporters. It was necessary, the commander said, to “depopulate” the islands.

Unrest plagued the camps. Men, propelled by the hope of either being released or spared death, turned on each other by identifying alleged rebels – regardless of whether the accused were guilty or innocent. Those singled out were held down on the ground, arms pinned behind their heads or tied behind their backs, mouths pried open, beneath the running faucet of a large water tank. “Water cure,” Cirilo called it. The American soldiers in their cowboy hats shoved the butts of their rifles or their boots into the prisoners’ bloated stomachs for several minutes while a native interpreter repeated the word over and over again, “kumpisal” in Tagalog to the prisoner and “confess” in English for the Americans’ sake. But many of the prisoners drowned.

The detention camps were overcrowded, with little food or clothing to go around. Malaria, beriberi, and dengue fever raged. American doctors treated the soldiers who fell ill, but neglected the sick prisoners. Everyone in Purificacion’s family died of disease. Cirilo didn’t know if anger or grief had kept him alive. He escaped with two prisoners one night, but not without having to grab the patrolman’s bayonet and smashing his skull. On his journey back to Ilocos Sur, he heard similar stories of detention camps and ruined villages. Some said the Americans were angry because the natives were ungrateful for their help in liberating them from Spain. Instead of welcoming them as heroes, the Americans complained, the natives were betraying them, hurling their bolos and hacking to pieces American soldiers who stepped beyond the towns they had pacified. They used spears, darts, and stones, but they were sticks compared to the American bayonets. The guerrillas were easily flushed out by the American soldiers like quails in a shoot.

Cirilo met a compatriot who had fled his hometown of Balangiga on the island of Samar. He told Cirilo that the American soldiers had rounded up the townspeople and crowded them so tightly into open pens that they could not move. They slept upright, leaning against one another. The American Navy fired on his village from their gunboats before they landed to invade. “They are turning our lovely islands into a howling wilderness. They cry out, ‘Kill and burn’ everyone and everything in their path,” he said. Another man who had escaped ruin in his hometown recited an order – like a drinking song, a motto – that he said had been handed down from an American general to all his soldiers in the field: “Everything over ten” would not be spared. Everything over ten.

“This is your America,” Fausto’s lelang told him, and slumped against the scarred wooden headboard of her bed.

“Things have changed.” Fausto’s voice faltered. “When I was in school—”

“Poor boy!” She sat up, spittle flecked on her lips. “Those kind American women in those American schools were not teachers. They were just another soldier, telling you what to do. How could I tell you then? Miss Arnold opened up the world for you. Education is good. But they came here for a darker purpose.”

“Lelang, Miss Arnold is not evil.”

“You are not listening!” She shook her head, her gray hair brushing her shoulders like a stiff mantilla. “You will never be accepted by the Americans because they will always treat us different. The Negroes in America have been there for hundreds of years, but they are still treated like criminals. Why go there with this knowledge?” The flame hissed as the melted wax pooled around the short wick. Her dark eyes were wet in the candlelight. “You think your father is ignorant, but he is not. American education made you smarter, but their schools erased our past, just as the Spaniards did.”

“Lelang, I am not ignorant.” Fausto got up from her bed, but suddenly felt weightless, unanchored. He held on to one of the thick, carved bedposts.

“I told this story only once before, to your father after your lelong passed away.” Her fingers kneaded her pliant cheek, skin shattered by deep wrinkles. She whispered, “Until that time, Emiliano never knew why his own father was so untouchable.”

“I am sorry for your loss.” Fausto’s words, his whole body was stiff. He pulled down the mosquito net from the four posters of her bed until she was encased in white gauze. She seemed so far away from him as she blew out the candle.

“We must make use of the bad times,” she called out.

He unhooked the curtain from her bedroom entryway and let it fall in front of him. “It will make me stronger, Lelang,” he said. He waited to hear her voice again. In the moonlight, wisps of smoke rose and disappeared.

Remembering my father on the anniversary of his birthday

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I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
– Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I took a lot of photos of my father in his garden while taking a photography class in 1982.

I took a lot of photos of my father in his garden while taking a photography class in 1982.

Yesterday was my father’s birthday. Given that he was 55 when I was born, he would have been 106 years old today. He came to the United States in the mid-1920s, following his older cousins when he was a teenager. His relatives laughed at him because he didn’t know how to speak English, and his defiant response was, “I know ‘yes’ and ‘no.'” This should have told me a lot about my father. But I didn’t appreciate his courage and resiliency because first I had to overcome the generational and cultural gaps between us, which didn’t happen until I went away to college.

Dad liked making cakes. He lined the kitchen cabinet shelf with a row of Betty Crocker yellow cake mixes.

Dad liked making cakes. He lined the kitchen cabinet shelf with a row of Betty Crocker yellow cake mixes, 1985.

When I went to UC Davis and wrote stories in my fiction workshops, in a nod to youthful naiveté and indulgence, I modeled my writing after great writers such as Hemingway and Joyce. Not surprisingly, my stories were artificial and awkward. Prompted by an unknown reason, I wrote a short story about a father and daughter. In one scene, Emily, the protagonist, is embarrassed when her elementary school teacher mistakes her father for her grandfather and tries to hush him when he speaks in broken English and proclaims that he is so proud of his daughter – who helps him with his spelling when writing letters to his relatives – because he never made it past second grade in his home country. My classmates, and my professor, really liked the story. The father, they enthused, was endearing and human; they wanted to know more about him. They wanted more of his story. On the other hand, they disliked the girl, who was cruel and disrespectful to her father. In writing that first story, which I still have, I, too, wanted to know more about him. And I, too, disliked the girl, and I wanted her to change.

My father loved to read the newspaper every day. He always bought the Los Angeles Times.

My father loved to read the newspaper every day. He always bought the Los Angeles Times, 1988.

Confronting the past
Growing up, he was already an old man to me, retired by the time I was 10. As a child, I couldn’t appreciate his idiosyncrasies. He thought the new microwave we bought would blow up the house. I can still see him scurrying in his house slippers after the delivery men – from the truck, through the garage, and into the family room – telling them that the new color television console they were carrying would make us go blind. Sleeping with socks on would make our feet grow big (my sisters and I have big feet, so perhaps he was right). Sweeping the kitchen floor at night would disturb the fairies that ventured out at night. When I would come home from high school with severe menstrual cramps, he would follow me all the way to my bedroom, insisting I got sick because I went to bed with wet hair the night before. And yet, as soon as I crawled into bed, he would rush to the kitchen to boil water for my hot water bottle.

My father posing with one of my Christmas presents to him - a Giants baseball cap, 1994.

My father posing with one of my Christmas presents to him – a Giants baseball cap, 1994.

Instead of admiring the fact that he actually watched Babe Ruth play in Yankee Stadium, my sisters and I focused on how old that made him out to be! He loved major league baseball, loved the San Francisco Giants, though we grew up in Los Angeles Dodger territory. His favorite player was Willie McCovey. Once when McCovey hit a home run during a televised game, he stood up from his recliner – his version of the Wave long before the Wave became popular – and threw up his arms, yelling, “Home run!” When the network replayed the swing of McCovey’s bat and the ball sailing over the fence, he stood up again, waving his arms, and yelling, “Another home run!” This happened on more than one occasion with different players and teams. My sisters and I would laugh in a painful kind of way, and scold him, “Dad! That was a replay, not another home run!” He would look at us, confused, his eyes foggy through his forever-smudged reading glasses. We just rolled our eyes at him.

Life before fatherhood
I never learned about his life before he became a father until I took a number of Asian American Studies classes at Davis. That’s when I saw some parallels of his life to Carlos Bulosan’s America Is In the Heart. When I was home from college, I would ask him about his life. He didn’t like talking about the bad things – just as many of my relatives didn’t like to do – though when I pressed him, he admitted that he had experienced bigotry in America. “They called us monkeys,” he said, his lower jaw jutting out. While you could hear his wounded voice, he was an apologist, adding that there were some bad-seed Filipinos who ruined it for the rest of them who were no trouble at all to the whites.

Laura Leventer of Personal Pizazz showed me how to pair this maize-colored skirt with appliques with a chocolate brown blouse.

Laura Leventer of Personal Pizazz showed me how to pair this maize-colored skirt with appliques with a chocolate brown blouse.

It wasn’t until after his funeral, after his passing on Christmas Day 1995 that my sister Heidi and I learned why he was so eccentric. (Another example: When I was in college, coming home from spring break, I came home to find out that he had imagined the bus driver who was taking him and his relatives to Las Vegas to gamble was instead going to take them to the desert and kill them. So he hopped into a cab once they got to Las Vegas and the car drove off; he was found three days later, wandering the oilfields outside of Bakersfield, 280 miles away, without his trousers and wallet.) Whenever his imagination ran wild, such as the time he insisted that fish were swimming in his bed, even as he threw back the covers and shined his flashlight on his empty wrinkled sheets, my relatives would click their tongue against the roof of their mouth and say, “That’s your dad!” I had this secret fear that his zany behavior was hereditary, and that at a certain point I, too, would be saying and doing loony things. Our uncle, his cousin, in fact told us that he was perfectly normal before the war, but that he had fought in the Battle of Leyte, which was one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He was never the same.

Upon hearing this revelation, I was relieved and then profoundly moved and saddened. What was he like before the WWII? How much of my father’s life would I have to piece together from relatives whose ability to recall was faltering, recognizing that he himself was an unreliable narrator when he was alive and I prodded him for stories? How much had I missed for good?

A Gorgeous & Green reclaimed vintage necklace made of chandelier pieces goes well with a contemporary glass bracelet.

A Gorgeous & Green reclaimed vintage necklace made of chandelier pieces goes well with a contemporary glass bracelet and textile earrings by Paz Sintes of Spain.

One of my greatest regrets is not having published a book and delivered it into his open hands. While my mother wanted me to go into nursing or business school in college, my father appreciated my writing. He proudly wrote letters to his relatives about my modest accomplishments. After his funeral, when we were cleaning out his possessions from my parents’ bedroom, we pulled out an old green Samsonite luggage from beneath his bed. Among the papers inside was a yellowed clipping – dated 10 years earlier – of a UC Davis Aggie newspaper article and picture of the chair of the undergraduate English department standing beside me after having given me an award for one of my short stories. It was a painful reminder that I didn’t give him the gift of a published book after all. But more importantly, it affirmed his belief in me.

And in celebrating his birthday yesterday, I keep the faith alive in my borrowed mantra: Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. And my echo: Yes, yes, yes.

Vintage floral purse mixes well with maize, chocolate brown, and contemporary and vintage jewelry.

Vintage floral purse mixes well with maize, chocolate brown, and contemporary and vintage jewelry.

March is National Women’s History Month

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My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it’s very open-ended: Every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.
– Ani DiFranco, American singer and songwriter

Cream and black, linen and lace for a beautiful spring day. Vintage handbag from Secondi (Washington, D.C.).

Cream and black, linen and lace for a beautiful spring day. Vintage handbag from Secondi (Washington, D.C.).

When I first started my lifestyle blog, The Dress at 50, I envisioned it to embody its tagline – “live the creative life.” I still follow that maxim. Striving to live the creative life touches on every aspect of my life – marriage, parenthood, friendship, career, fiction writing, blogging, fashion and interior styling – and my topics have covered that wide range. I’ve also focused on women, regardless of where they are in their lives, and their creative endeavors.

Since the launch, I’ve become fascinated by women entrepreneurs – why and how they got to where they are today with their businesses. Creativity definitely factors into many of their decisions and choices. As I’ve interviewed women whose shops I patronize, I’ve found an interesting theme of going from one career to the one of their calling – hence the category Transitions and Transformations. The one thing I’ve learned from all of these women is to truly follow your heart, taking risks along the way. And for this former non-risk taker, it is a lesson I’m still learning. But their stories are so inspiring, I come away invigorated and ready to welcome opportunities and the chance to open new doors.

Accessorizing creamy lace with a Gorgeous and Green statement reclaimed vintage necklace (Berkeley, CA), End of Century cicada ring (NYC), Alkemie scarab cuff (Los Angeles), and Paz Sintes textile earrings (Spain).

Accessorizing creamy lace with a Gorgeous and Green statement reclaimed vintage necklace (Berkeley, CA), End of Century cicada ring (NYC), Alkemie scarab cuff (Los Angeles), and Paz Sintes textile earrings (Spain).

I’ve also realized I want to celebrate women who have done amazing and courageous things in their lives. I have already met two incredible women – very close friends for more than 30 years – whose story will inspire you to stretch your boundaries of giving and living life to the fullest. Peggy and Tenny’s story will be posted this Friday, March 22nd.

March is Women’s History Month. It seems appropriate at this time to reiterate the focus of my lifestyle blog as the celebration of women at any stage of their lives who are living a full, creative life and making a difference in their communities, both local and global. I looked up the provenance of Women’s History Month: In 1987, after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress designated the month of March as Women’s History Month. Since then, every year Congress has passed resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March as Women’s History Month, which continues to be done.

Mixing linen and lace with carpet-bag floral and textile, reclaimed vintage, and vintage-inspired jewelry.

Mixing linen and lace with carpet-bag floral and textile, reclaimed vintage, and vintage-inspired jewelry.

The 2013 National Women’s History Month theme, Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination, honors “women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.” Certainly this year, I hope to feature women who have made contributions in this area, and have lived fully and creatively along the way.

My mother – as an immigrant mother who sacrificed her life to ensure that her daughters were participants in the American Dream – was a role model to me for her perseverance and her unconditional love. When I look back at my formative years, I can’t recall other female role models who influenced my life or remember studying in school women in history who made an impact on me. Whatever the reason or reasons, it matters little now. At any age, women can adopt female role models and become role models themselves.

Confidently put on that new dress and be a role model for your kids, your family and friends, and your community. And live the creative, meaningful, and full life!

Confidently put on that new dress and be a role model for your kids, your family and friends, and your community. And live the creative, meaningful, and full life!

Lunafest: Celebrating women

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When we get up from our seats and we walk away, we’re changed a little bit and hopefully for the better.
– Kit Crawford, CEO and co-founder of CLIF Bar and Company

In the past several weeks, I have been thinking a lot about violence against women in our communities, in various societies and countries, and everywhere, really. Of course, this has been going on forever, but my despair over the recent cases in New Delhi and South Africa seemed to demand a response from me, for which I had none. What else could I do as a person, a woman, and a mother beyond raising my son to respect women and raising my daughter to be empowered and have healthy self-esteem so that no person would ever take advantage of her and no situation would be beyond overcoming?

A few weekends ago, as I was walking my dog Rex, I came across a poster on a local storefront and read about Lunafest. I recalled receiving annual e-mails from the mom of my daughter’s classmate. Being overwhelmed and stressed during my busy work seasons, I never opened the e-mails, I’m embarrassed to say. What’s done is done, but I thought to myself, I would definitely go this year. In fact, in a serendipitous moment, I declared that this was my first response to my question to myself of how to respond to violence against women: Celebrate women and their creativity and achievements.

A mid-weight Zelda coat from Personal Pizazz (Berkeley, CA), comfortable walking boots, and Monserat De Lucca crossbody bag from Sundance is a perfect outfit for a film festival in early March.

A mid-weight Zelda coat from Personal Pizazz (Berkeley, CA), comfortable walking boots, and Monserat De Lucca crossbody bag from Sundance is a perfect outfit for a film festival in early March.

Lunafest: short films by, for and about women was established in 2000 by LUNA, makers of the nutrition bar for women, to connect women, their stories, and their causes through film. The traveling film festival also serves as a fundraiser for the many communities that host it across the country. Lunafest’s main beneficiary is the Breast Cancer Fund, whose goal is to eliminate the environmental causes of cancer. The selected beneficiaries of El Cerrito’s Lunafest showing were the El Cerrito High School’s Information Technology Academy (ITA) and World Neighbors, an international development organization established to eliminate hunger, poverty, and disease in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. ITA, a small learning community within El Cerrito High School, prepares students for post-secondary education and careers in networking, database management, digital art, and web design.

Reception before the show
The East Bay Lunafast Organizing Committee held a VIP reception prior to the film screening at one of the committee members’ homes, which was just around the corner from the high school auditorium, where the films were going to be shown. I had the pleasure of meeting the evening’s emcee, Karen Grassle, whom many of my contemporaries will recognize as Caroline Ingalls, the mother on the television series Little House on the Prairie (1974-1982). I also met two of the featured film directors, who were slated to participate in a panel discussion with Grassle after the screenings. It energized me to hear them talk about their passion for their art.

Sharon Arteaga, Karen Grassle, and Jisoo Kim at Lunafest 2013.

Sharon Arteaga, Karen Grassle, and Jisoo Kim at Lunafest 2013.

Jisoo Kim, who studied animation in her native South Korea, is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts MFA program and currently works as an artist for Disney Interactive. Her animated short, The Bathhouse, is a beautiful and lush audiovisual experience in which the bathhouse is the transformative venue for women of all shapes and sizes to achieve this uninhibited state of serenity. I appreciated her ability to move us all in our theater seats from feelings of exhaustion and stress to calmness and then vigor. I also appreciated the cultural reference for this transformation. It’s the same transformation I undergo when I lie down on my acupuncturist’s table, falling asleep while listening to soothing music in a warm room with a lavender pillow over my eyes and then waking up refreshed and ready to tackle the world again.

Sharon Arteaga hails from Austin, where she earned her bachelors in film at the University of Texas. Her short film, When I Grow Up, chronicles a morning in the life of a Latina mother and daughter who sell tacos on a route that takes them through refineries in Corpus Christie and ends at the girl’s school. In the panel discussion, Arteaga revealed that the film was an homage to her mother. As a daughter of immigrants, I very much appreciated how she depicted the conflicting views of the two generations without judgment or bias but with quiet generosity, and her understanding of how the immigrants’ dream enables their children’s dreams to be much grander and yet attainable.

Karen Grassle with my friend, Lisa, and her starstruck daughter Savanna, both of whom are fans of Little House on the Prairie.

Karen Grassle with my friend, Lisa, and her starstruck daughter Savanna, both of whom are fans of Little House on the Prairie.

Honoring nine films
The nine screened films, which were chosen from more than 900 entries around the world, were as diverse as they were impressive. You can see the trailer and more information on the films here. I enjoyed all of the films, but the one that was close to my heart was Canadian filmmaker Andrea Dorfman’s Flawed, which told in drawings the story of a woman who has a big nose and feels conflicted when she falls in love with a plastic surgeon. It reminded me of my own perceived flaws and the teasing I endured as a child for having a flat nose and full lips, which are typical Filipino traits. I recalled the times when one of the boys in elementary school taunted me by saying, “I’m going to hit you and give you a big nose. Oh wait, you already have a big nose,” or “I’m going to trip you and give you a fat lip. Oh wait, you already have a fat lip.” Never mind that he had pretty full lips, too. I contemplated, as the protagonist did, having a nose job as an adult. It also made me think of the time when I found my sister in the bathroom rubbing lemon juice and pulp into her face to lighten her skin, which she had learned from watching Jan Brady in the television show The Brady Bunch, who was trying to lighten her freckles. I was horrified because even as a child I understood that she was trying to erase who she was. In the same way the film’s protagonist learned to accept her big nose, I came to embrace my dark skin, my big nose, and my full lips as part of who I am, as part of my heritage.

I also enjoyed Amanda Zackem’s short film about Georgena Terry, who triumphed over childhood polio (I wanted to know more about this) and whose curiosity and tenacity led her to build bicycles that are custom-fit for women. Rebecca Dreyfus’s short film, Self-Portrait with Cows Going Home and Other Works, peeked into the life of Sylvia Plachy, a well-respected contemporary photographer whose Academy Award-winning son Adrien Brody wrote the original music for the film. Plachy has an amazing eye, and thus, an amazing portfolio of black-and-white photographs. New Zealander Louise Leitch’s Whakatiki – A Spirit Rising chronicled the rebirth of a silenced and disenfranchised wife after she takes a plunge into the waters of her youth. I was moved by the woman’s transformation toward emancipation. As she emerged, water dripping from the thick folds of her skin, she shed more than her clothes and regained a lightness of being in exchange.

The other films included Sarah Berkovich’s Blank Canvas, Sasha Collington’s Lunch Date (Great Britain), and Martina Amati’s Chalk (Italy). Blank Canvas celebrates a uterine cancer survivor’s decision to have her bald head beautifully decorated with henna. The humorous Lunch Date pairs an unlikely couple – a young woman who gets dumped by her boyfriend, who uses his 14-year-old brother Wilbur as the messenger – for an unexpected picnic in the park. Chalk chronicles the rites of passage of a young gymnast.

I came away feeling a rebirth of sorts myself. I was definitely invigorated. How can you not stand up and be excited to determine one’s next steps in addressing women’s issues after being empowered by the beauty conceived by nine amazing women filmmakers? All women, go forth and create beautiful things, and let us all celebrate all of our achievements. Only then can we all be uplifted.

P.S. If there is a Lunafest event in your community, get a bunch of girlfriends together and make it a fun, celebratory evening.

Dark-rinse jean leggings get a boost with a lot of texture: paisley and brocade, Carmela Rose reclaimed vintage chandelier earrings, my own vintage pin (1980s gift from my college roommate!), butter-soft chocolate leather, and gold-studded accents on a crossbody bag.

Dark-rinse jean leggings get a boost with a lot of texture: paisley and brocade, Carmela Rose reclaimed vintage chandelier earrings, my own vintage pin (1980s gift from my college roommate!), butter-soft chocolate leather, and gold-studded accents on a crossbody bag.

A Tribute to my mother, one year later

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Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
– Ambrose Bierce, American journalist, from The Devil’s Dictionary

My mother in the Philippines, circa 1950s.

My mother in the Philippines, circa 1950s.

At the age of 85, surrounded by her three daughters, my mother took her last breath in the early morning of January 3rd, 2012. We are journeying to our hometown this weekend to celebrate her one-year anniversary with our relatives.When I think of my mother’s life, I think about the decisions she made and the decisions made for her through the years. After World War II, as a teacher in a mountain province, she fell in love with a Filipino soldier who was enlisted in the U.S. Army. He wanted to marry her, but her strict parents demanded that she choose between them or him. She chose her parents because, she explained, they loved her and she loved them. It was as simple as that, she told me when I was home from college on winter break, in a years-removed, matter-of-fact tone of voice. My mother, the oldest daughter, in a family of seven siblings (two others had died during the war as a result of malnutrition), continued to help support her younger brothers and sisters through school.

My parents' wedding in the Philippines, May 11, 1957.

My parents’ wedding in the Philippines, May 11, 1957.

By the time my father’s cousin – a co-teacher of my mother’s at the school where they both taught – matchmade my parents, she was nearly 32 years old. The local priest had to convince my grandfather, my lolo, who was a layman at his church, to let his daughter go. My father, who was 19 years older than my mother, had been in the States with his cousins since the 1920s. After a short courtship, which my mother described as an exchange of photos and letters, they got married in the Philippines and he returned to Los Angeles. She followed him months later on a ship. My parents lived in a house that my father and his brother bought in Los Angeles. My mother not only took care of her three daughters, born within four years, but also kept house for my father and her brother-in-law and his wife, who all three worked outside of the home. My mother did not want to raise us in an urban environment, especially during the time of civil unrest in Los Angeles, and longed for a home of her own. Some of my father’s relatives had settled in Terra Bella, which my father likened to a camp (New York was the city, Los Angeles was the country, my father reportedly told his cousins). Nevertheless, in 1965, we moved to the small Central Valley town, two-and-a-half hours away, and my parents bought a gray-brick house for $7,000, paying it in full. By 1968, my mother had a ranch-style house built next door on our lot, and paid that house off within five years.

A family outing in Long Beach, CA, summer 1962.

A family outing in Long Beach, CA, summer 1962.

My mother didn’t work while in Los Angeles. In Terra Bella, however, she eschewed becoming a teacher, unlike a couple of Filipino townmates who did go back to school and secured teaching positions at our local elementary school. My mother felt that she couldn’t take the time off to get her credentials. She needed to work right away. And so she spent three seasons at the packing house, which required her to be on her feet for 12 hours a day, sizing or packing oranges and other citrus fruit. In the wintertime, at the height of the season, she would be at work at 6 in the morning, come home for dinner, and then return to the packing house. In the summers, she picked table grapes in the nearby farms. I remember how she would wake us up early in the mornings to ensure that we had a good breakfast, and then leave the house while it was still dark outside. I remember watching one of our relatives rub tiger balm on her swollen fingers and the long steaming baths she took when she came home in the summertime, leaving a pile of dusty clothes that smelled of dirt and sweat outside the bathroom. I don’t recall when she retired. But she packed oranges and picked grapes somewhere in the range of 30 years.

Graduation day at UC Davis, June 1985.

Graduation day at UC Davis, June 1985.

School was very important to both my parents. My father only had a second-grade education. Of course, only A’s were acceptable grades. We would attend and graduate from college and our degrees would provide us with solid careers. When I was a senior in high school, my mother helped me fill out financial-aid documents. She had to disclose her yearly salary in one of the forms, and when I looked at what she’d written I was stunned. Wasn’t she missing another digit, I asked. I still remember how she leaned towards me, her eyeglasses perched at the edge of her nose, her hands anchored on the kitchen table. “No,” she said, smiling. She had made sure that we were never for want of anything. Not food or shelter, clothes or non-necessities.It made me think of the time I was into sewing – back in the day when girls took home economics in elementary school. It was summertime. I had waited for my mother to come home from work because I wanted to go into town and buy some fabric to make a blouse. She came home too tired to eat lunch and in want of a nap. She berated me, telling me I always sewed a garment that I would either never wear or discard soon afterwards. In truth, it was rare that I liked something I had made, though I enjoyed sewing itself. I went to my room, lay prostrate on my bed, and cried. Soon afterwards, she came into my room and curtly announced that we would go to Montgomery Wards and look for fabric.

Celebrating her 85th birthday with her grandchildren, Folsom, CA, June 25, 2011.

Celebrating her 85th birthday with her grandchildren, Folsom, CA, June 25, 2011.

This past year, I have gravitated towards listening to music from the 1970s and 1980s – thanks to Pandora radio. While I have always had a weakness for music from those decades (and go through the motions of apologizing for my bad taste in music to friends), as I listen to the songs now, it brings me back to a time when you never ever doubted that your parents would always be there to protect you. They would always be this age, full of vitality even when they were weary of their lives.

I have found that when you discover your parents’ history – and this oftentimes only happens when you are an adult, and for me this happened when I was in college, after taking many Asian American Studies classes – you understand the root of their actions and decisions – good and bad, hurtful and big-hearted. And in that understanding, you receive the power of forgiveness, the weight of sacrifices, and most importantly, the burden and comfort of unconditional love with open arms.

Flowers for my mother's memorial service, January 9, 2012.

Flowers for my mother’s memorial service, January 9, 2012.

Fifteen years later: On becoming a writer

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Celebrating with glimmering gold.

Celebrating with glimmering gold.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
– John Ruskin, British art critic

In 1997, when I began researching and then writing my first novel, I could not have imagined that in 2012 I would still be working on the umpteenth draft. If I had known how much time would pass, I might have given up. Thomas Edison was credited as saying, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The thing is: I did give up.

The first draft was 1,000 pages. It was easier to write when my husband and I didn’t have children and my job was not demanding. My son came, I changed jobs a few times, job demands grew, and sleep deprivation was my companion in the middle of the night when I sat in front of the computer screen, writing articles instead of fiction. I finished another draft when I went into labor with my daughter. In 2006, I was finally done and sent the trimmed-down (at 650 pages) manuscript off to literary agents, only to get rejected by 60 of them. One writer friend exclaimed, “I didn’t even know there were 60 different agents to be rejected by.” The manuscript was too long and there was no market for a novel about Filipino immigrant farmworkers, labor unions and grape strikes, I was told. And I believed them. I also believed that a more talented writer would have made the novel more compelling. I understood that I was not good enough to have made it work against any and all odds.

So I gave up. I put the manuscript away. I stopped reading fiction and book reviews. I didn’t go into bookstores anymore. I did other worthy and necessary things in my life. I had some inkling that I would come back to the writing, maybe to the novel. Every now and then, through the years, my two high school best friends would ask me when I was going to resurrect Fausto, my main character, and his story.

For anyone who has known the passion of creating, who has experienced the ecstasy of getting the emotion or moment right with the precise words in the only order that makes exquisite sense, who has stopped whatever ordinary activity she is doing because she has solved a niggling and bottlenecking problem with a character’s motivations or actions, the desire to create is never abandoned. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew that.

When we are ready on the inside, it may still take time for that desire to radiate outward and make us aware of its awakening. Sometimes it takes an event in our lives that turns the key or opens the window, and the desire is unleashed and demanding to be nurtured and given the tools to create anew. I took a week of vacation in April to start the next major revision of the novel, and my happiness was palpable. I did not want to lose it again. Getting stuck on a word or a sentence was a gift, not something to agonize over or dread as a tedious task. Carving out time to reintroduce myself to my characters was a gift.

Gold accessories on gold brocade - my own vintage early 90s tassel earrings and M.E. Moore reclaimed vintage bracelet and necklace.

Gold accessories on gold brocade – my own vintage early 90s tassel earrings and M.E. Moore reclaimed vintage bracelet and necklace.

In May I submitted the manuscript to a local independent book publisher’s annual contest. I had high hopes, but my novel wasn’t chosen. I was disappointed to be sure, but undaunted. Last month, I heard from my undergraduate professor who, along with his partner, is an independent book publisher. I asked him to consider my manuscript, and while he didn’t accept it, he told me that he and his partner “enjoyed it and admired the sometimes quite lyrical prose” and that they “liked the rendering of the setting, at once exotic and universal.” This time I was ecstatic. He was one of the best creative writing professors I’ve ever had, and he gave me the gift of his time and his advice for the next and hopefully last revision. His response – the outside world’s response, so to speak – validated what I’d been feeling inside: I’m getting there, I’m on the right track.

In September I sent the manuscript to the Poets & Writers’ California Writers Exchange contest. Last week, I received an e-mail announcing the winning poet and fiction writer. I honestly did not expect to win, but there was an itch of disappointment. Yesterday, however, I received a letter, letting me know that I was one of 15 finalists whose manuscripts, out of a total of 609 fiction manuscripts, were sent to the fiction judge for his final selection. I was quietly happy. I felt a warmth growing inside of me.

Fifteen years later, this is what I know: In 2006, the novel was too long and I was not a skilled enough writer to make Fausto’s story resonate. I am a much better writer now and the novel is almost there. All these years of toil have made it thus.

A love of mixing textures again - thrifted embroidered purse, faux fur, Frye leather booties, textured tights, and bold jewelry by M.E. Moore.

A love of mixing textures again – thrifted embroidered purse, faux fur, Frye leather booties, textured tights, and bold jewelry by M.E. Moore.