some of my mixed race feels
2013-06-11
and i see people talking about mixed race feels… while i do have them, i also kinda don’t? i mean i’m mixed but my filipino dad raised us by himself because he threatened to kidnap us and raise us in manila if my mom didn’t give him custody.
and all of my white family (save my mom) lived across the country and spoke even less english than my filipin@ side, so i mostly just id as pinay because i grew up in a diasporic community of small, brown people. and i don’t even know what thanksgiving dinner without pancit and rice actually looks like.
i think most of my mixed race feels come from people outside of my family (who rarely perceive me as pinay – but Chinese/Japanese/misc Asian/Latina/white – in descending order) and the microaggressive reactions of ‘what are you’ ‘you look really exotic’ etc.
but. idk. maybe because my dad was a serious filipino nationalist (he gave me a copy of noli me tangier once) and that because i had no friends 90% of my socializing happened within my family and that all of our family trips/vacations were 100% related to visiting family
but i’ve always just felt pinay. and id’d that way too. and i feel 100% secure and comfortable in my id, despite the disbelief i regularly encounter.
because i can feel my connection to my ancestors in my bones. my spirit knows where it is from and who my people are.
and this is something that is always mine. and no one can take from me.
i doubt and feel insecure about many things, but this has never been one of them. and it never will be.
(this was posted on fb, but i’m archiving here)