Mom's Story
- Dylan Gascon
- FILIPINAS
- This personal story was submited in English
My mom's family came over because my grandma (Lola) thought that in America there is more opportunity. To her America really was this great land of opportunity. So after a brief stint for my grandpa (Lolo) in Chicago, the family moved to Long Beach in 1971. On an interesting note, if he had come to Chicago when it wasn't winter, at a time when the weather is vastly different than in the Philippines, then quite possibly my Mom's family could have been in Chicago and not in California.
Anyway, unlike St. Paul College, an all girls Catholic school, that my mom went to in the Philippines, the west Long Beach Stevens jr.high (an inner city school) my mom went to was pretty ghetto, and there were fights all the time. She even said teachers got their lives threatened by students. Needless to say, this was a bit of a culture shock. But because of this she didn't really make a lot of friends. There was also the fact that her having an accent made her feel discriminated against, so she made it a point to get rid of her accent. (Now she doesn't have an accent at all).
Another conflict was that my mom came from a traditional Filipino household, and my mom being one of the eldest daughters, things where very strict for her, unlike my other aunts, who were younger and rules were more lenient, and my uncle, who was the oldest, and also a boy, so he really could do whatever he wanted. Also, to give a perspective on how traditional the family was, all the girls in the family basically have names that in some part are derived from the name “Marie” (as in the virgin Mary). Here are my mom’s and her sister’s real names: Marieanne, Mariselle, Maricor, Marielouis and Hopemarie. Friend wise, Mom didn't have many cause she never felt accepted by the Americans, but at the same time, many of the Filipinos that were there came over at an earlier point in their life than her, so she felt she couldn't really connect with them.a so So made friends with people who came over like she did.
Overall though, she felt like she could never fit in with Americans, but at the same time not fit in with Filipinos. she always felt that her home was always in the Philippines because of this never being able to fit in. Ironically enough though, when she did return to the Philippines ten years later, because of being in America, she was once again treated like an outsider, and because of certain cultural norms being different, like wearing tighter fitting clothes, short shorts, and the fact that she smoked, she was generally looked down upon there, to the point where some random guy even called her a whore! Also on a different note, my mom and her sisters and her brother actually aren't very religious. This is kinda weird, especially coming from a culture that is very religious.