by Kaitlin Milliken
Most people who grow up in the US as a -American have a complicated relationship with culture. Maybe you’re teased for it. Or you have a dual identity between your classmates and your cousins. Or you compartmentalize how you act at home from the rest of the world.
As a kid, I always felt too American when compared to my Asian-American classmates and friends. I only spoke English and preferred pasta over palabok. I saw culture as a checklist. If you filled in enough boxes, then you could call yourself Filipino.
When I moved to Massachusetts for college, my experience flipped. At Boston University, I was one of a few people of color in groups. I began to see how my background shaped my worldview. Being Filipino-Japanese-American became a larger part of how I defined myself.
In the first episode of this show, I take a deeper dive into my relationship with Filipino culture. I also sit down with my grandma to get a better sense of the family history and her journey to America. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed sharing this story.
Transcript
[MUSIC]
Kaitlin Milliken: Hello, and welcome to the first ever episode of the BOSFilipinos podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken. This is a brand new podcast created by, you guessed it, BOSFilipinos. For those of you who don't know, BOSFilipinos is a volunteer run organization that aims to elevate Filipino culture in Boston. This podcast is one way that we tell those stories. The group also has a blog and an Instagram which you should also check out.
In each episode we highlight a different aspect of the Filipino American experience, from language, to food, to dance, and so much more. Our show is going to be Boston-centric, sharing Filipino stories from the Bay Sate. But we'll also talk about people promoting FilAm culture from other parts of the country.
But before we dive deep into all of those topics, I'm going to spend our first episode introducing myself and talking about my relationship with culture. To do that, I want to start at the very beginning by talking to my grandma, Odette Semana Rojas.
Odette Rojas: Okay, when do you want me to start?
Kaitlin Milliken: So tell me where you grew up in the Philippines.
Odette Rojas: I was born in May of 1946 in San Juan, Batangas, in the Philippines, and we migrated to Manila, when I was two years old, and that's where I grew up. It’s also called San Juan Rizal. I went to public school there. And then when I went to high school, my mom, my dad enrolled me in a private school, which is called Forresten University, where I also finished my nursing career. And I got married in 1967, and we migrated to the United States with a child, and it's your mom. Her name is Maria Ayna Rojas.
Kaitlin Milliken: So we’re gonna go back, like a while. I feel like we just went through, like 40 years in like five minutes.
Kaitlin Milliken: In this recording, I'm sitting with my grandma in her house in San Jose, California. My mom and boyfriend are sitting on the couch off to the side attempting to be a quiet audience.
My grandma is the coolest person I know. I always picture her as this radiant woman with an unforgettable smile. She has an objectively better taste in fashion than I do, and never ever wears sneakers. Even as a nurse clogs are her walking shoes.
On top of being an absolute icon. She is also the matriarch of our family. She knows all of the gossip and holds all of our stories close. The CliffNotes version about her journey to the US and have asked her a few questions about her immigrant story for school projects. But this is one of the first times we really dove deep.
Kaitlin Milliken: What was it like growing up in the Batangas? What was that like? I've never been.
Odette Rojas: Okay, okay. Batangas is like a province. That's where I really enjoyed myself when I was young. We used to go to the beach, and we used to play with jellyfish and sometimes it gets caught in your skin. It gets itchy but all you do is rub yourself with the sand and it goes away.
I will walk with my friends and wherever we will take us. When it's raining and there's water flowing water nearby, what we do is we used to use wooden shoes and you can slip it on and take it off. So what we used to do is we race those shoes. We put one of our shoes in the water, and we race the shoe and see who first will go the other end.
The other one too is the, you know, the spiders. It's the one that has the big butt. It’s not the regular spider that has more legs. I don't know what you call it, but anyway we put them in a batch max… What do you call that?
Kaitlin Milliken: Match box.
Odette Rojas: The match box. We put them in there, and then we get a stick. Then one end, someone puts their spider then, and then the other one was deep spider at the other end we did have them fight and the one that false loses the game. [LAUGHS]
Kaitlin Milliken: My grandma grew up with her six siblings in the Batangas, fighting spiders and racing shoes in the rain. When it was time for her to go to university, she decided to study nursing, one of the big professions in the Filipino community. She went to school in Manila writing the jeepney to and from university for the first two years. After that, she moved to the dorm and even with the strict rules of nursing school, my grandma was her usual fun loving self.
Odette Rojas: And I always get involved with activities because even when I was a student and I was the president of our nursing school organization before I graduated. And then besides that, I was one of the representatives of our department to the university that meets with others. That's where I met your grandpa. Yeah, so that's how I get involved. And then when there was, before martial law, I was really married at that time. When I was a student, and I was one of the activists. We used to run around and we had placards about you know, this and that, this and that. And then we go to the classroom and tell them not to go to school and we go out there in the street. And you know...
Kaitlin Milliken: My grandma always knew she wanted to come to America. In one of her journals, she had written that her dream was to move to the US, drive a fancy car, and send all of her kids to school. Around the same time, a number of my grandpa's relatives started immigrating to the country looking for opportunity. He was an engineer, so he was able to get a professional visa. And thus the small family's immigration journey began
Odette Rojas: Using your grandpa's certificate graduating from engineering department, because I didn't graduate at that time, I have to wait another year. I applied for a second type of visa to the United States which is professional, and if you are accepted, they'll issue you an immigrant visa. So we were able to get an American visa, and your mom was born at that time. Your mom was only 14-months when we left.
We stayed with Auntie Dorith, which is your great-grandma's sister. That's where we rented a room. And on the way coming to the United States, all I had was $10 in my purse, and our transportation was fly-now-pay-later. There was such thing before. And it was, I believe it was like $475 each at that time. That was expensive at the time. That was in the 70s. So we stayed here and rented the room with Auntie Dorith.
Kaitlin Milliken: My grandparents lived with relatives when getting their footing in the US. My grandma had to take an exam to continue her nursing career in America. After two tries, she was able to pass, and the rest is sort of the American dream. My grandma eventually got a job.
Odette Rojas: So I got hired at the hospital and I had to work evening shift because of babysitting. So your grandpa and I used to switch. I work 3am to 11am. He comes home at 5 o'clock and takes care of you to care of — not you — but your mom. And so that's how we did it. I worked 3 to 11 and he worked, what do you call it, days.
Kaitlin Milliken: They bought a house in San Jose, California.
Odette Rojas: Then we bought the home, and we could not afford anything so we ended up, as I said, buying stuff from the garage sale. So our plates were like 10 cents apiece. And then the table I think we bought it for five bucks. The two chairs were like $1 each. And they are so cheap when your grandpa was sitting on one, he fell on the floor. [LAUGHS]
Kaitlin Milliken: She got her first American credit card from Macy's to buy better stuff for the house.
Odette Rojas: Mind you the only department store, or any place, that issued us a credit card, because we could not get any credit because we didn't have any credit reference, right? So Macy’s was the first one. That's why I've been with Macy’s for years, even before your uncles were born. So they gave me a credit card good for $500. So we bought our mattress there and the box spring so at least we have a bed. And you're your mom slept with us anyways, so it didn't make any difference whether she has a bed or not.
Kaitlin Milliken: She and my grandpa helped out some friends who also immigrated from the Philippines.
Odette Rojas: Your dad, your grandpa's best friend and another friend needed a place to stay. They came from the Philippines too, and they didn't know anyone. So what I did is I rented the two rooms to the two guys with the food too, so that way, we have enough money to buy the other stuff.
Kaitlin Milliken: They also helped my grandma's siblings and parents when they came to the US.
Odette Rojas: Mama Josie, dad’s mother, had three sisters that were here. It was all on his side, none on my side. So every Christmas then, I always cried because I didn't have anyone. Then my sister came with the husband, and that got a little bit better. And then later on I petitioned for my dad and my mom. And so everybody got here, but it took a while before we got them all here.
Kaitlin Milliken: My grandma had two more kids. She got involved with the FilAm association at the local church; divorced my grandpa; fell in love with my Lolo Sol, who has been like a grandparent to me ever since.
She watched her children grow. My mom got married and at some point in the mix, my brother and I happened. And we grew up with two loving parents, my grandma close by, and the whole Filipino side of the family within city limits.
My grandma and her siblings were the side of the family we spent the holidays with. My idea of Christmas is incomplete without the full spread of my uncle Amado’s cooking. My maternal cousins and I spent summers together. My Tita Baby spent a long time attempting to teach me words in Tagalog, which I never internalized. I grew up surrounded by all of this culture and a large part of that came from my family.
On top of the culture that came from my family, I grew up surrounded by other Filipinos in my community. Most of the students at my middle and elementary school were Filipino, and my high school was also very diverse. Lots of students were bilingual and very in touch with their cultural roots. So I never felt like I was different. Sometimes I actually felt like I wasn't Filipino enough. I wasn't full Filipino. My dad is Japanese and white. I didn't speak the language or own a filipinana. We stopped doing mano-po, where you touch an elders hand to your forehead as a blessing, after my great grandfather passed away. To me, I was just like any other American and way less Asian than other people in the Bay Area.
My relationship with my cultural identity changed when I moved back east. My grandma and mom dropped me off at Boston University in 2014 for my freshman year of college. I was the first person to go to school on the east coast in my family. I studied journalism, did radio, made a bunch of great friends, and met a lot of people from different backgrounds. And of course, going to BU, a good number of my friends were white.
And that's when I realized that I was raised differently. The traditions in my family, the food, the close knit nature of my relatives — that was all a part of who I was, and I missed it. So I went to the internet, more specifically Instagram, to find ways to meet other people from the same background. BOSFilipinos was one of the first groups I found, and they had a meetup that was relatively soon. The rest is history.
At the end of the conversation with my grandma, I asked her what she wanted me to know about being a Filipina.
Odette Rojas: I am a Filipino by blood, and then of course, accepting the way who I am, wherever I go. And then my feeling is we're the same, excuse me, but if we scrape off our skin, my skin will be brown. When we scrape off our skin, my blood and your blood is the same. Maybe we come from a different place, I come from a different place, but that doesn't mean that you're higher than I am. That's why I have an attitude, “If you can do it, I can do it too.”
Kaitlin Milliken: What role do you want Filipino identity to play for like me?
Odette Rojas: I guess. Consider yourself as a Filipino, and just like people here they accept to be American. Just respect each other's values and beliefs. And you take the way you are as a Filipino. You always always have the attitude of respect. Dignity.
Kaitlin Milliken: If you can do it, I can do it. And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to be the best at it. I think about that all the time. I'm still figuring out what it means to be a Filipino-American. But as I search, I think that mantra will be with me all along that journey.
[MUSIC]
Kaitlin Milliken: This has been the BOSFilipinos podcast. This episode was written and produced by me, Kaitlin Milliken. The amazing Trish Fontanilla helped me get this podcast off the ground. Thank you so much, Trish, for everything you do. Special thanks to my grandma and my family for helping me tell my story. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play. For more stories from Boston's film community, visit bosfilipinos.com or follow us on Instagram @bosfilipinos. Thanks for listening and see you soon.