OUR TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH

Americans who read Patron Saints of Nothing often tell me that my story made them cry. It means a lot to me that something I’ve written moves people so deeply, but our tears are not enough.  At midnight in the Philippines on July 18, the country’s Anti-Terror Law (ATL) went into effect. Its vague language …

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WHAT BLACK HISTORY MONTH MEANS TO THIS FILIPINO AMERICAN

When I was growing up, I never felt like I fully belonged anywhere. As a half-white, half-Filipino American who very much appears mixed race, my ethnicity was constantly interrogated. Friends, acquaintances, teachers, coaches, and even the occasional stranger would ask, “What are you?” or “Where are you from?” I understand that (in most cases) there …

SHIFTING THE SPOTLIGHT

In what I believe is the first photograph of me that exists, there is a woman standing behind me who is neither my mother nor my lola (with whom I lived with for the first year of my life). Instead it was a woman casually referred to as the “maid.” In my visits to the …