Pinoy is the term often used to describe Filipino-Americans, especially those who have left their homelands. A rough translation is, "A Filipino whose body is in America, but whose heart remains in the Philippines."
For me, learning the meaning of being Pinoy has been a five-year journey, beginning with the research of this book and ending now with me being much more appreciative, respectful and aware of what it means to be a Filipina-American.
While researching my book, one of the items I came across that really hit home for was the following poem. What I liked about the poem was that it reassured me to know that I was not the only Filipina-American (or Fil-Am or Pinoy...) who felt conflicted over their mixed-race heritage. It was written by Fred Cordova, co-founder of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), which was created out of a need to document Filipino American history for succeeding generations. Before Fred Cordova and his wife Dorothy Laigo Cordova took up the task, there was a paucity of information available about the Filipino American community's history in the United States. Retrieved fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FANHS
For anyone interested in more information about Pinoys or FANHS, click on any of the following links:
http://www.fanhs-national.org/
http://www.geocities.com/fanhs_stkn/museum.html
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/cordovas.htm
Below is a full reprinting of Mr. Cordova's poem (printed with his permission). Enjoy!
Ang Kundiman ng mga Niyog sa America
The Lament of Seven Hundred Seventy-Four Thousand Six Hundred and Forty Coconuts
by Fred Cordova
We say we are Filipino; we say we are American; so, who are we; more so, what are we; brown or white; or are we still “other”?
We waste precious time in perennially asking these questions about ourselves among ourselves but never listening to ourselves for the answers which should come from within ourselves in our search of ourselves.
Meanwhile, in the downstream, others of color daily go about their commitments of uniting, mobilizing, organizing, prioritizing, planning, programming, strategizing, implementing and doing their own thing to get farther in the mainstream where the sun shines as we, faraway upstream, still are wondering, gazing, hesitating, envying, criticizing, commiserating, disputing, contending, rivaling, sleeping, gambling, whoring or just spacing out and turning off while raindrops keep dropping on our heads.
In a tragic sense we—who expound we are either Filipino, who declare we are either American, who deny we are neither—we are all coconuts, brown outside and white inside because we are never sure who or what we are.
Like coconuts, big ones, small ones, varying in kind, we, too, are of many kinds even though we spring from the same family tree, producing myriad shades of brown, mixed with White, Mexican, Puerto Rican, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Black, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Guamanian and other mistiso blood, thanks to our parents, God bless them!
We are all kinds because it takes all kinds to make us whoever and whatever we are.
We are young and old, native and alien, flat-nosed and big-nosed, slant-eyed and round-eyed, dark and light, poor and poorer, middle class and lots of class, smart and stupid, industrious and lazy, full-blood and hardly any blood, scrutable Chinese and macho Spanish, university degree and third-degreed, trilingual and inarticulate, loquacious and stoic, hyper and passive, cynical and naïve, gentle and violent, doctor, dishwasher, Indian chief and Catholic, conman, petty thief.
We are hard workers, struggling in school, in labor, at home and in our ghetto of survival and we try to work hard even though we are accused we do not work hard while we try to work even harder to please. Yes, sir, yes, ma’am, yes, boss; thank you, sir, thank you, ma’am, thank you, boss; I am so sorry, sir, I am so sorry, ma’am, I am sorry, boss.
We are loud-mouthed in our meekness, rarely angry amidst wrath and so in our fury we never go berserk; we just run amok; with knives and pistols, we have no preferences; watch out, everyone, stay away, far away; we only desire to hurt ourselves for fear of offending others; but do not push us too far; we will fight for our rights.
We are then marginal man, marginal woman; better yet, margarine, because we are being burnt, toasted, singed, braised, scorched always to our detriment, for someone else’s benefit; thus we party, dance, banquet, and, happy in our delusions of grandeur, we do not hurt as much with the pain of exploitation.
We are the papas, mamas, uncles working in the fields, stooping from sunrise to sunset, sweating in the layers of dust that cling to our tanned skin.
We are the brothers, the manongs, to salmon, crab, tuna, whose guts perfume our wage-earning bodies in the slime of the fish canneries.
We are the old faces in restaurants, hotels, mansions where we do valuable service from cooking white food, waiting on tables, washing pots, fixing beds, cleaning rooms, polishing hallways, running elevators to smiling, always smiling in our fast pace even while hustling for extra money on the side and teaching our brown newcomers to the work force all the shortcuts in the job to cut short the daily drudgery.
We are those subordinates whom our superiors like to call “Filipino boys” even though we will never see sixty-five again.
We are the forgotten Second Generation, bridging the past with the present but remaining uncertain of our future, silent in our thoughts, private in our fears, deluded within our dreams, hidden in our pursuits, regretful over our failures, overlooked in our achievements, and, omitted by our very own.
We are the Third Generation, the now generation, divorced from the ways of our parents; alienated from the fermented smell of fishy bagoong, and more sadly, from the discipline, endurance and faith of our grandparents.
We are the immigrants newly arrived, inspired by the red, white and blue flag not of the sepia sun and the three stars within the triangle but of the fifty stars in the rectangle.
We fought against the Japanese; “Asians for Asians,” they said and immediately killed our men, women and children, and pillaged homes in the Philippines; atrocities, we fought for the Americans; “I shall return,” they said and eventually neglected our men, women and children, and rebuilt homes in Japan; atrocious; we warred on America’s side and prayed for the rise of the United States; we battled the Japanese side and saw the fall of the Philippines; Bataan and Corregidor; we died by the thousands and we suffered by the millions; atrociousness; the invaders by military force left our native land; Tacloban and Manila; we by economic force had to leave our native land; the Pacific and U.S.A.; yet we are denied as veterans, deprived as immigrants, demeaned as being overqualified, underqualified, demoted to being underemployed, unemployed, denounced as being inadequate, incapable, incompetent, untrained, unschooled, limited and deposed for having English with an accent; whose side did we fight on; are we not among the victors; why then to the defeated go the spoils of a world war; and was not the Philippines in the Nineties the Vietnam of the Seventies.
However, we have become the new faces among office workers, so-called professionals, where we are one notch up from our brown brothers and sisters among domestic hands who empty our trash cans and mop the floor even while we work our shifts.
We continue to be family folks, among us couples, first generation, rearing growing children, also first generation, being baby-sitted by Lola, Grandma, also first generation, and all homesick for the homeland, meaning the Philippines.
We are the brown faces you see on the city streets, no longer curious about each other, no longer smiling at one another, no longer caring; street persons we continue to be, but of a different breed, recognizing not the faces of our brothers and sisters, who preceded us in their bitter struggles for the right to be on those very streets.
“Get away from here, brown monkey! Stop loitering! You don’t belong here! Go back to where you belong!”
Yet, how we remember the faces of our dead as we father as a community to honor these pioneers, old-timers, heroes and heroines of the First Wave, at funeral parlors, churches, cemeteries, such unlikely sites for reunions among friends in mournful events turned social for the living in their zest for life.
Still, we are nobodies, missing in our white majority society among somebodies like your teacher, your employer, your basketball star, your plumber, your television personality, your top entertainer, your singing artist, your big-time idol, your big time anything.
Why do we drop out of school, especially in our youth; why do we shirk from knowledge that would transport us through the expanse of space, the depths of the ocean, the complexities of a computer, the infinity of a molecule, the almightiness of words; is it the lack of money, role models, ass-kickers; is it because of the system or is it ourselves?
We are the emerging Fourth Generation, who, in the face of the future, wonder what all this Filipino stuff is all about and whether it is for real or not, let alone having to deal with life, getting through school, finding a job, having peace of mind, feeling some measure of happiness, owning a few bucks, and getting ourselves (our head, our act, our shit) together.
We celebrate, we sacrifice; we progress, we regress; we cope to live and live to die.
Dammit to hell!
Who are we?
What are we?
We are everyone to whom this world has to give; for whom America has in store.
We are minority racially, ethnically, culturally, politically, socially, economically, educationally, not necessarily in that order; we are Malay; we are Asian; we are people of color, of the Third World; we are disadvantaged, disenfranchised, dispossessed, disowned, disemboweled of our roots, of our history, of our culture, of our languages, of our dialects, of our identification, of our legacy, of our equities, of our share, of ourselves; we are that minority about whom we had said to you some time ago make up a minority within a minority within a minority.
For most of us, American can do no wrong; for a few of us, America cannot do anything right. As far back as the New Deal, America has rarely given us a fair deal, based on a long history of patronizing benevolences, it seems, more so, to have been a raw deal.
The Exclusion Act continues to be acted out from within the bureaucracy: “…The purpose of this grant is to expand the existing language collection that serves Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese readers in the state.”
Who and what are we?
Proudly, we are Americans, who are Brown, unlike George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Lone Ranger, Superman, Charlie Chan, Douglas MacArthur, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior. Pridefully, we are also Filipinos, who are Tagalog, Ilocano, Pangasinan, Bicol, Visayan, and Muslim, too, whose roots spring from throughout Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, like Lapulapu, Gabriela Silang, Francisco Dagohoy, Gregorio del Pilar, Francisca Aquino Reyes, Ramon Magsaysay, Carlos Villa, Carlos Bulosan, Jose Caluegas, Vicki Manalo Draves, Roman Gabriel, Barbara Luna, Ron O’Neal, Tai Babilonia.
We are not just American and Filipino…Filipino and American.
Pinoy.
Yes, we are Pinoys.
Now what in God’s name is that…and would someone Pinoy please explain!?!?
(excerpted from Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans by Fred Cordova, copyright 1983 by Demonstration Project for Asian Americans)
