(Originally published as a Student of the Month feature in August, 2014.)
Anak
(My Child)
I will break through barriers for you
So that you may run swiftly unhindered
By the hurdles of being
Born . . . Filipino and a girl
One day you came home from school
And said, a white girl told me . . .
White rules brown drools
What does that mean mom?
It means that whoever taught her that
Is sadly mistaken
I will empower you with weapons to fight
The pen to slay
The word to shield
Your heart and mind
One day you came home from school
And said, why am I one of the few
Filipinos in my school
Why can’t I go to a school
With other Filipinos?
Because education is a weapon
I will be a bridge for you
Illuminating your path with our ancestors dance
Sustaining your strength with our sacrifice
Fortifying your love with our humanity
We belong to a culture struggling
To emerge from these invisible chains
Virtue of a colonized mind
Generation by generation
Stripping of our history
Silencing of our language
Searching for our ancestral land
You will be the generation
Who knows their history
Who knows their language
Who knows where they come from
ANAK you are FILIPINO
Made in Hawaii . . .
I was Made in Hawaii
Woven of different threads
Threads of Filipinoness
Lay only in distant yet vivid memories of my grandparents
Cleaning yards in Kahala for only $5.00 each
The pungent smell of fresh cut grass on a Saturday morning
My grandma frying up bundi bundi
The scalding oil searing my lips and tongue
Too anxious to wait for it to cool
Threads of Localness
To prepare for May Day I would climb my grandma’s
Plumeria tree and pick flowers to make leis
The white milky sap from the flowers sticky on my fingers
After school I would walk with my cousins and my grandma
To the crack seed store to buy 25 cent ice cake
The refreshing cold on my tongue made me forget
The Kalihi heat walking home
Threads of Americanness
Woven together like patches of a quilt
Land of opportunity
Innovation
Ingenuity
Leadership
Democracy
Free Enterprise
Social Justice
The threads of my identity
My Triple Consciousness
I say I am all
But do I belong?
I was Made in Hawaii
That is why they say I’m not a true Filipino
I’m a fourth generation woman
Who doesn’t speak Tagalog or Ilokano
Who has never been to the Philippines
and never wanted too
The threads that connect me now are
My memories, my face, and the color of my skin
I was Made in Hawaii
That’s why I say I local
I grew up interwoven in Hawaii’s local cultures and traditions
Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese
Merrie Monarch, Bon Dances
Visits to China Town, Leonard’s Malasadas
Speaking Pidgin, no more one betta feeling
Like I stay home
And I can be myself
But this land no belong to me, but to another
Am I only a settler?
I was Made in Hawaii
But immersed in American and Western culture
American culture taught me to reject my Filipinoness
American culture silenced my Localness
American culture educated me to question the threads of my identity
Which made me realize
I have the choice!
To define myself
Not one identity
encapsulates who I am!
I have the choice!
To accept or reject the status quo!
To reinvent myself
To honor my elders
To be the catalyst for my children
I was Made in Hawaii
My triple consciousness
Local, Filipino and American
I’m like a mix plate
Two scoops rice
One scoop mac salad
Spam
Chicken adobo
Garden Salad with Ranch Dressing
All different but das what makes
It so good…
Three is betta den one!
Our Journey
For Valentine Jasmin
Pacific crossing
Blending ocean and sky
13 days
Aboard steely S.S. Pierce
Only 16 but 19
On the Passenger Log
PI to HI
Departed
Urdaneta, Pangasinan
May 23, 1931
Arrived
Honolulu, Hawaii
June 10th, 1931
Status: Immigrant
Plantation travels
Kauai Cane Sugar
Cheap labor
Das wea he started
Worked up
To Janitor
In da Hospital
Met my grandmadda
Kid on every Island
6 in all
Bought home in Kalihi
Status: Settler
Paradise progress
Entrepreneurs
Weekdays clean offices
Weekends clean yards
Kahala $5.00 each
Lunch time
Coral Tuna sandwich
Best Foods Mayonnaise
Hawaiian Sun
Passion Orange
Wrapped in Reynold’s foil
Status: Happiest times with you
Paradise lost
1 stroke
2 stroke
Diagnoses Alzheimer’s
7 years
You drifted away
Back to the PI
In your mind
Never got to ask
All the questions
Now I find in books
Status: Searching
Filipino Chicken Soup
Warm Simmering Goodness
Wafting Soothing Smells
Cradling My Soul
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
With One Sip of
Her Chicken Marungay
Unscathed by Modernity
Untainted and Authentic
Eloquently Passed Down
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
With One Bite of
Her Chicken Marungay
Plucking Tender Leaves
Together You and I
Incandescent Love
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
With One Bowl of
Her Chicken Marungay
Jovial Diasporic Communities
Rejoice and Reconnect
Taste of Home Resonating
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
Mmmm . . .
With One Pot of
Her Chicken Marungay
Writing as a fourth-generation Filipino American woman born and raised in Hawai‘i, Shannon shares the following four poems: “Anak,” which speaks to the poet’s daughter about gender, race, and cultural identity; “Made in Hawaii,” which comments on the poet’s “triple consciousness” as local, Filipino, and American; “Our Journey,” which narrates Filipino diaspora in Hawai‘i; and “Filipino Chicken Soup,” which Shannon performed with her daughter at Kōkua Market’s first Pacific Poetry Feast in October 2013. Shannon is currently writing poems about Filipino foodways in Hawai‘i and plans to include these works in her MA thesis.