Pinoys in Flatbush: A Fil-Am Family History

Julie and Ding both grew up in Cebu, Philippines, specifically from Baguio City. Julie grew up with nine siblings: four brothers and five sisters under one roof on a nearby farm. She recalls visiting a province two hours away every summer to go to her uncle's farm. The farm was surrounded by lush mountains and fertile farmland. There, Julie and her siblings did farm work, like picking up fruits and feeding chickens. Before the school year started again, she would go home, leaving on Saturday morning and arriving back in Baguio on Sunday morning in time for church. When she was not at her Uncle’s farm, she occasionally received postcards depicting America as a “paradise.” On the postcards, there would be lines like, “The snow…we thought it was cotton falling from the sky. We don’t know what is apple before, but the picture looks enticing to it.” This was also the first time Julie and Ding heard about Santa Claus. This became her motivation to visit America. 

In their households, religion played an integral role in creating familial bonds. It was common to go to mass every Sunday and every holiday with the entire family, whether you were half-asleep in church or in your Sunday best. The most memorable service in the year was the Christmas novena. As Julie remembers it, “The Aguinaldo mass [was] every four o'clock in the morning for nine days until Christmas. You have to go, even if you are so sleepy. You have to go, even if you sleep in church, as long as you go to church, and then when we come back, we have food.” Every night, the whole family would pray the rosary, since Julie and Ding were both children. The religious exposure, both within church and outside, was an integral part of their childhood that strongly developed both of their values when later coming to the United States.

Julie and Ding also recall education culture within the Philippines as being virtually the same from elementary school through high school. Both of their families pushed hard for them to attend Catholic school, so as to maintain relationships. The schools usually required uniforms for all students. Julie and her siblings had two sets of uniforms each: one to wear, one to wash. If they wanted to pursue higher education, many of the opportunities were rooted in Manila. This attracted many students throughout the Philippines to seek out new opportunities outside of small-town province life, which became an integral factor within Julie and Ding’s future immigration journeys. 

Ding and his siblings were considered upper-class within the Philippines, and all attended some of the top ten universities in the Philippines. This harshly contrasted with Lola Julie’s upbringing, although they grew up in the same province. However, Ding and his siblings still had similar educational experiences to Julie. They were put in Catholic school from elementary to high school, were required to wear uniforms, learned English, and grew up around the same cohort of people throughout the years. 

Although there were socioeconomic differences between both of their families, it was common throughout the Philippines to have certain amenities. Having at least two helpers within a household was common in both of their experiences growing up in their households, and for many of their classmates, too. The helpers would do basic domestic tasks, like washing, drying, and folding the laundry, or cooking for the family they worked for. 

Lola Julie and Ding both met at Sacred Heart College in Quezon and got married soon after. Ding pursued a chemical engineering degree, and Lola Julie pursued English. Returning to Baguio post-marriage, they had three daughters: Mary, Cindy, and Maureen. In 1976, Lolo Ding received a work offer in Indiana, United States. Around the same time, Tita Nans was working in New York City as a nurse. Tita Nans was a relative on Ding’s side and was around his age at the time. She was part of the majority of the family that lived in the United States. In 1976, Ding and a couple of my titas still in the Philippines travelled to New York City, rather than Indiana, to live with Tita Nans. 

Their immigration process started with Tita Nans petitioning their process. The available port of entry at the time was through Alaska, and it took them a few days to get their visa processed there. Once they were legally allowed to enter and live in the country, they moved to New York City. Needing more space to accommodate the family, Tita Nans decided to buy a house in Flatbush. After housing was secured for Lolo Ding and the titas, Lola Julie and her daughters used the same port of entry in Alaska and moved into Flatbush in 1977. This fulfilled Julie and Ding’s long-term goal of visiting and thriving in America. 

The Red House in Flatbush was bought for my family in 1976. After Julie and Ding’s first three daughters moved into the Red House, the house grew extremely lively. After moving into the Red House, Julie and Ding had five more children. On the second floor, all of Julie and Ding’s children shared the same room. The titas shared the room down the hall, and it was the same system for each section of the family on the first floor and basement. Although the space was very packed, the family still made time to celebrate Christmas and invite a lot of people over. "We stayed in the big house... that is the home base for all of us." During the warmer months, you'd find the family out in the backyard with a karaoke machine, a trampoline, classic white lawn chairs, and a BBQ grill. Similarly to life in the Philippines, maintaining the traditional Filipino familial culture of prioritizing family over all else was an anchor for comfort within New York City. 

Maintaining this cultural bubble within New York meant finding ways to access and incorporate traditional Filipino foods within their diet. The family shopped at local grocery stores for necessities, like milk and chicken, but most groceries didn't stock Filipino pantry staples. To access more Asian-centered foods, Tita Margie and Tita Irene planted a garden in the backyard of the Red House with the same vegetables they'd grown back in Baguio. Long green beans, bitter melon, and Japanese eggplants were staples in their garden. The entire household contributed to keeping the garden tidy and healthy, but Maureen was especially invested in gardening. 

Although she has no recollection of the Philippines, Maureen and her sisters felt deeply attached to the communal lifestyle in the Red House. Maureen's favorite memories were picking fruits with Tita Irene when it was harvesting time, and eating strawberries and any edible flowers that grew in the vicinity. After harvesting and washing the fruits and vegetables in the backyard, they would cook classic Filipino dishes, ranging from chicken adobo to panakbut, a Filipino vegetable stew. 

For Maureen’s younger siblings, Michelle and Matthew and Melisa, American fast food was slowly incorporated into their diet. Ding would walk with them to the local McDonald's and order a Big Breakfast Meal, but the siblings would typically eat the hash browns that accompanied it. Still, their palates were rooted in Filipino food, rather than relying on American staples like Kraft Mac and Cheese and cans of Chef Boyardee. As the siblings explored a multitude of cultures outside of their bubble and slowly scattered to travel the world as adults, many of them still turned to Filipino food as their comfort food. As Melisa told me, “I think food plays a huge part in heritage. I think it plays a huge part in how you identify.” 

While acclimating to an unfamiliar environment in New York, religion was an anchor and a source of comfort. For the siblings, Catholic values became a moral compass for understanding how to interact with others in their communities. Verses and lessons from the Bible, such as treating your neighbor as you treat yourself [Matthew 22:39] became integral in understanding other families within the neighborhood. Although many people in the area kept to themself, the Red House family grew close connections with their immediate neighbors and within the church. Michelle, Melisa, and Julie would “make sandwiches for the homeless and rosaries on Saturdays,” which solidified their presence within the church scene. When Julie became a substitute teacher at her children’s elementary school, she also stepped into an important community role. Recalling Julie's status as a trustworthy figure for children within the community, Michelle remembers how, “a lot of children from school went back home [with us to the Red House] and picked them up from the Red House. Everyone knew her [Julie] and knew us.” 

Melisa also reflected on Julie's role as a teacher in her own oral history: 

“So they knew a different side of her, right, then they saw her as a teacher. One day, they saw her as our substitute teacher. So, it was even more familiar with her. It wasn't just, oh, that's whatever, like, 'That's Miss M.' That was also like a respect, like a respect, like a teacher's aide, as well as a church, right? She was a Eucharistic minister, right? So she was there all the time. We were there Saturday, 5 PM, all the time. Everyone knew her. The priest knew her. Miss Mueller knew her. I know you didn't know her. I think she was the director of the directory, like the church side of things. 

And I think it was a really great way for us to also feel welcomed. You also always had someone saying good morning to you or smiling at you, and I think that brings it breeds community, right? It breeds the sense of we belong here, right? We are a family. We might not look the same, we might not eat the same food. We might not speak the same language all the time, but I see them on Sunday, Saturday night, at church, right? And I think that did help. I think growing up, I think I did feel like — again, I think the community is always big. And I think that the church played a huge part in it. And I think that also resonates with being Filipino, right? I think the Catholic religion is probably the greatest value that a lot of Filipinos — maybe not all, but the majority of — a majority of Filipinos that even that, I know they're all Catholic. So I think that's always something that you can have in common.”

Outside of school, the siblings and their friends from school and on the block would play together. The friendships they developed within the vicinity of the Red House were very different from how those same friendships might look today, in large part because of the 1980s' relative independence from technology. Melisa remembers the days they spent outside with friends, saying, "I think it's very different nowadays, just because social media is so relevant. Back then, we actually played outside, right? We went over each other's houses, we talked on the phone, right? It wasn't even texting.” This limited many of the siblings' views on how they understood other cultures, since they had no external references or exposure beyond their own personal experiences. No sleeping over at other houses and wearing shoes inside the household were oddities to living in the Red House, an extremely Filipino-centered household. Although at the time, it wasn’t a jarring detail for many of the siblings, they would learn in retrospect that it was specific to being Filipino.  

Even as they found community within the neighborhood,  my family still felt stark culture shocks from within the Red House. In the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of the neighborhood around them in Flatbush was composed mainly of Caribbean and White families. Other than their immediate neighbors, the families in the Red House didn’t venture out much other than going to school and to church. 

Julie and Ding’s children attended St. Vincent Ferrer Parish and School in Flatbush for elementary school. St. Vincent Ferrer provided a similar educational structure as in the Philippines. The school required uniforms, and nearby families enrolled their children into St. Vincent’s from elementary through middle school. Like many of the siblings, Michelle referred to her family dynamic in Flatbush, and especially at St. Vincent's, as a “bubble.” As the only Asian family within a primarily White-turned-Caribbean neighborhood, the siblings leaned on each other for familiarity. They chose high schools and colleges nearby, so they could stay in close proximity to one another.

The family spoke a mix of Tag-lish, known as Tagalog-English, and Illocano. Although Tagalog was the primary language within the household, it was hard to use when assimilating into other parts of the community. This language barrier was especially difficult to navigate within the siblings' school life. For Cindy, she would have trouble understanding her teacher’s instructions and classmates’ conversations. As a way to facilitate their assimilation into American culture, Julie limited Cindy and her siblings from speaking Tagalog, and strictly enforced speaking English.  

Melisa told me, “Growing up, you don't realize race. I think you don't recognize that. I think you're more focused more on kids your age, right? I think maybe up until, I don't know, fourth grade, fifth grade. So when I was, what, 12, I think prior to that, I think you were just more focused on, like, camaraderie and having fun.” Learning English allowed the siblings to understand these playtimes on a deeper level, helping them to engage more deeply with their academic and social communities later on in life.  

Many of the siblings attended school near Midwood, rooted in familiarity with the area and proximity to family. Mary and Mark attended Midwood High School, while Cindy and Michelle attended Edward R. Murrow High School, and Maureen studied in Bay Ridge. The bubble that they'd been raised in in the Red House had grounded them in something important; through incorporating traditional Filipino foods, family relationships, and religious values, they stepped into the broader world with a firm foundation for their own Filipino identities.

It's difficult to now comprehend just how jarring of a transition it was for the siblings to leave the neighborhood for high school, then later for college. Going from being a part of a class size of 22 people to a school with 6,000 students, like Midwood, felt like a different universe for them. The bubble suddenly popped, and exposed them to a multitude of other cultural values, ethnicities, and opinions. Below are two special stories extracted from the oral histories I conducted with Melisa and Michelle that detail their high school and identity journeys.

Melisa

Melisa went to the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Bay Ridge. The distance alone from Flatbush to Bay Ridge was another factor in her feeling alienated and vulnerable in this new environment. But many of the siblings talked with people who had roots in the neighborhood, such as each other since junior high or someone whose mom’s friend’s child went to that school. Unlike Midwood High School, Telecommunications was a smaller school and a more gradual change. In socializing, Melisa discovered a love for volleyball that would influence the majority of her four years in high school. At Telecommunications, she was exposed to many different nationalities, including many Hispanic students. She recalls, “One kid in my class who was Puerto Rican, but when I went to Bay Ridge, everyone was Puerto Rican. Maybe the first time I ever even met a Dominican person, right? Like it was that, or different, even that different Latin nationalities, it was even that.” 

“I think if I had Filipino friends, then I would feel like, oh, man, I'm missing something. But all my friends spoke English. But what I did realize was, then, when they spoke to their parents, right? They were speaking in Spanish, they were speaking in Chinese or Mandarin. They were speaking in their native language. And I thought then it was like remnants, maybe in high school, but I think then in college, it was when I took a — I forget the name of it, but it was like a Social Sciences class, and I remember it was big on exactly kind of what we're talking about, but more worldly. And a lot of people had experiences of a lot of this. Those experiences were, oh well, speaking the language, or going back to our hometown, our native country, and then I didn't — [I had] never even been to the Philippines, right? So I think slowly, as I got older in college, I was like, I think I'm missing a huge piece of knowing my heritage more, right? Not only the language, it's going to see the country, right, experiencing Filipinos that are not in our family. And I think it was still hard, right? I think it was still hard. I think in Brooklyn, it still didn't exist, right? You had to go out to Queens, you had to go out to Jersey. You had to know of other people. It wasn't walking down the street, you see another Filipino person."

As she grew and worked through this understanding of “missing” parts of her identity, Melisa's understanding of the culture around her expanded through music. Growing up in the urban culture of New York City, she had exposure to several different music styles: 

“Whether it's hip hop, it's rap, it's R&B, I think it's what's around you, right? I think that's why it's so important, the environment you grow up in, because it has a lasting effect on you. Now it's easier to get explore different genres and and have you have that access. But back in the day, you did it, right, internet was very, I think in the internet, I think was in college when it was it was more popular, but growing up, it was literally what's around you, right? If there's a CD, or if there's a tape at Don Flatbush, they weren't selling country, right? They weren't playing country music, right? They were playing Jay Z, they were playing Aaliyah. So then naturally, you gravitate towards that, right? I think it's only when you then go outside of it. So then, now, when I'm in Telecommunications, now I hear Spanish music. Oh, that's different, right? So you were kind of like in your own bubble back then.”  

“Learning about other cultures, learning about Guyana, learning about my best friend. She was from down South. There she was from Georgia or North Carolina. So like, learning about even that, right, geography of things. We didn't really travel growing up, right? So learning that, like how people migrate from different states, and how Brooklyn really is a melting pot. So I think also my role in other people's lives mattered, right? Because I think they can also say, 'Oh yeah, I had a Filipino best friend growing up,' right? I learned more about them. I learned about lumpia, right? I learned that whenever her family is huge, they're real Catholic. So I think that also plays a big part even in my reality, right? Being the outsider wasn't always fun, for lack of better words. It wasn't always the most comfortable. But I think it helped in maybe even communicating or shaping who I am as a person, knowing that you're not always — you don't always look like your neighbor, but that doesn't make you different.”

Melisa explored and connected in the Flatbush community through working at Foot Locker. At 16 years old, she recalls getting her working papers and applying to the local Foot Locker location that opened on Flatbush Avenue. As she walked up with Michelle to Foot Locker, she remembered seeing a long line in front of the store, which she later found out was people applying for a job at the store. George, the store manager, questioned Melisa on her job experience and reliability. Her proximity to the Foot Locker, only a block away from the Red House, and her ability to quickly learn about the shoe business paved the way for Melisa to secure a job there. She had “always had an affinity for sneakers,” so Foot Locker wasn’t too far from her interests. “I literally read the bottle. And I was like, okay, here, whatever, blah blah. And I literally was just reading as I was going, but I was smiling, and I was like, holding it. And he was like, 'Okay, you're hired. When can you start?' And I was just like, wait, what? I'm like, What do you mean? I'm hired? He's like, 'Yeah, you're hired.'" After she got hired, she developed close relationships with her neighbors and people at her school, finding a unique social currency in being the point person for upcoming sneaker drops at Foot Locker. 

After college, she travelled internationally and found a home miles and continents away from her bubble in Flatbush. As she now lives relatively close to New York in a prominent Filipino community, she reminisces on her childhood experiences and reflects on how language was regarded in her family growing up. She offered this thought in retrospect: “I think that [not learning Tagalog] was maybe a big miss, but I don't think that was their intention for it to be a negative. I think their intention was for their family, like for us, to grow up and feel and assimilate…to American culture.”

Michelle

As a student at Edward R. Murrow, Michelle felt shocked “that other people knew my culture and foods I was eating, and the traditions we had. In grade school, we didn’t talk about race at all. In high school, I saw one girl and asked if she was Filipino and asked about where she was from and if she ate certain foods, and she was Cambodian. We look like each other, but we’re from different cultures. That’s where I explored my culture and other Asian cultures, and [about people who] don’t practice Christianity. We had social science and theology classes that taught different ideals from Catholic schools.” 

During high school, Michelle felt completely immersed within Filipino culture, compared to her siblings. She didn’t necessarily differentiate herself from other ethnicities around her, like her Haitian or Jamaican classmates. Around this time, Michelle experienced her first interaction with stereotypes. Within her global studies and math classes, her teachers would invoke stereotypes. This was unexpected, as she didn’t expect to experience this from an authority figure. She felt that the Asians in her school were being lumped into stereotypes, like the trope that "all Asians were good at math." Reflecting on her own experiences living in the Red House and conversing with other Asian students in her school, she felt like the Asian community chose not speak about it as a collective. Instead, she noted, “We just don’t speak about it and expect it to go away on its own, and we aren’t super emotional. It’s very focused on objective goals measured by metrics, rather than ruled by emotions and embracing sensitive areas of life.” Feeling heavy social and academic pressure, she eventually dropped out to pursue her GED. 

After getting her GED, her then-boyfriend needed to move to Colorado after a death in his family, and they decided to break up to avoid long distance. “He asked me to visit him to see how beautiful Colorado was, so I planned a trip for a week. He convinced me to stay by saying he will pay for my culinary school tuition. So I stayed. I think I was like 19 or 20 at the time. His grandmother was Korean and she didn't like me very much. Unfortunately, a lot of East Asians look down on South East Asians. However, she taught me how to cook Korean food, since she expected me to cook for her grandson. They made fun of the way I used chopsticks, since Filipinos don't really use them. They teased me about eating with my hands and also commented on the way the Filipino food smelled, since we use a lot of fish sauce and vinegar. I love it, though. I never got criticized by my non-Asian friends about Filipino food culture; just met with curiosity. 

The main Asian diaspora in Denver at the time were Vietnamese. At the time, there were a lot of veterans [men who were 40 years and older] from the Vietnam War, so sometimes I felt this tension. Again, never, ever experiencing this in NYC. I worked at an upscale supermarket, I think Erewhon, and a lot of the customers were white and spoke to me as if English wasn't my native language. I could see how it would feel insulting to people, but I took it more as them being ignorant, as opposed to them trying to insult me. I absolutely never ever felt that way in NYC before, because it's so normal to see different races everywhere. I think moving out of NYC and eventually out of the country has made me want to connect to my Filipino and American heritage more than ever, because I want to crush the stereotypes that really create the unnecessary divide between us all. 

With customers, there was a possibility that I would never see them again. With teachers, they were authoritative figures in my life whom I had to see every day as a teenager. So it was a bit different. One teacher commented on my hair, saying she was surprised because all Asian people have oily hair. In NYC, I also worked at a supermarket when I was in college. Gourmet Garage. I don't know if it's still around anymore, but I guess it's like a more upscale Trader Joe's. There, even customers were asking me about Asian meal ideas, so my culture seemed like it was more embraced.”

Michelle also pursued a nail license in 2008. On her journey, “Some people discouraged me from doing it. One of them was my boyfriend at the time, who was Trinidadian. He said I would fit into the Asian stereotypes. Meanwhile, I already had a great job. I would only do this so I could do my own nails and get better prices for my nail supplies. I didn't want to work as a nail tech, but my teacher convinced me to work at an upscale nail salon in Fort Greene, which was actually Black-owned. I did it on the weekends. Even though it was upscale, people still treated me like I was a second-class citizen, even though I was probably earning more than my clients earned in my day job. I never really disclosed that to them. I just enjoyed practicing and building my skills and hearing the ‘tea,’ because many of them treated me like their therapist, too.” 

After Colorado, Michelle made the decision to move to Sweden and eventually found a job within the hospitality industry. When talking with me, Michelle highlighted the difference in privilege that Americans have when traveling abroad. In Sweden, she had frequent experiences where she would get judged by locals for having tanner skin and Filipino features, as for many of the immigrants in Sweden. “I noticed also that here in Sweden, many white Americans always seem to comment on how good I speak English. I never hear any of my white colleagues get the same 'compliment,' though. In the beginning, I used to let them know that I'm also American, but then I just took the compliment as is and said 'Thank you.' I don't think they have any ill intentions, but I will say, it feels like the soft bigotry of low expectations based only on my appearance. Here, many Filipinas and Thai women have a reputation of being young and marrying old Swedish men to save them from the 'poverty'-ridden 'Third World' countries."

Experiencing these microaggressions on a daily basis, combined with her past experiences living in NYC, solidified Michelle's identity as both American and Filipino, since being American carried a hefty privilege and status apart from embracing and identifying herself as only Filipino. “I wanted to fit in growing up, but now realize the importance of having ethnic features later on. I realize my ancestors probably had this face; it feels like a hand-me-down. It feels like a gift you have to accept.”

TKTK