Welcome to #PUNTOTalks, our monthly podcast/chikahan series featuring the voices of Filipinos from the diaspora. This series will focus on global Pinoys who embody fascinating intersections in their own identities and experiences.
Meet Michi Trota!
Michi is a storyteller and journalist from Chicago. She is an incredible writer and editor who is well-known in sci-fi circles – having won the Hugo Award five times for her work on the groundbreaking Uncanny Magazine. She is the first Filipinx to win a Hugo Award – widely considered to be the most prestigious award in science fiction. She also performs as a fire spinner in her spare time!
I met Michi three years ago when she was working as senior editor of Prism. We quickly bonded over our common experience as Filipino-American writers and leaders in the storytelling/advocacy spaces.
I recently caught up with Michi after she took a life-changing trip back to the Philippines for the first time since her early teens. She was part of the 2022 cohort of the annual FYLPRO immersion program, which encourages Filipino-American leaders to reconnect with their roots and learn more about the Philippines through a highly structured and intentional series of cultural experiences.
In this latest episode, Michi and I talk about her unique experiences with the FYLPRO program, the Filipino brain drain, and the importance of centering Filipino stories and talent from the Philippines.
Check it out! You can also read a transcript of our convo below.
Maki:
We’ll just jump right into it. This is a casual conversation.
I saw that you went back home to the Philippines and you had a really enriching, amazing, challenging, and once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Tell me more about that, and why did you decide to do it?
Michi:
Well, I haven’t been back to the Philippines since I was 13 years old, so it has been quite some time. And that is coming up to just about 12 years now. I'm sorry, it’s 32, because I can do the math. <laughs>
So, this would actually be the first trip to the Philippines that I have taken as an autonomous adult. My husband wasn't able to come with me because of our vacation times, schedules, and the cost of the flight.
I had a goal of wanting to revisit the Philippines before I turned 45, which I just slid under the wire. I turned 45 at the end of January.
Maki:
Nice. Congrats!
Michi:
It's weird but people ask me or they refer to it as going back home because the Philippines is not my home. Chicago is my home; I was born in the western suburbs, I grew up for the first 14 years of my life in Lombard, just outside of Chicago. I'm a Chicago person, so I will never call the suburbs Chicago. You don't do that.
It wasn't a “going home” experience. It was as much of an experience of wanting to reconnect with what being Filipino means to me. What that means for me as a member of the American diaspora and someone who has benefited from a lifetime of upbringing in a wealthy Western nation whose resources have come at the expense of countries like the Philippines.
So, it was something that I had been talking about with my therapist, in the month between getting the acceptance for the program and actually taking off. And that was a very, very fast month.
Maki:
Yeah.
Michi:
You know, I have a tendency to avoid difficult feelings and instead do the whole “bottle it up and just get through it!” And then you know, “I'll take it out and look at it later!”
Which… I never take it out and look at it.
Maki:
Very Filipino. Mm-hmm.
Michi:
<laughs> So I’ve been told! Filipinos don't do the stereotypical Asian stoicism.
But I feel like a lot of the folks I remember growing up around, they would avoid difficult emotional interactions and emotional processing through humor, socialization, and taking care of us. So it's been very interesting.
Like, one of my best friends is Singaporean and she and I have talked about how much we've related to Star Trek characters and she was always like, “Yeah, I really like Spock”. You know, he had the whole control of his emotions, but we also understand that there was a lot of this stereotyping of that Asian stoicism in Spock. And while I understood that stoicism wasn't the same form of emotional repression that I remember seeing in a lot of Filipino communities that I had been in.
I decided to apply to the program because I had the good fortune of being invited by one of the organizers of the program. It's a group called FYLPRO. It's the Filipino Young Leaders Program.
I would highly recommend folks look into joining, since they are specifically within this new cycle of wanting to do more outreach and encourage more participation from folks who are not from the traditional enclaves or Filipino communities. The Midwest, the Southwest, the mountain regions. Those who are in fields other than business, medicine, law, and government.
Maki:
We're here. <laughs>
Michi:
Yes, we're here. <laughs> I had been invited by FYLPRO to take part in an event that they were doing in Chicago. They were inviting professional Filipino women to come and talk about basically being centers of power in their fields and creating space for themselves and other Filipinos.
I was the only one with an artistic background who was participating. I mean, it was very impressive.
Maki:
Wow!
Michi:
Yeah, a bunch of folks. There was a venture capitalist. The first Filipino judge in the Chicago Northern suburbs – she's a judge in Evanston. I believe there was another lawyer.
And I think the person who was moderating was a Filipina who works in journalism. Actually, as it turns out, she lives in my neighborhood. I had no idea! <laughs>
Maki:
Small world, Filipinos!
Michi:
Yeah, small world. I wondered how they had gotten my name.
It turns out that someone whom I had worked with was part of a group called Filipino Kitchen. They had run this food festival in Chicago called the Kultura Festival. It was celebrating Filipino food and culture in one of the Chicago neighborhoods.
I think they did the event for like three or four years. It was a huge undertaking and it got much bigger. More attention than they thought, which was great and I had become friends with the organizers.
They had invited me to run a discussion panel with some other Filipino science fiction and fantasy creators and fans to talk about how a genre that fiction has integrated with our identities as Filipinos – and how we use those stories to work through understanding our political and personal identities. I mean, it was really, really great!
Maki:
Fascinating!
Michi:
Yeah, one of the folks whom I had come into contact with as a volunteer had basically remembered my name, and when FYLPRO was putting this together, he was like: “Okay, you have all these really amazing women. You need to have Michi in there because she's bringing a creative background.”
That’s something that we need to make sure that is showcased as a realistic future that Filipinos can carve out for themselves.
Maki:
That's great! That's so good.
Michi:
Yeah. Mark is going to play this down forever, but I owe him big time because that brought me into contact with FYLPRO’s current president. Her name's Leezel Tanglao. She is currently the digital editor-in-chief for the Dallas Morning News.
I really was impressed with her vision and her understanding of some of the struggles facing the Filipino-American community from within, and from some of the things that we struggle with amongst ourselves.
When I found out that they were running this immersion program again for the first time in two years since the pandemic – I believe they had done eight iterations of the program previously – and this was going to be sort of a transitional year where previous programs had been primarily run by the Philippine Consulate.
Increasingly, the Ayala Foundation in the Philippines was also taking up management of the program. At this point, Ayala was mainly driving the bus in terms of putting together the events and figuring out what our schedule was, and making the logistical arrangements.
As of next year, FYLPRO will be doing that 100%, because they now have the financial capability to do so. The Philippine Consulate and Ayala Foundation will still be providing support because they are integral to making the program work, but the direction, shape, and candidates who are chosen in the following years will be completely under FYLPRO’s jurisdiction.
Maki:
That's amazing, you can set your own agenda.
Michi:
Leezel did some really important things this year. She had pushed for the age limit to be moved up to 45.
Maki:
Oh, wow. That's great!
Michi:
Instead of the early forties. And her argument is that when you start entering your forties is when a lot of us start entering a different – but no less crucial – phase of our careers and developing perspectives as professionals that we just are not going to have as 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds.
So having a more well-rounded group of folks in terms of age, ability, or background. That's something that they're definitely prioritizing in years moving forward. And this year, I was the only one from the Midwest.
Maki:
Oh, wow. Not many of us here. <laughs>
Michi:
Well, no, it's okay. But I definitely am going to be spending time within the next year volunteering with FYLPRO – specifically around outreach. And like, tracking demographics which we don't have.
Maki:
Yes, please.
Michi:
The experience in the program has been very formative in getting me to think about how I want to prioritize my time. What are the things that I really want to do that are my own – versus where can I help out within a leadership capacity.
Because not only is that a huge drain on one's time; it is also a thing that we really need to ask ourselves, particularly to those of us who are hitting middle-age and older. Whether or not we need to be the ones who are leading all the time. We can't assume that just because we have a certain amount of experience –we're the best ones to lead, and we're the only options.
Sometimes, you're not going to find the people who are best in those leadership roles without taking a chance on folks who are not you, who are not in your age group, who may be younger, or who might be coming into this with a different set of perspectives and skill sets that you wouldn't immediately think would be appropriate for the role.
But it turns out: all they needed was the opportunity. Right?
Maki:
Absolutely, yeah.
Michi:
I at least want to think about how burnout is something that happens, because we don't acknowledge that it's okay for us to not be necessary for everything.
Maki:
Yeah. That's really big in nonprofit work as well. It really should be big everywhere, but especially in fields where you're trying to make your community a better place.
Because you feel like you constantly need to be doing and doing and doing. And I feel like, coming from the Philippines and being raised Filipino, they talk about love languages, right?
Michi:
What is their love language? <laughs>
Maki:
Doing (something for someone) is a love language, and I know a lot of Filipinos have that love language.
Michi:
Yeah. I mean, if we're going to use some of the parlance of American style – you know, put an American lens on it – one thing that we can benefit from is that Filipino spaces are taking the idea of self-care and the idea of “doing” as a love language and applying it to ourselves.
Maki:
Yeah, I love that. A lens of self-care.
Michi:
Right? Like, yeah, of course.
I love my parents. My mom particularly was showing how much she loved and valued people by cooking for them, sewing things, basically doing things for them. And that is absolutely a habit that I picked up.
This is not something that I think is a bad thing, but I think that when you are raised with both the encouragement that comes within Filipino communities: to be someone who is selfless, to put your community first, to put your family first, and some of it rooted in the concept of utang (being in debt to someone) – when you overlay the pressures of capitalism on top of that, the pressure to be productive, to what you do rather than who you are –
Maki:
Ding ding ding!
Michi:
I don't think I would've been able to really articulate that until after the trip.
Maki:
Tell me more about that. How long was it for?
Michi:
The program itself was a week, and then I stayed an extra week. So I would say the entire trip was roughly about two and a half weeks, that's a good time.
I acknowledge the physical limitations of being in my forties, which means I'm not going to do the dumb thing where I am gonna force myself to get on a plane from Chicago to L.A. and then on the same day L.A. to Manila – I’m not gonna do that.
I was like, ‘Nope, I'm gonna break’. <laughs> I'm flying into L.A. and that's my stop for the day. I stayed overnight in a hotel and then was able to get to LAX, which was right next to the hotel very easily the next day.
<laughs> This should have been an indication of what reframing of perspectives this trip was going to be. When I got to LAX to check in on Philippine Airlines, tugging along my one giant suitcase, and then I had the roller suitcase that I would take on the plane and a carry-on overnight bag…
I'm rolling the suitcase like, ‘Oh my God, this is so much. I can't remember the last time I took this much luggage just for me on a plane.’
And when I get in line, I see everybody there with their multiple carts of giant boxes of pasalubong.
Maki:
<laughs> Yes. It's all the things!
Michi:
Actually, all of this!
You know, people with multiple giant suitcases, and then when I get up to the check-out counter, the flight attendants are like: “Is that all you’re checking in? You're only checking one bag?”
I'm like, “Okay, look.”
Well, that is the opposite reaction. <laughs>.
Maki:
That's hilarious! Oh my gosh.
Michi:
I should have known that going from LA to Manila directly is almost 14 hours. <laughs> I don't think I can do that in coach again.
Maki:
I've never taken that flight. I usually transit in Taipei or Tokyo, one of those places.
Michi:
No, it’s long though.
Maki:
I know, it makes it longer. It's like the whole trip becomes 22 hours at least. <laughs>
Michi:
Yeah. No, I think next time, if you’re gonna do this in coach again, it's going to be: Chicago to L.A., L.A. to Hawaii, and then Hawaii to Manila, because Hawaii to Manila is eight hours, and I can do eight hours.
Maki:
Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay.
Michi:
It's five hours from LA to Honolulu. And that's fine.
This is the most international travel that I've done in a year (in 2022). Because in April, my husband and I went to Italy for the first time. We were getting married in Florence.
Maki:
Wow. Oh my gosh.
Michi:
Um, definitely go in the spring or the fall.Do not go in the summer, you will get baked in some way.
Maki:
Lots of Filipinos there, too. In Florence. <laughs>
Michi:
I had no idea! We walked in and the person who was managing the Airbnb property where we stayed was Filipino.
Maki:
No way.
Michi:
He walked up to let us in through the door, and he looked at me and was like, “Pinoy?” I'm like, “Yeah!” <laughs>
And then I ended up buying some really lovely pashminas from a Filipina running one of the stalls in one of the outdoor marketplaces.
Maki:
Oh, wow.
Michi:
She was just like: “Oh wait. You're Filipino. I'm gonna give you another discount.”
Maki:
<laughs> That's the beauty of the diaspora.
Michi:
And my husband was sitting here and laughing at me. He's like, “So y’all don't know each other, right?” I'm like, “Hush. Nobody should know!” <laughs>
But yeah, I was in Mexico for a week with two very good girlfriends, and doing that right before the Philippines was also an interesting reminder of how prevalent and obvious the marks of Spanish colonialism are. Particularly in architecture.
Maki:
Mm-hmm.
Michi:
Because the previous times that I'd been to Mexico and to Costa Rica, I looked around at the architecture and I’m like: You know, this feels like when I was a kid driving, going out of Manila to visit grandma, or my lola.
Maki:
Yeah. Where is your family from in the Philippines?
Michi:
<laughs> So I did not know until recently that my maternal family is mostly from Iloilo.
Maki:
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
Michi:
Apparently, I kept running into [Ilonggo] people everywhere!
Maki:
Visayans represent! <laughs>
Michi:
I was not prepared for how often the “Where is your family from?” question would come up in the Philippines. Yeah.
It is absolutely not the “Where are you from?” question that we get here in the States, right?
Maki:
No. Like which region of the Philippines are you from?
Michi:
Yeah. Which region are you from?
Are we cousins? You know, we're cousins if we're from the same region.
I don't speak Ilonggo at all, which made communication with my family when I was little limited. I had not seen that maternal family in a very, very long time. I actually only met my aunt and one of her daughters, and this aunt was first cousin to my mother and they're roughly around the same age.
For context, my mom died when it was just before my 12th birthday. She had multiple sclerosis, so she ended up dying from complications due to pneumonia because of what MS does to your immune system. And she had pretty much been bedridden for the last three to four years of her life. She was 21 years younger than my tatay (dad), and his family is from Mindanao (the southern region of the Philippines).
Maki:
Oh, that's right. You did say that the last time we spoke.
Michi:
Yeah, and Mindanao has actually never been fully colonized by anybody.
Maki:
Especially its southernmost regions. <laughs>
Michi:
Yeah. We were just like: I don't think we recognize the Philippine government! <laughs>
Maki:
Yeah, we have our own autonomous region and we have our own customs.
Michi:
Yeah, and it's like: “Oh, my dad came from the f**k around and find out!” region in the Philippines. That kind of makes sense, really.
Maki:
Literally.
Michi:
So, most of the time we spent on the program was in Metro Manila. The Quezon City Area. We were staying in Makati specifically.
Maki:
Makati is the most accessible. <laughs>
Michi:
I totally understood why we were there. This feels not all that different from a metropolitan U.S. city.
Maki:
It feels like California. When you walk around.
Michi:
Yeah, it does.
I also had not realized just how extensive the Ayalas were in the Philippines. The Ayala Foundation did such a fantastic job, by the way, of putting this program together. We were exhausted.
In future iterations, I think it would be great to have a light day in the middle of the week. <laughs>
Maki:
Like a chill, self-care day. <laughs>
Michi:
Yeah, or at least have time to process each day in whatever way works best for people. The introverts have space to go and decompress by themselves, and the folks who decompress better by processing around others can have a space.
There's Ayala Avenue; there's the Ayala Triangle; and there's the Ayala Museum. There's the Ayala Foundation. And I passed these housing complexes called Ayala Land.
You know, some of the local guides said they go all the way back to some of the original Spanish colonial families.
Maki:
Yeah. Like. one of the oldest.
Michi:
If this was Gotham City, they'd be the Wayne family.
Maki:
Yeah. <laughs>
Michi:
Except wealthier. <laughs>
Everything has to go through a nerd lens with me. That's how I process.
I think we had a good mix of people among the 15 members of this cohort. Age ranges were mid-twenties to mid-forties.
Maki:
Yeah, a good span.
Michi:
The oldest person was 45, and almost half of the cohort was in their forties.
Yeah, it was really interesting. I think only one person within the over-40 cohort was not a woman.
As far as I know, the gender spread was very binary among this cohort. It looked like we had pretty much roughly 50-50. I think we had seven women and eight men – it could be the reverse. I can't remember quite exactly.
There was a very large spread of professions. One of the cohort members was Emmy Award winner and director Michele Josue. She had done the documentary about Matthew Shepard that won the Emmy.
Maki:
Oh, wow. Oh my gosh.
Michi:
I still have to watch it, but she also did the docu-series on Netflix about the dancing inmates in jails in the Philippines.
Maki:
I saw that! Oh my God, I need to actually watch the rest of it, but I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Michi:
That's Michelle's work. She’s amazing.
There was another woman from Florida who is an editorial photographer who runs her own modeling agency that focuses on folks of color.
Maki:
Oh, wow!
Michi:
Yeah, representing folks of color.
We had a couple of people who worked in government. There were three folks from the medical industry: a pediatrician who had transitioned to being a research doctor, an ER doctor, and a nurse practitioner who was pretty much the head of her educational department at Rutgers.
One of the things that I loved about this cohort is that everybody was very conscious about power dynamics.
I noticed that between the two male doctors, they were consciously making sure that the nurse practitioner was being treated as a colleague of theirs, not somehow lesser than because she's a woman and a nurse. She was asked just as much as the men were to act as a liaison to some of the speakers, particularly the speakers who were talking about medical issues in the Philippines.
It was really amazing to see this wide spread of folks who were all coming from very different backgrounds, some of whom it had been their first time in the Philippines. And some folks had been back before, but this was in a capacity that would allow them more opportunities to find ways to connect their professional work with folks in the Philippines and give back.
I know there were one or two people who were going to be staying much longer because they were looking at buying property and either setting up a business or some kind of a resort. A business that is focused on supporting and living in a respectful relationship with the local people and supporting local artisans and things like that.
It was wonderful being in a group of people where I'm like: “Oh, I feel like I am part of a very talented school of fish.” It was great. <laughs> Everybody was very supportive.
For me, what was a unique experience compared to my cohort members is that out of all of them, I was the one who had the least constant connection to family in the Philippines and exposure to the Filipino-American community.
Maki:
Yeah. Interesting.
Michi:
I think the context around my age is important for this. Because when I lost my parents in 1992, we did not have easy access to the internet yet.
We did not have social media contact with family in the Philippines. I was mostly reliant on my parents and then the family who took us in as our legal guardians, which again, I have many complicated feelings about the concept of utang. <laughs>.
After my parents died and I graduated high school, I pretty much moved up to Boston and where I had been going to college and just stayed there. I did not know how to find Filipino American communities in the places where I lived. And I had personal experiences in Filipino-majority communities in Chicago and other places that had left me feeling very wary about being in those kinds of spaces for a lot of reasons.
One of the things that I had to keep in mind while I was on this [FYLPRO] trip was that I knew I was going to be triggered. I'm specifically using that word. Through nobody's fault, it was just going to happen, because I was going to be reminded of very painful experiences that I've spent the better part of 30 years trying not to deal with.
I did not come to this trip with any sense of nostalgia. I would say instead of a sense of nostalgia or idealization of what the Philippines would look like, I feel like I was actually instead coming into it with a sense of wariness.
Maki:
Oh, wow.
Tell me more about that, because I feel like I’ve seen that in my personal context as well – specifically with stepfamily.
Michi:
Yeah. And well, the experiences that you and other folks have experienced – the thing where you go into a space and you are basically told that you're not Filipino enough by other Filipino Americans, by Filipinos from the motherland who are here.
I just remember my stepbrothers were being really shitty about the fact that I liked heavy metal music when I was a teenager. But you know, “Filipinos don't listen to that.” You know Kirk Hammett, the guitarist from Metallica is half-Filipino. Right?
Like, y'all know this, one of the most successful heavy metal bands. Okay. But fine.
Maki:
Very exclusionary. Yeah.
Michi:
We're going to ignore how all of you are appropriating Black and hip-hop culture all while simultaneously being super racist. We'll just leave that in the corner. All things that I wouldn't have been able to articulate at the time.
So I think when I say coming back to the Philippines as an adult and feeling more wary than nostalgic, I think it was also a better thing for me to come back at this time in my life when I was at this age. And I have had these experiences where I now have a much better grasp of language and concepts to describe the very confusing things that I had felt and tried to understand growing up.
Understanding the long, deeply-held effects of colonialism [by] the Spanish and the U.S., and the occupation of the islands by the Japanese military forces. That's not that far, not that long ago.
Understanding those contexts and what it means for me to be an American coming into a space where people may look like me, but the experiences are radically different, in part because the country that I'm a citizen of has relied on the exploitation and exportation of Philippine labor.
Maki:
Uh-huh.
Michi:
Labor, resources, talent, all of that. It's a very –
Maki:
Brain drain.
Michi:
Yeah. I think it's very uncomfortable and there is no solid answer.
I think about how we are supposed to square the fact that we – by growing up Filipino in America – experience discrimination, racism, othering…and in America, we're too brown to be considered American.
But when we go to the Philippines, it is often a feeling of we're too American to be Filipino. What is the term for those who go abroad and then come back? Balikbayan (returnee)?
Maki:
Balikbayan, yeah.
Michi:
Yeah. There is always going to be that marker of difference.
And on top of that is the inescapable fact that the education, lifestyle, and wealth that I have been able to acquire, wealth and resources, I've been able to acquire and enjoy as an American, is far and away from being accessible to the average Filipino worker.
Maki:
Did you all talk about some of these uncomfortable feelings?
Michi:
Yeah, I think we did.
Maki:
Were there the conversations specifically set up as part of the program that led to those?
Michi:
Not part of the program, not this time. It is something we have bookmarked for now. <laughs>
Maki:
Yeah, I was going to say. I mean, we're all about, like, decolonizing now.
Michi:
These were conversations that were definitely happening among the cohort in our downtime, over breakfast on the van rides, because Manila traffic is Manila traffic. No matter what you do. <laughs>
Maki:
You gotta talk!
Michi:
That should be 20 minutes. Well, it's gonna take you an hour.
So you're in the van with seven of your cohort mates and you’ve got nothing to do but talk. Right?
I don't know what it was like for folks who had that very strong and well-founded or well-rooted sense of their identity as being Filipino-American. If they had the same experience, their way of processing the very uncomfortable understanding…[if it] was different from mine.
I think coming into it with the sort of background that I have, it just made sense to me that this is going to be messy and uncomfortable because the entire experience of being Filipino American, for me, has been messy and uncomfortable without any clearly defined lines or any expectations of support, up until probably the last decade of my life.
And oddly enough, this lines up with when I became much more active in fandom, science fiction, and fantasy spaces, which were [already] having discussions about decolonization power and equity that the rest of mainstream culture is still dipping their toes into at the one-on-one level. Those one-on-one conversations were being had by writers and fans of speculative fiction over a decade ago.
Maki:
Right. I remember you telling me that the last time we spoke, yeah.
Michi:
Yeah.
Maki:
This was a long time coming. <laughs>
Michi:
Yeah. So, it felt very othering in a different way. To realize that even if I wanted to have this experience of going to the Philippines as coming back home, I'm finding where I really belong, this and that…
It's like, you cannot have that when you have the weight of colonialism and Western imperialism attached to your experiences. It’s just inescapable. And I don't think that is like a thing that we should carry around as a burden or … it’s something that’s okay for people to guilt us over as members of the diaspora.
Maki:
Absolutely. I so agree with that.
Michi:
Yeah. It is.
I do think that it means we have a specific responsibility to not only acknowledge the position and how the things that we have benefited from as Americans have come at the expense of folks back in the Philippines.
We have to acknowledge that, and that is something that should always shape our awareness and approach to how we want to build a relationship with the Philippines through ourselves as individuals; through ourselves as political actors.
I think that if we don't acknowledge that very sticky, complicated position that we are in, the chances for us to do more unintentional harm are much higher.
Maki:
Yeah, I actually love that you said that.
As someone who did grow up there and moved to the U.S. for college in her late teens, I have been the beneficiary of [the fact that] when you're back home – at least for me – the thing to do was to leave. <laughs>
The thing to do was to leave, and even when my mom left, she effectively raised me and my sister when she was working in Japan as a diplomat, and we were in the Philippines. And for her, it was always about getting better opportunities elsewhere – education, jobs.
It was that whole thing, and then I got here [to America], and I was like, oh, I'm just an international person. But then I actually ended up dating and eventually marrying an American, and then I was being forced to grapple with questions like —Wait. I’m brown in America. What does that mean? What are the histories behind that? What is colonialism?
That stuff is just like water to you that you're swimming in. When you're back home [in the Philippines], you're just like, Oh, yeah, of course, everything American is great. Of course, everything's Spanish is great.
Michi:
Yeah, those narratives are really intense.
Maki:
But then, [people back home] are starting to have more of these conversations. You know, the Black Lives Matter, George Floyd stuff. That was a thing back home. I was like, wow.
We also need to talk about this other stuff. Like 300 years of being in a convent and… <laughs>
Michi:
Anti-Blackness is one. American media is one of its biggest exports.
The narratives contained within that media, of things are “better” in the US. You want to live here. Basically: you want to give us your labor and capital for our benefit, instead of the benefit of the country of your ancestors, the country you currently call home.
And the ideas of anti-Blackness and xenophobia toward specific groups of immigrants. All of those things are still like: “Oh but you know, it’s like that in America. It’s not like that here [in the Philippines].”
Like, you're watching our media. And colorism is a thing that you can trace back to the Spanish. I mean, there's a reason why mestizo (mixed-blood) is such a complicated word.
Maki:
And it's not like that doesn't exist back home. It definitely exists.
It might be more classist back home, but there's definitely a skin color aspect to it. The Indigenous peoples of the Philippines are darker-skinned.
Michi:
It’s really interesting [with] the relationships in the South in particular. Like the trades coming in through a lot of the Muslim trade routes, having that interaction with Middle Eastern North African countries.
It makes a lot of sense. Depending on where the populations are mostly in an area of the Philippines that has been given a reputation of: Eh, you don't wanna mess with those uncivilized [and] rebellious folks. They're not willing to work for the betterment of the collective Filipino.
And it's like: Are you giving them any reason to? Having conversations about colonialism and its effects on the Philippines was definitely brought up, particularly in the meetings we had with business leaders.
Maki:
Wow! Yeah, Tell me more.
Michi:
It's very interesting to me. ‘Cause on one hand, when you see what things are like in the Philippines, you can clearly see the effects of what happens to a country when its resources: human labor and human talent are drained, stolen and funneled somewhere else. That makes it much harder for the Philippines to access the kind of technology and infrastructure and all of these things that we take for granted.
One thing that I hadn't thought about at all was how easily we can rely on and access credit in the United States. I had not thought of that at all when I was going around the Philippines. I had to realize really quickly that I can't rely on just bringing my cards, I actually have to have cash. Unless I'm paying for something in a hotel or a fancy restaurant, it’s very cash-based.
You really have to bring cash because most Filipinos don't have access to credit, through no fault of their own.
It's a very new thing I hadn't thought about, but I understand where a lot of the push to encourage folks of the diaspora to set up businesses in the Philippines: to buy property, to possibly consider moving to the Philippines and becoming a Filipino citizen or obtaining dual citizenship if that is a thing that is open to you.
I understand where it was coming from. It would be great if there are opportunities and support systems in place for folks of the diaspora who do want to come back or want to move to the Philippines and make that their home or integrate that as one of their homes.
I actually was able to articulate this within the cohort and feel that I was doing so in a safe space, but one of the things that I was trying to process – particularly on the second-to-last day (Thursday) – a lot of us were all fried at that point. <laughs>
Maki:
You're like, I can't do this anymore. Oh my God, stop! <laughs>
Michi:
From 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM, we're up early and out all day. I'm having work/business wear and makeup all day in the heat and humidity, and also having very emotional reactions to a lot of the things that I'm seeing and hearing.
I understand where a lot of these [propositions were coming from]. Things like, “Oh, we’re really interested in you and want you to come. We want you to consider being part of the Philippines more: whether it's moving here, opening a business, and we hope that it really doesn't matter where you go: you are Filipino no matter where you live”.
It would've been nice to hear that when I was a teenager feeling very, very alone. And these are absolutely the feelings of an angry and traumatized teenager, right?
Maki:
Yeah, absolutely.
Michi:
It's hard not to have and acknowledge the feeling of not giving a crap about me being Filipino – until suddenly, I had something that you wanted and that you think you can benefit from.
The metaphor that I shared with the cohort was like: my experience of being Filipino American – if I was going to describe it right now – would be feeling like at times you are the child of an abusive parent and an absent parent.
Where America is shitty to you. It is shitty to you unless you follow very specific rules.
Maki:
Absolutely. Model minority.
Michi:
Model minority, gaslit all to hell. Occasionally, you'll get a pat on the head for doing something, and you really live for that pat on the head.
But you know, at least in a way that's more predictable than the parent who has never been around and only suddenly shows up now that you have something that they want.
Maki:
Yeah. I think it's interesting that there is more of a push to leverage the diaspora now [from the Philippines]. I had not heard about that. It is very interesting to participate in nation-building [as someone from the diaspora].
But there's also inherent jealousy there. Inherent want.
I think it's interesting that this is becoming part of the system now, and that they are trying to encourage folks from the diaspora to rebuild the Philippines.
Michi:
At the very least: invest capital.
Maki:
Yeah. Invest capital.
Michi:
I actually agree that's not a bad idea.
Maki:
I think it's a great idea.
Michi:
But I don't know if folks in the Philippines – who are doing this for very good reasons and I think with very good intentions – realize the complicated feelings that can come for those of us in the diaspora with that kind of outreach, for various reasons.
And it also raises the question for me…
Again, I'm really appreciative of the fact that the official representatives from the Filipino associations that were involved with the program were willing to hear this. You know, the sort of question was like: ‘If you are doing this for us, for those of us who are from America, what kind of resources are you investing in making this kind of outreach to people who are in the Philippines already?’
Because our talent is not unique. Like, you cannot tell me that there aren't that many Filipino science fiction fantasy writers who are using their work to wrestle with questions of identity and colonialism. I can give you five names right here.
One of the reasons I stayed an extra week [in the Philippines] was so I could see my friends who were there. One who just published a second short story collection through Ateneo Press. It’s got a gorgeous gold-foiled cut cover; she got 500 copies printed, which I gather is on the higher end of an initial print run over there.
Maki:
I love that you bring that up. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Michi:
I worry that in the rush to court Filipinos who may feel disconnected from the Philippines because of our upbringing outside of the islands, it's unintentionally replicating that colonial pattern of valuing folks who have had access to foreign upbringings, resources, culture, and that sort of thing over Filipinos who know the land, who know the politics and the issues.
Maki:
Western privilege.
Michi:
Yeah, I don't want my participation in any of the things that I do, because there are things that I do want to do after this program that I'm very excited about pursuing, but I don't want that to further entrench this narrative that “American is better.”
That if you’re someone who has lived your entire life in the Philippines, you're lesser than…I don't wanna contribute to that narrative.
Maki:
Yeah, I think it's so fascinating that you're saying this because I'm sure you know Jessica Hagedorn –
Michi:
I don't.
Maki:
Yeah. So she was born and raised in Manila back in the …I think she was born in the sixties or the seventies.
Oh my gosh, no, she was born in Manila in 1949. So right after the war.
Michi:
Yeah, that's right around my mom. My mom was born in the forties.
Maki:
Yeah and they moved.
So basically, she grew up in the Philippines, but then they moved to San Francisco in the sixties. So this was during the Asian American movement, “yellow peril [supports] Black power…”
Michi:
Actually, the formation of Asian American identity. Yeah.
Maki:
She was there in San Francisco taking part in this experiment.
Michi:
That was roughly around the same time as the farm workers’ strike – or wasn't that in the fifties?
So, what does time mean? Time has to mean… It means nothing. <laughs>.
Maki:
Oh, wow.
Yeah, the Delano grape strike was in 1965.
Michi:
Yep. So the sixties in California were big on the West Coast.
Maki:
It was Version One of what happened during George Floyd. Like, of 2020.
The sixties were a whole time of upheaval and there was just a lot of national questioning. You know, Dr. Martin Luther King got assassinated, Bobby Kennedy got assassinated, all of these people. And it was just a whole time of upheaval.
Michi:
Then on the other side of the Pacific, we had the Marcos Family.
Maki:
We had Marcos who was just coming into power.
And anyway, what I was gonna say was about Jessica Hagedorn. She’s in her seventies now, and she has this unique perspective of growing up and becoming an artist during that time. Before San Francisco became tech mania.
And now, I think what she's trying to do is uplift writers – not just from the diaspora, but writers in the Philippines.
In a recent interview of hers – I have to send this to you, she cited these two Filipino writers, one of whom I actually reached out to – I was like, oh my God, you write in Bisaya (the main dialect in the Visayas region of the Philippines and other parts of Mindanao).
Like, she literally writes in Bisaya. Her name is – oh my gosh, I don't wanna mess this up – but I’ve been in contact with her.
Her work has been translated into English. She's been published internationally, in all of these prominent journals here in the U.S. But she's from Mindanao, and she’s Lumad (of indigenous Filipino descent).
Just the fact that she's writing in Bisaya is revolutionary, and she's also writing about rural poverty. What it's like to live in occupied land by the Communist rebels and the Filipino military. In a constant sort of battleground trying to fight for control. And she's writing in Bisaya.
And then there's this other writer – a man who’s writing in Waray (another regional dialect from the Visayas region). It’s not as well-known, but it's the local dialect of Imelda Marcos, actually.
So just the fact that someone like Jessica Hagedorn who has seen it from all sides – like from Manila to San Francisco and now she's in New York. She's in her seventies, trying to uplift writers from back home.
She's talking about why aren't we celebrating those writers who are writing, doing literature, and creating literature in their own language – versus people like Jia Tolentino or Randy Ribay or Elaine Castillo. No hate.
But those people have the resources. They have access to cultural networks, financial networks, all of these things that come with [if] you're living in the West, that’s innately a privilege in and of itself.
Michi:
We have the systems here that can actually get writing out.
That was one of the things that – talking to my friends who are well into the publishing industry in the Philippines – it’s very understandable why Filipino writers want to break into Western publishing first. Because Western publishing has the system already developed on how to capitalize financially on your creative work, right?
I know we're dealing with a lot of monopolies in the American publishing industry, but they still have those giant resources that Philippine publishing does not have. Therefore, if Filipino writers want to have a bigger reach and access more of an audience that will buy their books, then of course, they're going to look at publishing in the States, and that's just another one of those.
It sucks that you're choosing to do it not in the Philippines, but I completely understand why. Because if you wanna make a living off of your work, particularly in any kind of creative field, there is very little support system for doing so. And it's the way that development has been stifled by the theft of resources. It is a really, really ugly snake-eating-its-tail kind of thing.
Maki:
Ouroboros. That whole thing.
You know what? I think we need to do a follow up interview.
Michi:
Oh yeah!
Can we talk about how Filipinos feel about the term Filipinx?
Maki:
Yes! Oh my God.
Michi:
I had some conversations where like… I don't think I have the bandwidth to have this conversation eloquently and civilly. Because I’m still dealing with jetlag. <laughs>
Maki:
I’m actually gonna put that as a note to myself. Because I feel like it would be a great panel. Let me just think about how to structure this. Because I do think folks back home talk about this.
My hope for PUNTO is to really create a bridge. Where we’re not just talking past each other.
You know, if you support the term Filipinx, that’s fine. I have kind of mixed feelings about it myself, but I’m not gonna tell you how to identify. If you identify as Filipinx, that’s great! Good for you! I identify as Filipina. Whatever!
Michi:
It’s all within specific contexts. Right?
Maki:
Yeah.
Anyway, I just wanted to time-check because I haven’t had dinner yet.
If you could just quickly wrap up, like say if you would recommend the FYLPRO program. In general, just kind of a reflection about it.
Then we can continue this discussion, because it's been so rich and we still have so much to talk about. <laughs>
Michi:
Okay. So yes, I would highly recommend the program particularly if you come from a Filipino American background that isn't as widely represented.
I particularly encourage folks who are in creative fields that don't necessarily immediately associate with Filipinos. It's not to say that if you're in nursing or if you're in business or any of the medical fields that you shouldn't apply, I think you should. It's just that those of us who are not in those fields tend to select ourselves out and psych ourselves out about like: Oh, are they gonna value us? Absolutely do it for this program.
I think if you are coming from a biracial background, if you are Tsinoy, absolutely you belong in this program. One of the doctors in the program, the ER doctor, Neil is Tsinoy. He said it was a really wonderful feeling for him to see his background represented in the program. By doing that walking tour through Chinatown, Manila, and talking specifically about the Tsinoy community, I am excited about how this experience has provided me with ideas and potential avenues for how I can build a relationship with Filipino culture and Filipino communities on my own terms.
I can have more control over the kind of interactions and the kind of power dynamics that I want to reinforce and the power and the narratives that I want to tear down. I am absolutely committed to the principle of nothing about us, without us. So any projects that I'm going to do that involve Filipino identity and Filipino visions as a wide broad-spectrum are absolutely going to involve – if not also center – Filipinos who are not of the diaspora.
I think this is particularly important in terms of shaping narratives and questioning narratives and creating new alternative stories for how we can base our identities around. And I love that I will very likely be able to do this through speculative fiction and media because the larger projects that I'm working on are kind of within this idea of narrative literacy. Not just media literacy, not just pop culture criticism, but looking at the large meta-narratives that flow from the TV shows we watch to the policies that are enacted and how they're justified to what we see show up in education, to what we see presented as news because there's always a narrative there.
But I love that I'll be able to do that through encouraging and helping to promote, give, and use whatever social cache that I have as a five-time Hugo Award winner, as someone who works in American media to make those platforms available to Filipinos who deserve to be seen.
Maki:
I love that. Thank you, Michi.
#PUNTOTalks with Michi Trota