Subtitles
Stuck in between two worlds, yet he embodies both. Nak is a second-generation Filipino-American and his album is described to be the many parts of his simple yet, mundane life. As boring as he describes his life to be, one of the crucial events that happened to him impacted how he saw himself. In Nak’s album, Ashley Court: Chapter 1, his song “Translated Letters”, tells his story of his aunt discriminating him for not knowing how to speak Tagalog despite being a Filipino descent. This moment, not only made him realize that learning how to speak Tagalog was what his family expected him to know in order to connect with his culture, but the idea of not knowing the language was not enough to be accepted as a Filipino-American.
The battle of identity continues with immigrants as each generation spends more than the other in a new country, slowly adapting in a different society. For example, Nak writes to his tita, or aunt, “You told me I’m disgracing us Filipinos/ ’Cause I was never taught: couldn’t speak Tagalog...Though I didn’t learn the language of our home/ I’ll love it with the language that I know…”(6-7, 15-16). The only reason he is not able to speak Tagalog is because his parents decided not to teach him and instead value English. As immigrants in America, they are expected to learn English; it is the only way to find success in the country. To his aunt, she may see that not speaking Tagalog is a way of forgetting your culture and who they are. However, it is in this case different for him because he grew up in America in the suburbs, surrounded by a predominantly White community; his generation is growing up in America while a part of him is still a Filipino, but in a different form. This new version of the American dream is newly lived through immigrant families in which Maxine Baca Zinn discusses in her article, “Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity” that states, “They neither ‘assimilated’ to America nor retained their old ways untouched; rather, they used their cultural resources selectively to adapt to shifting institutional constraints and opportunities”(53). Nak never detached himself from his Filipino background; he embraces it by being self-aware of who he is as a person, rather than who he is because he’s a Filipino. Not knowing the language won’t make him any less Filipino because it is in his blood. Instead, he lives in the same beliefs and culture his parents taught him through his own way; he goes to simbang gabi, he educates himself in Filipino history, and his family shares stories with him about what it was like living in the province. Nak continues to figure out who he is as he’s living in the in-between of Filipino and American and even his family can’t tell him so.
The battle of identity continues with immigrants as each generation spends more than the other in a new country, slowly adapting in a different society. For example, Nak writes to his tita, or aunt, “You told me I’m disgracing us Filipinos/ ’Cause I was never taught: couldn’t speak Tagalog...Though I didn’t learn the language of our home/ I’ll love it with the language that I know…”(6-7, 15-16). The only reason he is not able to speak Tagalog is because his parents decided not to teach him and instead value English. As immigrants in America, they are expected to learn English; it is the only way to find success in the country. To his aunt, she may see that not speaking Tagalog is a way of forgetting your culture and who they are. However, it is in this case different for him because he grew up in America in the suburbs, surrounded by a predominantly White community; his generation is growing up in America while a part of him is still a Filipino, but in a different form. This new version of the American dream is newly lived through immigrant families in which Maxine Baca Zinn discusses in her article, “Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity” that states, “They neither ‘assimilated’ to America nor retained their old ways untouched; rather, they used their cultural resources selectively to adapt to shifting institutional constraints and opportunities”(53). Nak never detached himself from his Filipino background; he embraces it by being self-aware of who he is as a person, rather than who he is because he’s a Filipino. Not knowing the language won’t make him any less Filipino because it is in his blood. Instead, he lives in the same beliefs and culture his parents taught him through his own way; he goes to simbang gabi, he educates himself in Filipino history, and his family shares stories with him about what it was like living in the province. Nak continues to figure out who he is as he’s living in the in-between of Filipino and American and even his family can’t tell him so.
