Writing: Narrative Prompt

Note: This was just extra writing practice for World Literature. It's about being Filipino (and immigration and race in America!), so I tried to include history, books I read, and the experiences of people I've met. The prompt was pretty vague at the time, so I forgot what it was already. Looking at it now, it reads more like a speech than an actual narrative.

In 1900, they came in great white ships, cannons booming and flags waving. Their politicians’ promises of freedom led us to take up our arms in unity, our cause one– independence.

But after a quarter million were dead and gone and the war was done, they just wouldn’t listen. While Rizal said that “the Filipino is regarded as a fit citizen,” what did they say? They said that we were “big children, who must be treated as little ones.”

Still, we hoped that we would rise from the position of conquered. When they needed workers at the sugar plantations and canneries, we were there. When they needed labor at the farms, we were there. We were there as the maids and the bartenders and the busboys and the waiters and the pickers. But then, in ‘46, after another great war was fought and won, Bulosan overheard them say “why don’t they ship those monkeys back where they came from?”

As we became citizens, they continued to look down on us. That year, Truman denied 200,000 soldiers from receiving their military benefits because they were Filipinos. Decades passed, and the Filipino still held onto that hope that one day he or she can rise. But still, Domingo and Viernes are shot in ’81 after asking for the end of corruption.

Now, in 2016, Linayao says that the army is his ticket out. His parents never home, his school not working out, his dead end job going nowhere– he thinks the system’s failed him. Back home, Duterte tells the masses to shoot and kill the druggies and dope slingers, and the masses follow. Crabs in a bucket, they type, as they do nothing but watch.

In the pictures, Filipinos smile; their faces with tight lipped, thinly stretched smiles show that even though it can be bad, their dream still lives. Their smiles betray their reality in a land that has stripped them of their dignity and their rights.

Today, we continue to smile. Not because we are savages, but because we are men. In the end, we choose to keep smiling– because as we do, we defy.

Postscript. Reading this again, I realize I should add something that I overheard at a Christmas party, which is pretty pertinent to this essay.

“As immigrants, we only came here to better our economic status and make a better life for our kids. We've been held back by our skin color, but the thing is that it’s your job as the second generation in America to change our social status. We weren’t born with the ideals of the American Dream, but you were– and that’s why you need to make America a place where people like us are equal... Although you don’t see us marching on the streets or protesting, we're not passive about our social status. Everyday, we live the issues you talk about, and we want to change it, but we know what happens when you try to fight these issues head on. For us, we've had to find ways to game the system and go around it all... At my old job, my coworker was a Hawaiian Filipino with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a Masters in his field. He applied to a Director’s position, but they decided to take a white high school graduate over him, even though he was overqualified."