Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]: An Interview with Sam

I conducted this interview as part of Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]. For more information about the project, read the project overview. To read additional entries as they come available, subscribe to The Letter.

Sam and I met originally through Twitter. When I took a trip to Washington, D.C., some years after we’d connected, she and I met in person for dinner with a couple of other Twitter friends in the area—after which we all continued to stay in touch via Twitter.

After seeing me share articles from my Stakes project via Twitter and in my e-mail messages, Sam shared a few of her thoughts on the topic. I asked if I could interview her.

Sam and I talked via Skype one Friday morning (Maryland time) and afternoon (Switzerland time).

Note: Sam preferred I use a variation on her first name, given the personal information we covered in our conversation.

How Sam Got to the United States from the Philippines

Sam moved to the United States with her two sisters from the Philippines when she was twelve. They followed their mother, who had moved for a job opportunity in Las Vegas.

“No one asked how we felt about it,” she said, speaking of her sisters and herself. They had stayed with an aunt for a year, after which their mother called for her daughters to come join her in Las Vegas. “We had to leave so much behind. It was so rushed, so sudden. I could say goodbye to my best friend and that was it.”

After a brief layover in Los Angeles, they landed in Vegas. “It felt like having a hangover for the first few weeks,” she said. “My two sisters were older, so it was harder for them. They were depressed for at least the first six months. It was exciting, but mostly terrifying.”

Sam and her sisters arrived in May, so they had to worry for months about what school would be like when it started. When it began, her two sisters went to high school together. Sam went to middle school alone.

She doesn’t know for certain how her mother made the decision to move to the United States. “The decision is so typical, to pick up and go,” Sam said.

Her father worked in Saudi Arabia at the time, returning to his family for a month at the holidays. Sam’s parents divorced several years after she, her mother, and her sisters moved to the United States.

Sam didn’t experience a breakthrough moment from feeling terrified. “The fear gradually tapered,” she said.

Sam remembers that a Vietnamese classmate befriended her and actively helped her with the transition by inviting her to events and parties and making her feel welcome. Decades later, she still feels thankful. “She was kind,” Sam said.

After about four and a half years in Las Vegas, Sam, her sisters, and her mother moved to New Jersey, where Sam lived for a subsequent ten years. Sam said that she remembers seeing a lot more Filipinos there. Las Vegas—or her part of it—hadn’t had many nonwhite minorities.

At the time of this interview, Sam had lived for thirteen years in a suburb of Washington, D.C., called Tacoma Park, Maryland. She had moved there to accompany her now husband.

Nothing Feels Permanent

After so many years in the United States, Sam said the country still doesn’t seem like home. Home still feels like the Philippines, where most of her family lives. “We’re planning a trip to the Philippines right now, and we’ll say, ‘We’re going to go home this summer.’ So that’s where home is always going to be.”

However, Sam said that New Jersey—where her mother and sisters still live—also feels like a sort of home. She said that says she’s “going home” and that she “went home” when she speaks about visiting family there.

Yet even then, home is with her family in New Jersey—not New Jersey.

“I’ve always felt displaced since moving,” she said. “I’ve now lived outside of the Philippines longer than I have inside it, and the United States still doesn’t feel like home.”

Even Maryland, where she has lived for longer than she has in any other place in her life, does not feel like home. “We’re going to leave,” Sam said. “I’m not doing to die here. So it still doesn’t feel like home. Home will always be where my people are.”

Sam said that she’s less attached to where she lives now than she might have been if she’d never moved. “Nothing feels permanent,” she said.

Never Moving Home Again

Unless her mother and her sisters relocate to the Philippines, Sam believes she will never move back to her country of origin. Her mother has talked about it, but Sam doesn’t believe she will relocate again.

Feeling that she will never move back to the Philippines makes Sam sad, but she recognizes that she has opportunities and conveniences in the United States she wouldn’t have there.

“I’ve gotten spoiled. I like the security of being here. If things were better in the Philippines, I would feel differently about it,” she said.

“One of the reasons my mom didn’t go home when her brother passed away was that it was the wrong season and everything was flooded,” she said. “We don’t have a good infrastructure in the Philippines. I like knowing that I can call 9-1-1 and someone will come. I like that it doesn’t take two hours to drive a distance that should take only forty-five minutes. The Philippines is still a poor country.”

Yet Sam said she actively misses her family in the Philippines and Filipino food. She said that visiting more often might make her feel better.

Sharing Her Culture

Sam actively stays engaged with her Filipino culture and identifies her ethnicity as “Asian.”

“I ask my dad to send me Filipino folk tales and history books,” she said. “On Facebook, I follow a page that shares Filipino-American news. And the internet has made it easier for me to stay connected with my family in the Philippines.”

She enjoys sharing her culture with friends and with her husband.

Sam’s husband is white and grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until he left for college—where he met Sam. “Talking with him about what it was like to grow up in the Philippines brings it back. It’s unlocking pieces from my past life,” she said. “And I notice the contrasts. I remember how wonderful and lovely it was. I realize more who I am and where I come from. I’m embracing that.”

For her last birthday, they ate at a Filipino restaurant in New York City where everyone eats with their hands and shares the food. She enjoyed showing that to her husband.

And for an upcoming discussion group, Sam plans to share how Filipinos culturally approach death—a topic that is especially top of mind for her after the recent loss of her uncle. “Filipinos grieve as an extended family,” she said. “We celebrate the birthdays of dead people, the days people died, and we celebrate All Souls’ Day.”

Sam added that moving away from her family in New Jersey—after moving away from family in the Philippines—has made her more intentional about staying connected to the family and the culture. She can’t simply expect to be around it as much as she once was.

Embracing Her Origins

She used to want to hide her origins. “The older I get, the more comfortable I am being Filipino,” Sam said.

“When we first moved, it was assimilate, assimilate, assimilate. As seamlessly as you can,” she said. “That we spoke English already made things a lot easier. We thought we had to let go of everything to fit in. Maybe forever.”

Sam said she now proactively bonds with other Filippinos. “I used to think it didn’t mean anything other than that we were both Filipino when I met someone else from the Philippines. Now I see that it does.”

Sharing a culture, traditions, and a national history is a deeper connection than just ethnicity, Sam said.

She has a new coworker who is Filipino, but he didn't admit right away that he's Filipino. After he did, he told her that he can’t speak Tagalog anymore. Sam finds this claim baffling: She moved to the United States when she was twelve, and she still can speak Tagalog. He’d said that he’d moved when he was fifteen. “What is that about?” she asked.

Sam wonders if it’s a sign of the same drive to assimilate that she experienced when she moved—and that she’s worked to change in herself.

“Expat” is for White People

Sam identifies as an immigrant in the United States.

“Expat implies a choice,” she said. “Immigration? Not so much. We left because we had to. We weren’t in danger, like a refugee, but if we wanted a better life, we couldn’t stay where we were when we had an opportunity to leave.”

Sam believes that even if she had personally made the choice to move—rather than following her mother—she would still feel like an immigrant.

“It feels like the word ‘expat’ is for white people,” Sam said. “’Immigrant’ is for brown people. In my body, that’s how I feel.”

Sam added that the United States taught her about racism. She felt racism less in Las Vegas than she did in New Jersey, which had more racial diversity. “In New Jersey, all these cultures butted heads and I saw it,” she said.

“I can't blend in. I can't hide my skin. I’ll always be different,” Sam said. And after her direct experiences with racism growing up in New Jersey, she now can’t extract racism as a reason for anything that happens to her. “I went to a pizza parlor with ping-pong tables, and I was using one. These white kids came up and started using the table like I wasn’t even there. Were they being brats, or did they not see me because I'm brown? I don’t know.”

She added that with their AirBNB account, even though she is the primary user, she’s put her husband’s photo in the profile. “It takes racism out of it,” she said.

A Missing Component in the Immigration Debate

In the United States, immigration is fiercely debated today. Amid all the debate, Sam said she feels like a big point is missed: Immigrants immigrate due to some level of duress at home. “Even when it’s a choice, you’re doing it because you should,” she said.

“We would not be here if we felt like we really had a choice,” Sam said. “We would rather stay with people who look like us, eat like us, and who want us to be there. Here, we have to watch everything we do and say and wonder whether something happened to us because of the color of our skin or our accents.”

Hearing public debates that don’t consider that immigrants would rather live in their countries of origin, if only they could live there and be safe or be able to thrive, frustrates her.

Upside: Flexibility and Comfort with Change

Sam said that moving has given her skills to adapt. “You’re less scared of the unknown when you’ve taken these leaps,” she said. “Moving to another place in the same country is challenging enough—consider moving countries.”

She notices that her husband is much more averse to change than she is. When she got a job offer at another organization, her husband worried about her having a new employer and a new office and new coworkers. She didn’t even consider these things—she just felt excited.

“I try to see things through the lens of my husband’s life experiences compared to mine, and I can’t imagine it,” she said.

When Your Interviewee Makes You Hungry

Sam and I had so much fun during our talk that we said we should do it monthly. At the very least, I’m going to persuade her into joining me for a meal at a Filipino restaurant she mentioned in Washington, D.C., when I get there next. Because yum.

Thanks, Sam!

For more information about Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down], the project that generated this interview, read the project statement. If you would like to participate as an interview subject or have a participant to recommend, please contact me. To get updates on the project, subscribe to The Letter.