A Fil-Am Reflection: Here Lies Love, Disco and Filipinos!

By Nicole Maxali, guest contributor

My boss asked if I want the New York Times to read. I say “Sure!” and read it on the train ride home. The cover story of the Fashion & Style section is an interview with Talking Head’s lead singer David Byrne and Cyndi Lauper. (Side note: I’m a huge Cyndi Lauper fan. And one of the last conversations my father and I had before he suddenly died in 2011 was about Cyndi’s artistry, her drive as a creative, and the fact that she followed the beat of her own drum). In the article Byrne & Lauper share their “famous pasts and their theatrical presents — she as the Tony-winning composer and lyricist of the Broadway hit Kinky Boots, and he as the Obie-winning creator of the musical spectacle Here Lies Love, about the former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos."

I’ve been dying to see both musicals since I moved to NYC. Last year, Here Lies Love played for an extended run but I wasn’t able to catch it because I was either too busy or too broke. But the article stated that Here Lies Love returns to The Public Theater for a permanent run in April! Another chance to see it? Score! I immediately hit up my friend to see if we can go together.  I get a text from her two days later saying, “Do you want to attend the preview with me?” See a $119 show for FREE? Double score! At this point, I don’t know what to expect except that it’s a 90 minute show and its set in a disco club so there are no seats and dancing is highly suggested.

I wear my most comfortable dancing shoes and meet her in the lobby of The Public Theater. We wait and wait and wait.  She texts her contact but no one comes to meet us. We wait some more.  And she notices a big group of gay boys going up a flight of stairs. Then a tall man in all white with white hair enters the lobby and heads towards the stairs. She asks him a question and he gestures us to follow. At this point, I’m trying not to geek out. I’m trying not to blurt out:

“I loved your interview with Cyndi in the NY Times!” or

“My dad loved the Talking Heads! My mom thinks you’re a genius!” or

“Hi, I’m Nicole Maxali and you’re DAVID BYRNE!”

Yeah, so I don’t say any of those things and just keep my mouth shut as we ascend the staircase that leads to The LuEsther Theater or the disco club that was once the LuEsther.

We walk in and it’s a typical club equipped with black lights, go-go stages, huge screens and a DJ booth above us. No chairs. No VIP bottle service couches. Nowhere to sit. Nothing like you’d expect a musical show venue to look like. And then it begins.

I have to admit there was a moment in the beginning of the show, when the liberal SF State Pilipino American Collegiate Activist in my head started to say: Wait. Is this show just a glorification of the Marcos era? Is Byrne not going to bring up the fact that the 1,000 pairs shoe lady was really part of a horrible time in Philippine’s history? Is this just going to be about Imelda’s extravagant life of excess?

In that moment I was hoping this wasn’t going to be like The Help. The Oscar-winning film has raised objections in the African American community, which may have to do with the fact that it was written by a white author. In a statement about the movie, The Association of Black Women Historians have said:

“Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers.”

So although I am a third gen Filipino-American from Cali, I still remember my grandmother’s horror stories about what the Marcos regime was doing to our mother country and our family in the 70’s & 80’s. And how much we celebrated in San Francisco when Aquino took office in 1986. I remember that regardless of Imelda’s extravagant life, her people (some of my family members) were suffering and abused during her twenty year reign as the first lady of the Philippines.

But I tried to keep an open mind and I’m glad I did. Midway through the show, we witnessed how seamlessly Byrne and the director, Alex Timbers, incorporated historical facts into the story line of the musical both lyrically and visually. In the days following the preview, I found out that David Byrne did a thorough job at researching and investing his time into this show. Ten years to be exact. On his blog, David writes:

“Here Lies Love is entirely true and much of the lyric content comes from speeches and interviews the various characters gave over the years.”

I respect him even more for putting the work in and for incorporating actual speeches and interviews into his artistic vision.

Once I had calmed my inner Filipina activist, I was able to be immersed into the world of disco, love and politics. Yes, it’s everything the descriptions and reviews say it is. It’s fun and enthralling but at times heart-wrenching but beautifully acted and sung throughout. I also realized that this show was less a glorification of Imelda and more a story that humanizes this woman’s journey. It humanizes a woman that both the media and personal greed made into a larger than life caricature like a Filipino Marie Antoinette… except with possibly a hundred times more shoes and her head intact. There was one point of the musical that made me actually feel sorry for her and feel like if I were in her shoes (no pun intended), maybe I would’ve turned into the woman she became.

As I danced my way through each scene I felt a sense of pride. I was ironically witnessing Filipino-American history of a Filipino history lesson on stage. I was proud to see other Filipino artists singing, acting and dancing on stage while still being Filipino characters. The first time I witnessed a Filipino actor on stage in NYC was Lea Solanga in Les Misérables where she played Éponine (a French teenager). That was 18 years ago! Finally two decades later there is a semi-mainstream show that is representing Filipinos in a way that isn’t either a racist stereotypical comedic bit or a highly sexualized prostitute or a submissive mail order bride.

There has never been a musical or play with this much media attention (Vogue, New York Times and The New Yorker have all written reviews on the show) and Off Broadway support in NYC that is written about Filipinos casted with “mainly” Filipino actors. I use quotes around mainly because in my research I found that almost all of the characters in the musical are Filipino except for the main actress playing Imelda. Wait, What? Yeah, the actress Ruthie Ann Miles is of Korean descent from Hawaii. I do have mixed feelings about producers casting any person of color for a specific ethnicity but I will say that on the night of the preview Ruthie Ann Mills was under the weather and so her standby performed instead. Her stand in (or swing), Jaygee Macapugay, was amazing and she is of Filipino descent. But alas as David Byrne told us before the show, “Unfortunately, the swing will not be doing any of the hair or costume changes tonight.” That’s ok. Just another reason to go back and see the show.

There was one question that I wanted to ask David Byrne. Why Imelda Marcos? I unfortunately didn’t have the (disco) balls to do it. Fortunately, I looked over the NY times article my boss gave me to read on the subway and found my Q&A there:

"I read somewhere that she loved going to discos. She went to Studio 54. She was hanging out with Andy Warhol and Halston and those people. She put a mirror ball in her house. How many people do that? I thought this woman lives in that world, and that means something. The fact that disco music connects with her life, how she sees herself, that’s significant. And I thought: I know that music, I like that music. Maybe I can tell a story that way." - David Byrne

And with music as his passion David Byrne did just that. Probably unaware how inspiring his ten-year project would be to future Filipino-American artists, his own passion gave me hope that if a story about a Filipino woman can garner so much attention and support outside of the Filipino-American community then it is possible to do the same with my own work.

Because how do communities of color rise above racism and under representation in the mainstream media? We write, produce and direct or own stories regardless if the gate keepers ask us or allow us to do it. In a recent article about Asian American representation on TV, Alanna Bennett added the quote from Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz:

“You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror…And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all… And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors.”

On that brisk April night, I walked out of The Public Theater humming Here Lies Love in my head. And in my heart… inspired that my stories will manifest one day on screen/stage. Thank you for this musical that is a huge mirror for Filipino-Americans, David Byrne. My mom is right. You are a genius.

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Info and Tickets: www.herelieslove.com/‎

General tickets: $99.00 Rush tickets: A limited number of $40 day-of-performance rush tickets will be available, at The Public’s Taub Box Office (425 Lafayette Street, NYC) starting at 6:00 p.m. on all Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for those evening performances.

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The original version of this post originally appeared on Nicole Maxali’s blog. 

Photo credit: Here Lies Love

Life Before Hashtags: When Heritage Defined Our Screen Names

We all remember that big moment we had to face as young teenagers - that moment when all of a sudden we had this power to make such a huge choice that would impact our pimple-faced lives. It was a moment that required careful thought and a moment that seemed so permanent, that it was literally a matter of life and death.

You know, the moment when we asked ourselves, “What should my screen name be?”

Picture this. You’re 13 years old. Your parents finally agreed to let you spread your wings, leave your AOL Kids account, and join the rest of humanity over on the other side without parental controls. Chat rooms, profiles with HTML codes that were literally more colorful, asking Jeeves whatever your inquisitive mind wanted, and finding Sparknotes for Julie of the Wolves so you wouldn’t have to actually read it for your book report - cue “A Whole New Wooooorld.”

But before traversing this new vast digital world, you had to figure out the nametag you would wear while doing so. Things were so much easier up until this point - before this, choosing your identity was just contingent on your favorite color. My favorite color is blue, so I was always the Blue Ranger when my friends and I would play at family parties. If you were a girl, you would choose to play as Princess Peach in Super Mario. But now, you faced this new pressure of picking your character and it had to somehow tie back to something you were interested in. Even the sample screen names AOL would suggest for us pushed us to do so. Enter screen name (ie. Basketballguy4, Dancegirl123).

What did I choose to tie my screen name to? My Pilipino heritage. Before I knew it, there I was, running as fast (or as slow ... if you were still on that pre-Broadband game) as that yellow AOL man, waiting for my life as Pinoydude1125 to begin.

Looking back, I’m not sure if I chose that screen name (or rather SN for the sake of nostalgia) out of genuine interest or pride. I think it’s because I viewed being Pilipino as something tangible to which I could attach an identity. I wasn’t an athlete, didn’t play piano, and wasn’t into video games so creating a SN with those elements went out the window. I was, however, Pinoy. And a dude. And my birthday was November 25th. It was available and it set me apart from my other friends... my non-Pilipino friends.

At 13, I joined a youth group that was predominantly Pilipino. On the last day of camp, everyone was walking around with sheets of notebook paper asking for each other’s SNs to keep in touch. I came home that Sunday with a sheet full of SNs that were all similar to mine, all written in that quintessential girly handwriting of over-pronounced loops and bubbles and that boyish effort of adding tails to every stem to make letters look like graffiti on paper.

And when the chatrooms would happen - forget it. It was a traffic jam that resembled Manila’s highways, complete with the PnayAn63Ls, the iLLpn0ys, the xxFL!pcuti3xxs, the oSoSwtPN@Ys, the FLiPAZNs. Looks like we all latched on to the same thing.

It’s so interesting that, as teenagers, we chose to define our online identities by our heritage. Many of those people at my youth camp were born in the States and didn’t speak an ounce of Tagalog (some didn’t even understand). They could’ve been nawteeNnice374 or chiLL3nvillain512, but maybe they thought, in some way, that those just weren’t authentic enough. Since your teenage years are usually the time when you start to grasp the concept of cultural roots, maybe this was a manifestation of that. Maybe it's because this was a level of “different” that we were comfortable with among our non-Pilipino friends.

Fast forward to 2014 and those SNs have since vanished (at least among my age group they have). Perhaps it’s because we’ve grown up a little - knowing that one’s heritage is not the sole part of one’s identity and that not having Pinoy or Pinay in a SN doesn’t make you any less Pilipino, and vice versa. Perhaps it’s because we finally did find things we were passionate about and interested in to use as the basis for our handles and account names. Perhaps it’s because we realized that no one could decipher what our actual SNs were with all those damn Xs, 0s, and <3s.

Photo credits: HerCampus.com and PCMag.com

A Response to "I Hate Filipino Culture"

The article about Pilipino culture took storm when it was first released. The title alone was enough of a reason to burn with rage. The author, who goes by the pen name Jaywalker, definitely roused more than a few tempers making it one of his most popular blog posts. Jaywalker went on to name several aspects that he hates about the so-called “masa culture” of the Philippines such as “religious zealotry,” “inter-cultural ignorance,” and the entertainment industry, among others. He criticized Pilipinos for the tendency to leave fate up to God and for the incessant novelty songs and shows that the Pilipino entertainment industry churns out; he went on and on. Jaywalker hit home when he targeted the common thread in all of his complaints—ignorance. Jaywalker describes “masa culture” as:

“[a] culture that is rife with Crab mentality, dragging down anyone who wishes to rise up into their own pit of communal stagnation; a culture that is so practical that it lacks awareness and interest on matters that do not immediately concern their day-to-day living. A culture that puts so much emphasis on idolatry that independent thinking becomes muffled.”

His words sear into Pilipino pride. His explication makes me angry, as it would anyone with Pilipino ancestry. As a Fil-Am, my heart smolders with mixed emotions, because as much as I don’t agree with Jaywalker’s tone, I can’t completely dismiss his opinions. I understand his discontent when he talks about the double standard about God, his frustration when he describes the frightening way that one’s emotions dominate decision-making, and his exasperation when he ends his article with an almost desperate plea. With a great amount of reluctance, I almost want to agree. Every now and then, I secretly roll my eyes in irritation when someone changes the channel to a Pilipino game show. I purse my lips when I hear about dominance of religion in everyday thinking.

As much as I identify with Jaywalker’s ideas (not with his harsh words nor his pretentious tone), I really cannot comment on them. I’m a Pilipina, but I’m also an American. I gave up my right to judge a culture once I was immersed from birth in a particular culture that is deeply American despite its Pilipino influences. I can identify as Pilipino all I want, but at the end of the day, my experiences and viewpoints are different from someone raised in the Philippines.

Each country needs to develop in its own way, by its own standards, or else it will never be able to stand up on its own. Fil-Ams can help as much as we’d like to develop the Philippines, but we have to make sure that we don’t overstep our boundaries. In the United States, religion and state cannot mix, but who are we to say that they can’t in another country? The separation of church and state seems obvious to Americans, but for a country whose culture is dripping in religion, it’s difficult to separate those two entities. I believe the role of Fil-Ams in the further development of the Philippines is to provide opportunities for Pilipinos to realize their potential, to give them the chance to see how successful just one individual can be, in order to better their life and better their country.

According to the Census Bureau, Fil-Ams are currently the second largest Asian minority in the United States, second only to Chinese Americans. Yet the influence of our culture and heritage are not as well known as say, Korean or Vietnamese Americans, each with smaller populations here in the US. One example of this lesser known presence is the lack of Filipino restaurants. If we were to see the rise of the Fil-Am food industry, it would assist in the development of the Fil-Am community. It will create more discussion about Pilipino issues as well as the country itself.

Our status as one of the largest Asian communities is a bit tempered by the fact that we don't have much representation in the public sphere. More representation can bring more attention to issues concerning the Philippines. If our congressmen see that a great number of their constituents are interested in a certain matter, then more consideration will be given to that matter over another. Of course, the political system involves much more complicated steps than just reaching out to your congressmen, but taking action is much better than staying stagnant. If we stay stagnant, then Pilipinos, Fil-Ams, and all those part of the diaspora are just feeding into the image that Jaywalker so bitterly describes.

Photo Credit: fanportal.org

Not Stepping Far Enough

If you were to count the amount of times I spoke up in my law class, the number would be significantly smaller than the amount of times I had raised my hand that day our class discussed affirmative action. I go to a school where there is a very small group of minorities. As a result, these minorities tend to stick together, so there is not much exposure to other cultures other than the one you belong to. When any topic relating to race is brought up in a room of those who are not of color, I’ve noticed the hesitation in people’s voices, the fear of stepping too far. In class that day, it was obvious that people did not agree with affirmative action, but to speak against it would mean risking being perceived as racist. So they ran in circles, trying to identify alternatives to affirmative action.

The biggest misunderstanding about affirmative action is that people tend to think that it’s about giving minorities a bigger advantage—a more-qualified white person would be passed over in favor of the less-qualified minority. But that’s not at all true. The goal of affirmative action is to bring diversity, a compelling government interest, to the classrooms and the workplace. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1977), the Court cites Harvard’s admissions program in its opinion—

“A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer. The quality of the educational experience of all the students in Harvard College depends in part on the differences in the background and outlook that students bring with them.”

The idea that affirmative action gives an unfair advantage to minorities has been crushed time and time again in the United States Supreme Court, so this hushed talk about affirmative action really reveals the underlying issue that people have with the program—not admitting that minorities are still at a disadvantage in education and in the workplace.

When my classmates spoke of affirmative action, they tiptoed around the issue. They came to the conclusion that in order to diversify both classrooms and the workplace, the government needed to tackle the issue of poverty. It was a legitimate point, I'll give them that. But the way they spoke about poverty was as if they were trying to not overstep any boundaries. They talked about minorities and poverty as if they were two different issues. However, it should be noted that they are intertwined.

That’s the problem—not stepping far enough and not admitting that there is a disproportion of minorities in our education system and the workplace. You literally did not even have to leave that classroom to see the lack of balance. There were four other minorities in the class of twenty students, only one of which actually spoke up with me. The blatant oversimplification of affirmative action and diversity was incredibly frightening to see, especially on a college campus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEO3H5BOlFk

Last September, Sy Stokes, a student at UCLA, spoke about the university’s glaringly small African American male population of 3.3% and how he felt isolated and uncomfortable until he found his own niche. Minorities tend to stick together because of their common background, a fact further explained by Kristina Rodulfo in her article, “All My Closest Friends Are Pilipino… Is This A Problem?”

There is a unique bond between two people who belong to the same ethnicity or gender, one that cannot be found anywhere else. However, when a college’s minority population is so small, the need for a community with a common background is even further exacerbated.

This is why minorities form and stay within their cliques. This is why minorities may have limited exposure to other cultures, ideas and viewpoints. And this is why a packed room with only a handful of minorities had trouble understanding exactly why we need affirmative action.

Photo credit: Feminspire

UniPro Presents "Education For All In the Philippines"

There is a vicious cycle of poverty plaguing the Philippines, and education (or lack thereof) is considered to be one of its main drivers. In an effort to explore this idea and promote dialogue, UniPro hosted an event titled “ Education For All In the Philippines,” which featured representatives of organizations doing their part to end the cycle. Panelists included Cherrie Atilano from Gawad Kalinga, Jay Jaboneta from The Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation, Jerry Topitzer from Advancement for Rural Kids (ARK), and Paul Grimsland from Hope for Change International.

The night began with a brief overview on the current state of education in the Philippines: an already alarming rate of students not going to school was worsened even more by the destruction from Typhoon Haiyan, which displaced thousands of people and diminished schools. Before the panel discussion commenced, the audience was reminded that “education is a basic human right,” according to UNESCO. This set the tone for the dialogue and it became clear that this wasn’t going to be just like any other forum about education; it was going to be so much more.

Young children in the Philippines are trapped in a box of illiteracy - the same exact box that their parents and grandparents were born into. The solution, it seems, is to literally think outside the box, and as the panelists expounded on the work of their organizations, the common thread emerged: they were not necessarily the ones providing the education, but instead they were providing the access to education.

Education is very much alive in the Philippines. It exists. There are nursery rhymes to be sung, math problems to be solved, and essays to be written. There are teachers. There are students. The real problem, however, is that education is not physically accessible to every single child.

In reality, “Bueller...? Bueller...?” was “Boyet...? Buboy...? Not because Boyet and Buboy wanted to play hooky and sing in a street parade in awesome 80s clothing, but because the Boyets and the Buboys had to work to put food on their table that night; because they couldn’t afford textbooks and notebooks; because they had to swim across the river to get to the nearest school; because they lived in a community that did not even have a school.

All these root causes are what ARK, Hope for Change International, The Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation, and Gawad Kalinga are tackling in order to rewrite the script. Granted, simply providing physical access to education will not solve the overarching issue of poverty, but it is certainly a start.

The true challenge to tackling poverty lies in the intangible concepts required to actually keep children in school: building confidence, establishing self-esteem, developing accountability, inspiring them to dream, and perhaps the hardest one of them all -- getting each one of them to believe that there is actually a way out of the boxes they have been trapped in and that they are in control of their destiny. These are all concepts that need to embraced today in order to truly move the needle on the issue of poverty when tomorrow comes.

In his closing keynote, Jay Jaboneta shared his reason for starting The Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation.

“You always hear stories of kids skipping school to go swimming, but here we had kids who go swimming to go to school.”

Today the organization is the vehicle (both literally and figuratively) for thousands of children being given the chance to go to school in the Philippines. Things won’t change overnight, but through the efforts of Jay Jaboneta and his counterparts in other organizations, the provision of access to education for “some” will someday lead to education for “all.”

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About Gawad Kalinga

‘Gawad Kalinga,' translated in English means to 'give care,' is a Philippine-based movement that aims to end poverty by first restoring the dignity of the poor. GK began with a simple desire to give care and leave no one behind, and our mission is to end poverty for 5 million families by 2024. We do this by employing an integrated and holistic approach to empowerment with values-formation and leadership development at its core.

About Hope for Change International

Hope For Change is a non-profit humanitarian organization dedicated to eradicating the effects of hunger, illiteracy, and disease ravishing impoverished communities throughout the world. We believe the time is now for an unprecedented humanitarian initiative, pairing communities in East Africa, the Philippines and Indo-Asia who need aid with individuals who can supply aid. Those who receive aid will have their lives transformed from despair to hope. And those who provide aid will experience the transforming power of giving and the enduring satisfaction of having fostered HOPE FOR CHANGE.

About Advancement for Rural Kids (ARK)

ARK is focused on improving education and health of school age children (pre-K, elementary and high school) living in impoverished rural communities in developing countries. By focusing on education and collaborating with an empowered community, we hope to provide the critical tools that will enable every child to dream, carve new paths, seize new opportunities and create a promising future devoid of poverty.  We strive for 100% literacy; drive rural investment and economic vitality; cherish traditions; keep community and family members together; and give farmers, fisherfolks, store owners and other rural residents a chance to lift themselves out of subsistence with dignity and pride.

About The Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation

The Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation was formerly referred to as the Philippine Funds for Little Kids. The Philippine Funds for Little Kids started as a national movement to help children who used to swim to school in the mangrove village of Layag-Layag, Zamboanga City. The idea behind it is to pool our own individual little funds to help these children get to school safe and dry. We are more popularly known as the Yellow Boat Project. Initially, we thought we would just give them the yellow school boats but by now we've since move on to helping support them through provision of other school supplies, medical/dental missions to their communities, scholarships and even through livelihood programs.

Photo credits: Jorelie Anne Photography, yellowboat.tumblr, Knights of Columbus, Hope for Change, Advancement for Rural Kids and Smart