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Transcription: [00:00:00]
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
We are going to get started with our next program, which is called My H'Oprah, um discussions on Filipino American identity and queerness.
[00:00:09]
I am Regie Cabico, um if you were here a little bit earlier you saw capturing fire, queer, immigrant, queer, poets speaking.

[00:00:22]
And so right now it gives me great pleasure because I have this opportunity to delve more into the Filipino Queer identity, with Jerrica Escoto. Um, He and I are really excited to be here, if you don't know what On the Move is,
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um, it is the examination of American culture that's been shaped by the movement of people to and within the United States.

[00:00:46]
On the Move creates an understanding of the resilience of heritage, the many shapes of community and identity and the creative potential intentions between past and future.
[00:00:57]
Big Big Big shoutout to Sochin Kim and Olivia Caraval and Amalia and all of our fabulous, um, sponsors the Smithsonian Latino Center, Asian Pacific American Center,
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Triple A, it's not what you think, it's the American Anthropological Association, with the collaboration of Anacostia Community Museum, National Museum of American History, On The Move Advisory Committee, Youth Advisory council,
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United States Citizen Citizenship and Immigration Services, National Park Service and WAMU.
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Big big shoutout to all of you who are here. So, um Jerrick and I are going to do stories and poems,
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we are going to go back and forth, and then we are going to have a little bit of a dialogue and so we hope at the end we hope to hear from some of you.

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Learning to be my father's son.
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You were a caribou lifting rice sacks under the Pangasinan sun,
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a handsome sailor on his way to Greece.
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Instead found a Filipino nurse who hummed Elvis tunes.
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She thought America would be a technicolored beach,
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but she arrived during the coldest Baltimore winter surprised by foods like pizza.
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You bought a house with a fireplace. It was romantic, mom said.
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While mom worked late shifts, you watched basketball. The bounce of your belt breaking me when I was 3.
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For twisting the controls of the portable TV, called me destroyer.
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You fed me the finest adobo, stews of blood garlic chili peppers.
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When driving me to piano lessons, you said you can never eat a piano.
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Dad, you can turn so red and jolly, you convinced all the neighbors that you should play Santa Claus,
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when you were really hiding a temper that left fists through doors.
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The house you bought is boarded up with too many holes to be sold.
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The gorgeous cherry tree you killed with insecticides gone too.
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Did you even know what you were doing, Pisces man?
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Lover of seas, whose hot spit I felt on my cheek the day my head split bloody beaten by the boy across the streets.
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You lifted me by the neck, told me how you were slapped by Japanese bayonets.
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"Don't cry. It doesn't hurt." Shaking me like a wet umbrella.
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I wanna know if you ever saw me dad.
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You hiding behind sunglasses in the hammock.
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You who made your boy rub your back for a nickel, I am tired of growing fat like you.
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Now that you become that apathetic sack of rice buried in the fields.
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What can I do to make it worth the miles.
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I wanna play a sonata of love for you.
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Arpeggios of anger scaling 32 years of tears for you.
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Metronome clicks for disappointment in you.
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My hands reached out to lift you, higher than the volcanoes where Gods gave men rice.
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And from the altitudes of Angels,
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I am not afraid to say,
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I've come home.