My interview was with the professor of my English class this semester, Grace Burns. She is an instructor at Skyline College and is involved in the Kababayan Learning Community here. I almost didn't have an interview up and done, but Grace was gracious enough to allow me to get her on the record for this, and for that, I'm very thankful. :)
That being said, in addition to being gracious and accommodating of my schedule this semester, she was remarkably open and forthcoming in our interview. We covered a lot of topics, though I'll admit the interview process wasn't perhaps as structured as it might have been. Regardless of how well structured I thought it was, I have to confess that our little chat was enjoyable to the point where it was difficult to delineate the entire process between interview and amiable conversation. Grace was expressive and comical at times throughout the interview, and went on informative tangents which offered a lot of insight into her perspective and her "story", as it pertained to both my questions and her interests. I asked a lot of open-ended questions in part to see where she'd take the interview and in part because I thought a more rigid structure might feel a bit sterile. The result was almost more of a casual, friendly chat than an interview, at least in terms of the feeling I got from both within the interview and while watching it in retrospect.
I've divided the interview up into two parts. We had a very long interview and I'd like to capture the continuity of it, more than anything else. We covered a lot of ground in our conversation, and touched on some personal stuff towards the end (again, a big thanks goes out to Grace for being so open and wonderful about all of this!). One of the things I wanted to discuss at some point along the process was the connection to sexuality and identity in Filipino/as in America and Filipino/a-Americans, and I couldn't have stumbled across a more perfect person to elaborate on it than I did.
In this first segment, we start off fairly basically with name, background (ethnicity, etc), and then launch into a discussion about her family life and how it is that she came from the Philippines to the US. She talks about her parents work history, the process of moving, and what it was like to be a young child growing up in a Filipino household in the US. We went over what the differences were that she can remember between how a Filipino home "felt" in the Philippines versus here. Grace elaborated on her early schooling, how she wound up connecting to the "idea" of the Philippines and her eventual induction into the process of identifying as Pinay. She talks about her misconceptions of the Philippines being dashed upon finally visiting and goes into depth about her experiences while visiting and staying with family, as well as diving into cultural differences, culture shock, and general observations about the culture that may have or may not have matched what her expectations were going into the trip "home". We talk about remittance culture, languages, the treatment of her as an American by her family and by native Filipino/as in her country of birth, the concept of what "home" is, the nature of family and household norms in the Philippines, and segue from all of those topics into a conversation about discrimination. This talk about discrimination lead to my topic of interest, which was the effect of sexuality on identity formation.
Part two really dove into the topic of how Grace's own identification was affected by her discovery of her orientation. This is where I thought the interview took a turn from being very cursory to being more open and in depth. She coined a term that really stuck with me in this segment.... Grace described the culture for gay or queer Filipino/a people as a "culture of silence", and elaborated greatly on what she means by that. We talked about contributing factors to this, the nature of it, and where it might be going with recent developments imminent in Catholicism (the dominant religion among Filipino/as at home and abroad). We also chatted about the differences just between the Bay Area and the rest of California in informing the process of "coming out" for gay Pinoy/ay men and women, as well as how families and culture can be affected by such a declaration. A lot of this segment has to deal with sexuality and identity, and I felt her testimony to be a great anecdotal voice to add to a hopefully expanding choir. There are a few other things we touched on... Among them, the various "filters" that exist that many Filipino/as must go through before being considered as a "real" Filipino/a. Ending the interview, I simply asked her to add whatever she felt like, and asked her to elaborate as to what identity means to her, and why it's so important. Her answer, I think, was convincing and personal. Finally, we talked about what her obstacles were to forming an identity, and what her hopes are for the culture and community she's come to be a part of.
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