We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet

Letters to My Filipino-Athabascan Family

E. J. R. David

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781438469539
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios asiaticoamericanos

In a series of letters to his mixed-race Koyukon Athabascan family, E. J. R. David shares his struggles, insecurities, and anxieties as a Filipino American immigrant man, husband, and father living in the lands dominated by his family's colonizer. The result is We Have Not Stopped Trembling Yet, a deeply personal and heartfelt exploration of the intersections and widespread social, psychological, and health implications of colonialism, immigration, racism, sexism, intergenerational trauma, and internalized oppression. Weaving together his lived realities, his family's experiences, and empirical data, David reflects on a difficult journey, touching upon the importance of developing critical and painful consciousness, as well as the need for connectedness, strength, freedom, and love, in our personal and collective efforts to heal from the injuries of historical and contemporary oppression. The persecution of two marginalized communities is brought to the forefront in this book. Their histories underscore and reveal how historical and contemporary oppression has very real and tangible impacts on Peoples across time and generations.

III. MY SONS

There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men (and women) enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscles, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Between the World and Me,
(2015)

Malakas looking out to the water and the mountains on July 4, 2016.

March 27, 2016

My Sons,

The two of you drive me nuts!

You make me so frustrated, because you don’t pay attention. I get so exasperated because you don’t listen. You don’t listen the first time I ask you to do something. You don’t listen when I am trying to get your attention. You don’t listen when I am giving you instructions. You don’t listen when I am lecturing you about not listening.

Sometimes I get so irritated that I even raise my voice and end up yelling at you. Sometimes I may even seem mean, nasty, intimidating, and scary to you. Because, why do you always wait until I repeat myself over and over and over again and get to the point where I end up yelling at you before you finally pay attention, before you finally listen? For real.

But despite these occasional outbursts, I hope you don’t become scared of me. I hope you don’t misinterpret my frustration, my yelling, and my stern, firm ways of communicating as mean-spirited or ill-intentioned. I hope you don’t see me as unnecessarily harsh, unsympathetic, strict, or demanding. I am deeply sorry for all the times that I get carried away. And I promise to do a better job of reminding myself that you are still children, that I need to be patient, and that sometimes I just need to let you be.

I love you Malakas. I love you Kaluguran. I will never ever do anything to hurt you.

It’s just that my own emotions, insecurities, anxieties, and fears get the better of me sometimes. It’s not my intention to get angry at you. Actually, I am never angry at you, and my outbursts are never driven by any sort of anger or animosity toward you. Instead, I need the two of you to understand that my seemingly cruel, insensitive, and strict ways are driven by my learned resentment and bitterness—and even learned helplessness—toward our world, and by my worries about you living in this world.

You see, even though I understand that you are still children and that perhaps I should be more lenient, give you lots of chances, and just let you two be children, I also know that you are Native children, that you are Filipino children. I also know that you are Native boys, that you are Filipino boys, living in this world. And I am afraid for you, for how you are going to thrive—or even just survive—in this world.

Malakas and Kaluguran—please pay attention. Please listen.

You need to understand that you are products of both your parents’ colonized histories, by your ancestors’ colonized histories, and recognize how your lives in this world are going to be influenced by such colonized histories. You need to understand that although your teachers and your textbooks and your friends and your politicians and other “authority figures” may tell you that colonialism happened a long time ago and that it’s been long over, you need to resist such lies and see how the legacies of colonialism are still around today, and therefore, still significantly influence your lives today.

You need to know that the legacies of colonialism can still hurt you—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically—and therefore potentially lead to your suffering and death.

Your ancestors were victims and survivors of cultural genocide. They were dehumanized and were taught to hate themselves. Their ways were demonized and were stripped away. Your ancestors were traumatized, yet their pains, grief, and misery were minimized and never acknowledged. And many of them had to do what they had to do to survive.

Many of them had no choice but to stop speaking their indigenous language and replace it with English. Some were forced to change their mannerism to adapt Western ways of interactions. They had to replace their indigenous beliefs and worldviews with what was portrayed as more civilized and enlightened ways of knowing. Some had no choice but to keep quiet and accept the denigration, mistreatment, and injustice they were subjected to. Many of them had no choice but to leave their homelands—everything they are familiar with and love—just so they and their families can survive. They were forced to dress, act, think, and believe like the colonizers, perhaps even adopting the colonizers’ prejudices as their own. And so some of them hated their own Peoples, not realizing that they were also essentially hating themselves.

Many of them directed their anger and frustrations toward those who they perceived as less threatening—their children, their partners, themselves. And so many of them ended up inflicting violence on their own families, on their own loved ones. Some of your ancestors were forced to encourage their children to learn the Western, American ways so their children wouldn’t suffer the same maltreatments and discrimination as they did. Some even taught their children to suppress the indigenous ways, to hide their heritage, because of the shame and stigma that has been attached to their cultures and bodies. And so many eventually hated themselves and others like them. Many of your ancestors felt helpless and hopeless. Many were forced to turn to alcohol, drugs, and other self-destructive vices to grieve for the losses, to mourn for their ancestors, to soothe their self-loathing, to numb the pains. And many were driven to end the pains, permanently.

And these pains and anger and sorrows and attitudes and behaviors—as maladaptive as they may be—were unsurprising responses to the violence and trauma that your ancestors faced. It just makes sense that they developed such “defense mechanisms” and “coping strategies”—it’s just what they had to do as they tried to survive. And through how they raised their children, and what their children are exposed to in the home and out in the community, it also just makes sense for these maladaptive survival responses to be passed on to later generations. They have been passed on to me and your mom, and now to you.

My sons, historical trauma has wounded your ancestors, and their wounds haven’t yet healed. And you inherited such wounds along with their violent and painful consequences for our Peoples.

According to research, your colonized Native and Filipino pasts—and the trauma, cultural loss, and soul wounds that such ethnic and cultural oppression brought to our Peoples—contribute to a wide range of very worrisome and gloomy outcomes today.

For instance, research tells me that Native boys like the two of you are the most likely to abuse alcohol and become addicted to alcohol when you’re older. Native boys like you are also the most likely to use marijuana. Because you’re Native boys, research tells me to worry about you dropping out of school, being suspended from school, and not finishing high school. Native boys like you also seriously think about and plan a suicide attempt at a troublingly high rate. Research also tells me that Native boys like you also have the highest risks of dying because of suicide.

These grim statistics, and their links to intergenerational trauma, remind me of one of my homeboys. He’s Native from the interior—just like the two of you. I didn’t know much about his parents, but what I did know was that my homeboy didn’t seem to have a stable family life. He seemed to just hop from one friend’s house to another with curious regularity. He seemed so free, that he could do whatever he wanted, show up for school only if he wanted, stay out as late as he wanted, sleep wherever he wanted, hang out with whoever he wanted, drink whatever he wanted, and smoke whatever he wanted. Not unlike my situation at that time, it seemed that no one was supervising him, or caring about him. And he also seemed like he didn’t care what happened to himself; it didn’t seem like he cared much for his life.

Then one day, when I was in college, he called me, sobbing uncontrollably. He just found out that both of his parents had died. I eventually learned that they got into a heated argument, when past pains and hurts—between them and caused by others to them—were brought up. And things spiraled out of control. I heard that my homeboy’s father shot his wife, then shot himself. My homeboy also told me that his four younger siblings—who are around the same age as you right now—witnessed the argument, the violence, the murder-suicide.

That messed up my homeboy pretty badly. He struggled even more with life, performed even more poorly in school, got into serious trouble with the law, got even deeper into drugs and alcohol, and also seriously considered suicide. And I am sure his younger siblings were traumatized and affected by everything too. I wonder how they are doing now.

So you see, I worry about you as Native children, because your ancestors’ traumatic colonized history can still have very real, destructive, and lethal manifestations today. And in addition to my worries about you as Native children with regard to the intergenerational trauma and associated risk-factors you may have inherited from your ancestors, I also worry about you as children of a colonized Filipino man with internalized oppression.

I worry about you developing feelings of shame and self-doubt. I worry about you having self-hate because you’re Filipino. So I am concerned about you becoming depressed, being bullied, and having low self-esteem, issues that research tells me Filipino boys like you are likely to experience. And these issues may lead to eating disorders and body dissatisfaction, as research tells me that Filipino boys like you are at higher risk for these problems compared to many of your peers from other ethnic groups. These issues, in turn, may lead to poorer health when you get older, as being overweight or obese, having diabetes, and developing hypertension and coronary heart disease are also found to be common among Filipinos—and are significant contributors to our deaths. As Filipino boys, research also tells me to expect you to smoke cigarettes, and relatedly, to worry about you dying of lung cancer.

As Filipino boys, the sense of insecurity, low self-esteem, cultural loss, self-hate, and identity confusions that are brought on by colonialism and contemporary oppression may also lead to various other concerns for you. Research says I also need to worry about you joining gangs, or getting involved in criminal activities like damaging other peoples’ properties, or getting arrested as juveniles. Research also tells me that Filipino boys like you are most likely to be suspended from school, cut school, get low grades in school, experiment with or abuse alcohol and other drugs, and have problematic aggressive behaviors compared to other Asian groups like the Chinese and Koreans.

Look, I know that all of these research references may seem boring to you, and you may feel like they don’t relate to you. So let me make them real, let me bring them to life. Please allow me tell you a short—depressingly short—story.

Remember how I moved to Barrow from the Philippines as a young teenager? The very first friend I made in Eben Hopson Middle School, during my very first day in an American school, was a mestizo Filipino boy—just like the two of you. He was cool, fashionable, popular. He showed me where my classes were, toured me around the school, and introduced me to several other kids—kids who I would end up playing on the same basketball team with. Over the years, my mestizo Filipino friend started struggling in school. I started seeing less and less of him; in fact, I don’t believe he ever finished high school. He got into trouble with the law several times, got into fights, and got into drugs. He got involved in gang activities, and became a low-level drug dealer. And just five years ago, my mestizo Filipino friend was shot dead in the streets of Anchorage.

His killer? Another Filipino friend of mine who I played basketball with. He was another Filipino friend who also struggled in school, also got into drugs, also became a low-level drug dealer, and also got into trouble with the law as a juvenile.

My sons, that’s the tale of two Filipino boys—just like the two of you. One of them is dead now, and the other is in jail for eighty-five years.

So please pay attention. Please listen.

These are just a few of the reasons why I worry about you as Native and Filipino boys. Your mom and I know way too many young Native and Filipino boys—people we went to school with, are friends with, and are related to—who have struggled in life, passed on tragically, or inflicted pain on others due to the intergenerational legacies of historical trauma or loss of kapwa. I wish I could depend on our world to help me—to help you—address the risk factors and lower the likelihood that any of these undesirable things will happen to you. I wish I could optimistically tell you that our world can help correct all the wrongs of the past, along with its many negative consequences. But I can’t.

Instead, based on what I know about our history, about our ancestors’ experiences, and what I myself have directly experienced, this world won’t even acknowledge half the wrongs that were done in the past. Our world won’t even believe that the past still has anything to do with all the social, educational, economic, and health issues our Peoples are struggling with now!

So, yeah, I wish I could depend on the world. But unfortunately, the world will probably just continue to mess the two of you up. Perhaps mess you up even more.

Historical trauma has wounded your ancestors, and their wounds haven’t yet healed. And it seems to me that our modern world won’t do anything to heal such wounds. Instead, our world will probably even continue to infect such wounds, perhaps make it even worse, whip you up some more and add even more wounds, or perhaps make such wounds even more lethal.

You see, even if intergenerational violence and hurt and trauma don’t get you, this current, modern world will try. The two of you need to understand that it’s not easy being a Filipino man in this world. It’s not easy being a ...