When she was in first grade, senior Jamie Alessandra Garcia introduced herself as Filipino, expecting a warm welcome that her other classmates received. Instead, she was met with unfamiliarity. Since then, throughout elementary and middle school, Garcia has always felt a disconnect from her culture. When she began high school and met her now close Filipino friend and senior Juliana Therese Banes, she began to explore her cultural identity and decided to start the Filipino Student Union with Banes junior year.
“I didn’t know many other Filipino students growing up,” Garcia said. “I met Juliana in my sophomore year, and we bonded over being Filipino. Then, my sister started joining Filipino organizations in college and we had just traveled to the Philippines, so I got the idea of starting a club. Juliana is one of my few Filipino friends, so I asked her if she wanted to do this together.”
Growing up, Banes and Garcia noticed that, even though there is a large Filipino population in the Bay Area, MVHS lacks both a Filipino community and Filipino representation. As a result, Banes recognizes that Filipino culture is often misunderstood by her peers and she continues to focus on educating them about Filipino history and traditions.
“It’s really nice to share another part of Asian culture, especially Southeast Asian culture, since at MVHS, a big portion of students are East Asian,” Banes said. “Language-wise, Tagalog is really similar to Spanish and sometimes when we say words in Tagalog, some people think we are speaking Spanish and are Hispanic.”
For many mixed-race Filipino students at MVHS, Banes and Garcia realized that FSU has become a space where they can connect with others and celebrate a shared aspect of their identity that they might not have explored otherwise. As a Filipino, Japanese and Taiwanese third-generation U.S. citizen, sophomore Kennedy Ancheta says she grew up feeling disconnected from her Filipino roots. She appreciates the safe environment that FSU facilitates for her to explore this side of her heritage.
“I only felt connected to my Filipino side whenever I would go to family gatherings for my Filipino side,” Ancheta said. “Joining this club made me learn more about the culture and different experiences that people have had in their family. For example, my family does a lot of karaoke and singing and dancing together, but other Filipino students at FSU have had different experiences. One person shared that when they were a kid, they had a Filipino mythical creature that they would be scared of.”
As co-presidents of the club, Garcia and Banes aim to ensure that students of mixed race, like Ancheta, feel equally welcome. Being half-Chinese and half-Filipino, freshman Sydney Wong says she values how FSU provides underclassmen with older figures to look up to and welcomes non-Filipino and mixed-Filipino students to learn about their culture.
“Oftentimes I’m surrounded by other Chinese people, so I get to hear a lot about my Chinese side and the traditions we do,” Wong said. “But there are not many Filipinos here at school. So being in a club where I can talk to other Filipinos, makes the connection whole between the two parts of me. So I like the fact that it’s a little space for this small minority of people just to hang out and connect with one another.”
Usually chosen by Garcia or Banes after discussing it with their officer team, a typical meeting includes officers presenting an in-depth aspect or tradition of Filipino culture followed by a casual activity, such as a quiz or share out. Specifically, FSU has hosted meetings on Filipino karaoke, popular Filipino figures in pop culture like Bruno Mars and Saweetie, how Filipinos start celebrating Christmas in September and Ancheta’s personal favorite: Filipino folklore monsters remembered during Halloween.
In particular, Garcia especially appreciated the FSU’s meeting on karaoke, noting it as a cultural staple that she recollects partaking in as a child. She had hoped the activity would allow club members to build closer relationships with each other. However, her personal favorite meeting was when the officers watched Filipino movies, as she was enamored by the idea of love teams — a recurring actor and actress pair that appear in various television shows and movies.
“I ended up watching more Tagalog movies, which was pretty funny, and that was a smaller aspect of connecting with my family,” Garcia said. “When meeting my family from the Philippines and Australia, I could see how they could speak the language really well, and they could understand certain quirks about Filipino culture, like the love teams, that I couldn’t get and just made me want to connect better with it.”
Overall, Garcia and Banes believe FSU doesn’t just exist to represent a community of Filipino students, but also serves to educate the MVHS community about a group that doesn’t receive much cultural awareness. Garcia is proud of being part of a tight-knit community and she and Banes hope the underclassmen Filipino community carry on the club.
“There’s a lot of freshmen that have joined this year, and it’s nice because they bring their friends as well, and we’ve definitely grown a lot as a club,” Banes said. “We have graduating seniors, and they have siblings, who are our underclassmen, and have their family rejoining the club that way. Overall, we’ve just been building a community with our shared experiences, and as seniors, we really hope that this club can continue in longevity.”