I am Filipino, white-passing, and from the United States. I do not speak my mother’s language, and I barely grew up with the culture. My mom is the only one from her family in the United States. I did not grow up near other Filipino people. I didn’t even know my ethnicity (Visayan) until I was 26 years old, and had the realization the nationality we call “Filipino” derives from the name of our first conqueror, King Felipe II. I called my mom and asked, “Mom, what are we?” She said, “We are Visayan, we are Cebuano, and we are descendants of Datu Lapu Lapu.” I didn’t know who Lapu Lapu was. I didn’t even know Magellan never actually made it around the world.

For most of my life, my experience of being Filipino felt like being a house guest. I take off my shoes at the door, I fill my plate with food, I take in the polite smiles and kind words. I don’t understand anything. The cousins are playing, and they try to include me, but the way you would for a small child that has yet to learn all the rules. They share knowing-smiles and quiet words when I make mistakes with my pronunciations. At the end of the day, I stand by the door and put on my shoes. I cross the threshold, and I’m outside again.

I know it’s insecurity. Blood-quantum is a white supremacist concept, which is why I refuse to refer to myself as “half.” I have learned our history, connected with organizations that fight for our peoples’ interests back home and in this country, and I search for inspiration in our culture. My upbringing was not my choice. I know I’m not alone in my experience of being biracial and in the diaspora.

I made monggo the other day from memory. Monggo, if you don’t know, is a type of Filipino mung bean soup. I grew up with a version that is very shrimpy in flavor. My mom doesn’t share recipes with me, if I ask she’ll say something like “just look it up.” Lol. I did spend a lot of time watching her cook as a child, so the memories of her movements serve as the recipe. (I did also look it up, just to confirm a few missing pieces.)

• Soak the dried mung beans, and then cook them. Cook them the way you would any other dried beans. I added some dried shrimps because it felt right.
• Peel and de-vein whole shrimp. Keep the heads.
• Mince ginger and garlic (a lot of it)
• Dice some tomatoes and cut up some spinach. This is a deviation from what my mom did.
• Heat oil in a pan and cook the shrimps lightly. Remove from the pan. Add their heads to the oil and extract that shrimpiness. Pink goo comes out of their heads, this is good stuff.
• Remove the heads, cook the garlic and ginger in the shrimped-up oil.
• Before the garlic burns, add the tomatoes.
• Add the mung beans and some more water until it looks soupy enough for your taste. After the water starts to simmer, add the spinach.
• Hey, have you been salting things this whole time? Make sure you do that.
• Add the cooked shrimps, and put a lid on the whole thing. Let it go for a while. The mung beans start to split, which is good.
• I like to eat it with rice.

The act of cooking this soothed me; in those moments, every instance I have ever felt culturally isolated no longer mattered. It tasted pretty close to what I remember too, while tasting different enough that it felt like my own version. Anyway! Identity is complicated. Enjoy your beans.