(draw + insert self portrait later)
who is cassie?
hello, my name is cassie. i use they/them pronouns and i am a first generation student of color at evergreen. for folks who like astrology, pisces sun/capricorn rising/libra moon. i am multiracial, which is a significant part of my identity and is a driving factor of my academic pursuits here at evergreen. i was born in san diego, california by my lovely mother claudia, who is mixed with pilipina and white, and a mexican father who left too early in my life for me to ever get to know. my family, whether because they were never taught by my grandpa, or just because they didn’t really acknowledge that they were pilipino (despite many of them identifying as such), never told me much about The Philippines, my grandpa (who passed very early in my life), tagolog or ilocano or anything about pilipino culture in general. the only knowledge i had about pilipino culture was about the chicken adobo my mom made us for dinner sometimes, that i never really consumed myself until i was older because my younger self was skeptical of the food and probably thought it was gross, and the lumpia we would have at our (few and far between) family events. the same applies for mexican culture as well, considering i had no contact with my mexican family besides my mexican aunt on my mom’s side, who taught me spanish words and phrases during my elementary school years, about dia de los muertos, and made some of the best tacos i’ve ever tasted (besos tia patsy). throughout my twenty years of life, i have been constantly searching for answers about my multiple identities, which involves taking a deep look into the histories that were never fully discussed with me, ones that i had to search for mostly on my own or with support from friends and loved ones. this makes history very important to me, because without the knowledge of history in my metaphorical belt, i would have probably lived in blissful ignorance of my self for a very long time.
what is my blog about?
to keep it short, this blog will be focusing on asian american/pacific islander american history and cultural studies, a subject deeply important to me and my life, and i plan on sharing the knowledge i have about untold histories such as this with the next generation as i complete my journey to become a history/social studies teacher. (pop culture focus to be chosen later)
under the cut will be a longer explanation of my interest in history and cultural studies that is much more personal and story-driven that the explanation above. please read it if you’d like! 🙂
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throughout this quarter, i will be looking more into asian american/pacific islander american history in the program Asian American: Pop Culture Crosscurrents (APOP for short). while i have learned a few things about asian american history, much of that history has been focused on east asian history, specifically japanese american and chinese american history. this is frustrating to me as a (south east) asian/pacific islander* person, because while i understand that these folks have more documentation on their histories that my people do, it can be very isolating to not hear yourself represented in an identity that you have been considered a part of for a long time.
A photo of Tacoma, Washington’s Lincoln District. In the photo is an image of a banner hanging on a Chinese style lamppost that reads “Lincoln: 100 years. Lincoln High School,” which is the school that the district was named after. There are many shops in the background of the photo, with one restaurant, Vien Dong, appearing on the right side of the photo. There is a paper heart in the window of the restaurant.
since about 2009 i have lived in tacoma, washington—a diverse, multicultural city with lots of history in its streets and shops. my family and i moved into a little mother-in-law house on 36th street, two blocks away from 38th street, a bustling place with stores and restaurants going all along the street, from pacific avenue to south tacoma way, maybe even farther. the part of 38th street where i grew up was right in the middle of a tiny asian district–a mostly but not solely a vietnamese asian area–with a few latino stores and taco trucks down the block and a soul food restaurant that gave our high school’s students a really generous discount for their delicious chicken. in high school i would go with my friends after school to the la fondita taco truck down the street to buy a burrito about the size of my arm to eat after a long day of school, and after that we would go to the next block and get snacks and drinks for cheap from the asian markets, mainly the hong kong market that opened up during the middle of my high school career. these places–this city–are where i discovered most of my knowledge so far about asian culture. from anime and manga, to boba and pho, video games, shrimp-flavored chips, ramune, asian new years and more, i got to experience for the first time what a lot of my friends, asian and non-asian, had been consuming and participating in for years before i had arrived to this place. it was amazing as much as it was lonely– amazing because all these new things were wonderful and insightful, lonely because i was experiencing so many things on my own, and i required a lot of guidance from my friends and my eventual partner moroni for learning about all of these things. my time here at evergreen has also exposed me to new people and friends that have taught me even more things, pop culture as well as political and social issues, that have filled me with exhilarating moments of discovery and understanding, and debilitating moments of sadness and isolation. it’s been a tough journey to learn all of this alone for so long, so i’m thankful that this program exists so that i can find out more information in a larger group.
there are still many things that me and other asian folks outside of east asia have yet to learn about our histories, and that the general american public have never heard of in our history classes. for example, my partner and his family in particular have been kind enough to teach me about cambodian/khmer history, especially the reason why his family fled to the US and have been living here since. i won’t go into details about their family because that’s their personal information, but one piece of their history that my partner taught me has been the fact that there are active landmines left over from the khmer rouge regime in Cambodia that haven’t been completely removed, many of which were US landmines, and is a significant reason why many khmer people fled from Cambodia to the US as refugees, seeking sanctuary here. what conditions make people in other countries so eager to find a way into american society? how do we as a country trick people into thinking that the US is a source of safety and opportunity when our country values their labor more than the people themselves? why do we protect US imperialism and continue to contribute even more problems in countries such as Cambodia or the Philippines with our careless displays of power? these are questions that i would like to see people think about more often, and i will challenge many students in this program and my future students to think more critically about the histories we’ve been taught to believe, and why we believe them.
*i use asian and pacific islander here because of the various opinions on the racial categorization of pilipino/filipino people in our community. to put it simply, i’m confused so i want to use both to make things simpler for me in my mind.