pinto,
or an open-doored question:
On Research, Reluctance,
and Returning to the Homeland
By Arianna Alcaraz
The last time I went home,
I was already a foreigner.
The specific word they use is balikbayan, which quite literally translates to “someone who returns to the homeland.” Implicit in that label is the act of departure, and the signs of that passage, the indelible markers of someone whose ties to the homeland have grown tenuous, whether by choice or circumstance. It was something perceptible, a quality that even complete strangers could identify, despite my fluency in Tagalog, or the ease with which I (thought I) navigated the local areas. Maybe it was because my reference points were a decade out of date, or because my Tagalog had lost its blunt Manileña corners and softened into more Westernized tones, as if I still knew the words but my mouth had forgotten the feel of them.
Still, I was surprised when they could tell. When the Uber driver that delivered me to my grandmother’s house met my gaze in the rearview mirror and asked me, unprompted, how long it had been since I left. When another driver, a little less kindly, made a similar comment: “You’re not from here, are you?” And I felt myself tense. (I was fifteen when I left for Canada. I was born here, and I grew up here, so when did I stop being from here? When did that door close behind me?)
“I was from this land, but no longer of it; my knowledge of this place is intimate, intrinsic, but now incomplete.”
When I first started researching Filipino libraries, I did not account for how much my foreignness would hinder my outreach. Where I thought I could draw from a sense of kinship, I found myself needing to forestall their wariness of outsiders instead. One librarian who agreed to speak with me mentioned that he had invited the rest of his team to our meeting, but they declined to attend because they were concerned about the language barrier — despite my offering up multiple times in our correspondences that yes, I still speak Tagalog po! And in response, what they alluded to: their fear that I didn’t speak enough Tagalog, that they didn’t speak enough English. I was as much beyond them as I felt beyond myself.
And it wasn’t as if I didn’t understand their reticence. The Philippines has laboured for centuries under the oppressive rule of many different colonizing forces, and I still grapple with the fact that many parts of my identity are products of this long history of colonial violence. And now I return as a Canadian, in nationality if not in spirit — an expat, a balikbayan, adrift in the diaspora rather than rooted in the homeland. I felt like an interloper knocking on a door, peering into a window, hoping to re-enter a home I had left behind. Hoping to reclaim some of what I had lost. Tell me about my history. Teach me about myself. A plea familiar to many, I’m sure.
“Is it not sad … that we have to learn from
foreigners about ourselves?”
Jose Rizal, writing to Ferdinand Blumentritt in 1877
The first recorded use of Filipiniana can be traced back to the late 1800s, when Wenceslao Retana, a Spanish “Filipinologist”, used the term as a designation for printed materials that enabled his study of Filipino life and history upon his return to Spain. The earliest Filipiniana collections — essentially the distillation of Philippine culture — were established for the conquistadors, the Spanish intellectuals and Catholic missionaries, rather than the Filipino people.
The more I read about Retana’s role in the origins of Filipiniana, the more I felt a troubling sense of affinity with him, at least in terms of being a researcher. Am I not an outsider myself? Does this work not enable my own study in similar ways, enriching my scholarship from thousands of miles away? What claim do I have to the richness of this knowledge, to this wealth of histories? That feeling only grew as I reached out to more librarians, and my inquiries were met with the same cool, disconnected reception. They were cordial, but not familiar. I was from this land, but no longer of it; my knowledge of this place is intimate, intrinsic, but now incomplete.
And yet I wonder whether it is that very incompleteness – the ache of those missing pieces, of working in the spaces within and without – that informs my research, carries it through. My upbringing in the Philippines gives me a degree of context and understanding that I wouldn’t otherwise have, while my time away gives me new perspective, as well as a certain curiosity, a driving interest that might not be quite as potent had I never left. The kind of questions that I ask are shaped by the push and pull of this tension, and the answers I look for help me understand my research subject as much as myself.
What I’ve learned about Filipiniana is this: that after centuries of war, Filipinos reclaimed it for themselves. In the aftermath of the destruction, they ventured out into the world, retrieving materials from foreign collectors and bringing them back home, piecing their own histories back together.
At the heart of Filipiniana, then, is the desire to come home to oneself. But for immigrants, the notion of home can be complex, ever-evolving. It’s never quite the same as you left it. I know the door is open to me, but nevertheless, I find myself pausing at the threshold. I am a child of the diaspora, at home in the liminal, and I am still learning what it would take for me to step through.
(At the very least, I know to take my shoes off before entering.)
Endnotes
The verse used in the title of this piece comes from All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems by the wonderful Michelle Peñaloza, gratefully borrowed with permission from the author.
acknowledgments —
With endless thanks to Emily, who illuminated the path that led me to this work; to Gabes, whose wisdom and insight helped me find the words I needed; to Megdi, my up//root editor, whose guidance made this piece stronger — and to Austin, whose love leads me home, every day.
Arianna Alcaraz is a first-generation Filipino-Canadian immigrant settler living in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta). She is an MLIS student at the University of Alberta, and serves as the current Editor-in-Chief of Pathfinder Journal. Arianna aspires to make a meaningful impact on the field as an academic librarian, with a focus on critical librarianship as scholarship and embodied practice. She is a 2020-2021 ALA Spectrum Scholar, a 2021-2022 AALL George A. Strait Scholar and Fellow, and a 2022-2024 ARL Kaleidoscope Scholar.