The Gifts of Community Cultivation (Part 2)

by Aimee Amparo

Cousins Valerie and Vanessa, Uncle Roger, Ninong Ben, Dad and baby Aimee, Mom, Ninang Nelly at Aimee’s Baptism

As was mentioned in the first section of this blog series, Herna’s upbringing was exceptional and markedly more culturally-focused than many of us who grew up in the diaspora. My experience was one of many first generation-born U.S. citizens who grew up detached from any cultural practice outside of my home and family life. As a young person, I was always searching for a connection. My upbringing was diverse but my parents were not familiar with Pilipinx arts forms or connected to a Pilipinx community outside of our family. I spent much of my childhood feeling like an outsider navigating between the conflicting worlds of life at home and life outside. The times we got to travel to the Philippines and be with family there, especially my grandmother, were some of the fondest memories of my childhood.

Estelita San Juan (Grandma Stely), Manila, date unknown

Cousins who grew up in the Philippines: Dominique, Christine, Joseph, and Grandma Stely

 My grandma, Estelita San Juan, embodied an untellable grace and showed me the softest kind of adoration. She nurtured with a sweetness that could only come from one skipped older generation. I remember the joy I felt from a treat she prepared for me and my brother one afternoon in her second floor apartment on Moret Street in Sampaloc, Manila. I watched in growing awe as she arranged in a tall glass an unexpected combination; mashed avocado topped with shaved ice, granulated sugar, and evaporated milk. I had never had avocado prepared this way before- sweet. In fact, my little 7 year old mind had never imagined the concept. I was inspired by the unfamiliar sensation. It was delicious; refreshing, rich, tasting like the islands, an essence that I craved, and expressed so vividly the love she had for us. Gestures like this carry great magnitude in youth, establishing memories that anchor you to an idea of self in relation to a community and culture. These memories become emotions that take root in the mind and body to structure who we are and how we extend love and care later on in life. 

Aimee, Mom, and brother Eric in preschool

Aimee and classmates at kindergarten graduation

I wanted to be intimately familiar with the instincts, habits, and customs of this world in the Philippines where I felt a profound pull that accompanied its own obstruction because of language and location barriers- both physicalities that I felt I had no control over at that age. I listened to my dad tell stories of hunting wild birds and crawfish, climbing coconut trees, and playing in the river that nourished the soil on the family land in Trece Martires, Cavite. I wanted to experience these sensations. Mostly, I ached for something that I hadn’t yet experienced in my body. These primal sensations beckoned me to tend to their familiarity.

Aimee’s mom and dad Elizabeth Regala and Roman Amparo before she was born

I saw my grandma just a handful of times in my life. I often wonder about the possibilities of the different lives that might’ve shaped had I had a chance to nurture these intergenerational/intercultural relationships. Returning to the U.S. always meant grappling with the compartmentalization of the many aspects and projections of myself. The disconnect made it hard to dream. Dreams were constantly threatened by the reality of a world where I did not feel visible or considered worthy.

KULARTS’ Man@ng is Deity post-show

I found cultural practice with a music and dance community later in life in 2017 when I first started singing and dancing in Afro-Brazilian folkloric dance classes and in 2018 I attended my first TribuTur with KULARTS and provided vocals for Man@ng is Deity and Nursing These Wounds. Learning the songs and dances from your ancestral history is vitalizing. Mentorship and activities with peers facilitates the joy and pride that we always have the potential to uncover within ourselves and our culture. Decolonization is nurturing work and it involves tending relationships and reveling in the beauty of cultural practice. Ancestral expression can inhabit the most mundane of actions. We learn these expressions together. Each day holds the opportunity to choose to continue to growth in interconnectedness and reinforce the resilience and power that lies in our unity.