The Philippines is in the heart

MEDIA hype has portrayed most Filipino-Americans as celebrities — as MTV VJs, movie starlets, basketball players, and pretty faces on Edsa billboards. But many more are here in the Philippines, not to break into the movies or television but to nurture a longing for "home."

Among such second-generation Fil-Ams searching for their roots are Jo Quiambao (21), Tristan Ignacio Hurlburt (22), Ivy Dulay (20), and Oliva Kardos (23), all college students enrolled at the University of the Philippines in Diliman for a year.

In i Report‘s "The Philippines is in the Heart," they share their thoughts with Susan F. Quimpo, the founder and program director of Tagalog on Site (TOS), a heritage program for second- and third-generation Filipino-Americans, in a discussion about identity, language, racism and discrimination, growing up in America, and their reasons for wanting to visit their parents’ homeland.

Read on at pcij.org.