AMERICAN ASWANG: Uncovering the truth about my Filipino American family's repatriation to the Philippines

By Manette Trogani Snow

Manette Trogani Snow always wondered why her father, Martin “Pop” Trogani punished his children by forcing them to kneel on raw rice, arms outstretched, with a stack of books piled high on their hands. In a quest to understand why Pop treated Manette and her eleven siblings so horribly, she unearthed not only her own family’s hidden histories, but also a previously unknown chapter in US history about racism, immigration, and war.

In a fascinating memoir created from a twenty-five-year mission to excavate information from archives, articles, books, and interviews, Manette chronicles her journey through a childhood darkened by fear, brutality, secrets, and lies while detailing the story of her father’s family’s experiences as the only known survivors—despite being starved and tortured during the Japanese occupation of World War II—of an orchestrated campaign to expel them from the United States under the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935. Included throughout are a treasure trove of personal and historic images, as well as additional insights obtained after the completion of Manette’s extensive research.

American Aswang intertwines the true story of a Filipino-American girl’s challenging coming-of-age journey with the often horrific experiences of her father’s family as they were repatriated to the Philippines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665745611

Manette Trogani Snow

Manette Trogani Snow is a leading historian on the Filipino Repatriation Act. She speaks on the subject of repatriation, including lectures at various universities and the Filipino American National Historical Society. She is an award-winning writer, contributor to the National Pinoy Archives and a certified researcher for the National Archives. She and her husband, Andy live in Colorado with their two daughters, Lucy and Megan, along with Meg’s husband Zach and their granddaughter, Winter.

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Copyright © 2023 Manette Trogani Snow.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Author Photo by: Yvonne Gringas Min

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4563-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4562-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4561-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023911169

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/17/2023

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 The Cookie Story

Chapter 2 I Am Other

Chapter 3 Paper Flowers

Chapter 4 Firstborn

Chapter 5 Juan and the Aswang

Chapter 6 Touch Me Not

Chapter 7 Hello Dolly

Chapter 8 Four Sisters and their Little Brown Men

Chapter 9 Utopia

Chapter 10 No Filipinos Allowed

Chapter 11 Plenty of Poison

Chapter 12 Black Magic

Chapter 13 Cancelled

Chapter 14 Doomed to Abject Misery

Chapter 15 Pearl of the Orient

Chapter 16 Iloilo

Chapter 17 Tigbauan

Chapter 18 The River

Chapter 19 The Great Experiment

Chapter 20 A New Order

Chapter 21 Rainbow 5

Chapter 22 Day of Infamy

Chapter 23 Dugout Doug

Chapter 24 Death March

Chapter 25 Back to School

Chapter 26 Balintawak

Chapter 27 Waiting Hours

Chapter 28 Alone

Chapter 29 The Way Home

Chapter 30 Massacre of Manila

Chapter 31 Loose Ends

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Bibliography

Epigraphs

Endnotes

This book is

dedicated to Pop—who taught me that the

difficult you do right away, the impossible just takes longer.

And to Nanay—who without her love and support,

I would not have become the person I am today.

He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.

~José Rizal

Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say this never happened.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

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PROLOGUE

A RARE BIRD

Outrage or obsession—one or both of these compelled me to email Dr. Dawn Mabalon ¹ at San Francisco State University. It was early 2017 and like many Americans, I was still stunned by the outcome of the recent national election. Then came the appalling immigration order enacted by our newly inaugurated president that blocked the entry of certain legal immigrants to the United States.

This announcement stirred up troubling memories for me of the eerily similar treatment that my Filipino American family endured during the 1930s at the hands of a racist group of American politicians. Professor Mabalon recently wrote an article about the similarities between the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 and the current treatment of immigrants in the United States.

In her reply, Dr. Mabalon said, Thank you so much for reaching out to me! You are a rare bird in our community—I have yet to meet someone whose family was repatriated.

This was not the first time I had heard this. Nine years earlier, when I first contacted the Filipino American National Historical Society (or FANHS) about my family’s repatriation to the Philippines, I received a similar response from Dorothy Laigo Cordova, Executive Director of FANHS:

"Your research intrigues me, especially since so little (or next to nothing) has been done on this subject.

I am curious, since it is my understanding that repatriated Filipino immigrants could not return to the U.S. immediately—but had to be placed on the miniscule quota system of the 1940s-1965.

My questions are these: When did your family return to the U.S.? Were you and/or your family members born in the United States—which gave you the right to return here without impediments? What procedures did your family use to return to America?"

At the time, I didn’t know the answers to most of Dr. Cordova’s questions. I had yet to unearth many of these details. Like the archaeologist who painstakingly pieced together the remnants of a broken vase with a pair of tweezers, it would take me twenty-five years to excavate this information from countless archives, articles, books, and interviews. To uncover haunting memories that were buried away long ago, never meant to see the light of day again.

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CHAPTER 1

THE COOKIE STORY

It was the summer of 1975 when I first realized what my father loved. That he could love.

The stifling humidity of late July sapped us of the urge to play on the sticky asphalt of our backyard. It was too early for bedtime, so I sought refuge with my ten siblings in the living room—the only spot in our house with a portable, window-sized air conditioner. The thrum of the A/C unit drowned out the din of the Garden State Parkway, which ran parallel to our home’s intersection of 677 Grove Street and Eighteenth Avenue in Irvington, New Jersey—a small urban ghetto that bordered the larger city of Newark.

Back then, we lived in a boxy, two-story structure with a sea-foam green stucco exterior. We occupied both floors on the right side of the building while the two apartments on the left were rented out to various tenants, which often included relatives from our massive family. Pop had eight siblings while Nanay ² had five—a tally of our extended clan totaled over eighty different aunts, uncles, and cousins.

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Figure 1. Trogani family home at 677 Grove Street, Irvington New Jersey (circa 1975)

Earlier, Pop tacked a faded flat bed sheet across the open doorway to trap the chilled air inside. Then he and Nanay dragged several twin mattresses down from the upstairs bedrooms and placed them end-to-end across the wooden floor. As I entered the room, a frigid blast washed over me. My brothers and sisters shoved me forward, then yanked the impromptu curtain back into place behind them. Now we lay two to a mattress, our bony bodies clad in threadbare pajamas, crossed this way and that like a game of human dominoes.

Ordinarily when we eleven kids were all in the same room, there was a constant cacophony as our giggles, shrieks, and thuds filled the air. On this particular July evening, those discordant noises were quelled by summer heat and fatigue to a low, gravelly din, like the buzz of mosquitos skimming over a pond. My eldest sisters, Anna and Marie sat near the windows and whispered to each other about their latest romances while moaning about how unreasonable their ten p.m. curfew was. My older brothers, Martin and Guy squabbled over who was the better baseball team—the New York Yankees or the Mets—as Greg silently practiced magic tricks in the corner. Monica and Martine slapped their hands together and chanted, Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, while Marnie—the youngest and fairest of us girls—lay beside them on her stomach, elbows propped up, chin resting in her palms. Marnie prattled on about which song she thought Sonny and Cher would sing on their variety television show that evening—though why anyone would guess anything other than I Got You Babe was beyond me. Maureen, who was almost thirteen with darker hair and complexion, sat behind Marnie and wove her fine blonde strands into two neat braids. Maureen occasionally stopped to push up her horn-rimmed glasses when they slid down the sweaty bridge of her freckled nose.

I’d wedged myself onto the narrow mattress beside my little brother Jay, who hummed quietly as he doodled cartoon characters on the back of a spiral notebook. Despite the Kenmore window unit working overtime across the room, my face felt flushed, so I flipped over the pillow and pressed my cheek against the cool side of the cloth. My white cotton pillowcase smelled of sweat and the Herbal Essences shampoo with which I’d just washed my waist-length hair. My father insisted that his wife and seven daughters all grow their tresses long. Regardless of how thick or unruly our locks might get, if any of us suggested shearing them short, he’d shake his head firmly and say, A woman’s hair is her crowning glory.

I waited impatiently for someone to switch on the outdated Motorola TV in its large wooden console.

Then Pop appeared.

All conversation suddenly ceased. My body stiffened. No one in the world scared me more than my father. Coarse black hair blanketed his head and protruding brow. Just five feet tall, yet he towered menacingly above us like a mighty tree in the forest. He was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of cut-off denim shorts, which exposed sturdy thighs and thick calf muscles that made his lower legs look like oversized turkey drumsticks. Years of working outdoors as a carpenter had turned his skin dark and leathery. His broad shoulders and chest were offset by a small, round potbelly. Pop reminded me of one of the carved wooden tribal figures that my parents kept up on a high shelf, out of our reach.

He filled the doorway, arms akimbo, and surveyed his brood. Pop frowned at the sight of us, then strode across the room toward our mother, carefully stepping over our bodies as if we were land mines he wanted to avoid. Nanay sat on our homemade couch—a long wooden frame constructed by Pop, topped with a rectangular foam cushion and two bolster pillows that she’d upholstered by hand in brown suede fabric. On either side of the sofa were end tables that my father had inlaid with tiny white and brown glass mosaic tiles. Pop sank down on the sofa beside her, tucked his feet under his crossed legs, then filled his pipe with fresh tobacco.

I glanced at my father and sighed. I knew that I was supposed to love him. The nuns at St. Leo’s had forced us to repeatedly recite, Honor thy mother and father, along with the other nine commandments. Yet sometimes I hated him. For being so cold and distant, so strict and authoritarian, at times violent. Mostly I feared him. No matter how well I behaved, how neatly I practiced my cursive, or how tightly I clasped my hands together and prayed fervently before bedtime, Pop would never behave like the dads I watched on television. He never held me on his lap or read bedtime stories to us like the soft-spoken insurance agent played by Robert Young on Father Knows Best. He was no help with a bad dream or math homework. Never gently dispensed sage advice to us like Robert Reed, who portrayed the quintessential family man on my favorite TV show—The Brady Bunch.

Nanay suddenly reached down and lifted me off the nearby mattress. Although I’d turned nine that April, I was small for my age and she easily pulled me onto her lap. As she did, my hand brushed against Pop’s bare heel. The skin felt hard and rough like sandpaper, the result of many barefoot years. I yanked back my fingers as if they’d just grazed a sizzling pan and wondered—could he even feel my touch against his calloused flesh? Pop’s head snapped toward me. I shrunk away from his glare. My father’s intensity radiated off him like the heat from an oven. I burrowed closer to my mother’s ever-pregnant belly, which presently contained my youngest brother, Michael.

Nanay peeked down at me. Her waist-length, wavy chestnut hair fell forward and framed her tanned, freckled face. Her neatly manicured brows pinched together.

Martin, she said, why don’t you tell them the Cookie Story?

Nanay’s suggestion shocked me. Pop rarely spoke to us kids. He never smiled. Just snapped his fingers and barked commands at us like:

Don’t give me that look!

I’ll give you something to cry about!

"You’d better move little girl!"

I knew better than to ever challenge him—unless it was impossible not to.

I glanced up at my father expectantly and watched as he drew in a sharp breath then bit down hard on the end of his pipe. Finally, Pop exhaled. Whiskey-flavored tobacco smoke filled the air. He stared at the ceiling, as if deciding how best to start.

In the beginning, he said, God made the earth. He built the mountains and the oceans. He filled it with animals and plants, and it was beautiful. Pop paused to peer around the room and ensure that we all were listening. None of us dared not to.

God looked at everything that He had created and said, ‘Something’s missing.’ He made little men, like gingerbread men, and He put them on a tray and placed it in the oven. But God had never done this before, so He left the cookies in the oven too long until they were burnt. And those became the black people.

I frowned as I imagined those charred cookies. Pop continued.

God said, ‘This won’t do.’ He mixed up another batch of little men and set them in the oven. But He worried that He might burn them again, so this time God pulled the tray out too soon. He called those pale, half-baked cookies the white people.

Pop paused for a moment, took a few puffs from his pipe and said, God shook his head and said, ‘It’s still not right.’ So He stirred and shaped a third group of little men and slid them into the oven. This batch came out nice and golden brown. God said, ‘They’re perfect!’ And those cookies, the ones that were baked just right…they were the Filipinos.

As my father uttered these words, the strangest thing happened—the muscles in his face relaxed, the lines above his brow eased and his jaw slackened. From where I sat, it almost looked like he was smiling.

Pop’s smile didn’t last. It faded away in an instant, like a shooting star that streaked across the night sky. It disappeared so quickly that I wondered if it was ever there in the first place. Any trace of joy or happiness that I momentarily witnessed was supplanted by the rage that seemed to perpetually simmer just below his surface.

Pop’s pride in his Filipino heritage was undeniable, even though this only accounted for fifty percent of his DNA (the other half came from his British mother who hailed from Liverpool, England). The cookie story, told by a man not given to talking, was an origin tale where the righteous were one color only. In our house a few of us struggled to be the righteous daughter or son, but most of us rebelled to save ourselves. To recount what took place at 677 Grove Street when I was a girl and ask why it was so, is my late rebellion.

In our household, Pop’s rules were clear and absolute. If we disregarded his order of Don’t put your elbows on the table, he immediately responded with a sharp jab of his fork to said elbow. My father never once made a threat that he didn’t follow through on. Still my older siblings constantly warred with him—typical teenager rebellion stuff that in another family might get you grounded or extra chores, but in my family earned you a beating and a trip to the confessional. Each time one of them challenged him—never getting it through their heads that this was a battle they couldn’t win—Pop exploded, teeth clenched, leather belt swinging, his face contorted and foreign.

What frightened me most were his eyes—behind their bulging brown centers and red-rimmed whites, I spied a terrifying trace of simmering anger and hatred. Did he hate me? Did he hate all of us? I couldn’t imagine that someone who hated children would deliberately have twelve of them. Still, whenever I saw that look in Pop’s eyes, I learned to keep my head down and stay out of his way. If only my brothers and sisters would do the same.

One night, my father called us all inside for supper. My siblings and I crowded around the kitchen sink, where I had to fight my way through a tangle of arms and hands, splashing water and Ivory soap, before I could take my place at the long, white Formica-topped dinner table with faux wood trim. The elder six children sat on the outer side of the table in wooden folding chairs with backs and seats made of woven jute, while we younger kids were crammed against the wall on a narrow bench constructed of leftover lumber from one of my dad’s construction jobs.

I waited anxiously with my head bowed and hands clasped for Pop to say Grace. I couldn’t wait to dig into the mouthwatering meal that Nanay had prepared—a platter full of salty pork chops pan-fried in Wesson oil, garlic powder and LaChoy soy sauce, a stock pot brimming with steamed white rice, and four cans of buttery Green Giant creamed corn. I greedily eyed one particularly crispy cutlet with oil dripping off the edges. I only hoped that no one else would claim my preferred pork chop before the plate was passed to me. I glanced up to see what was delaying our pre-dinner prayer.

Pop glared at my elder sister, ³ who stood in the nearby kitchen. She looked so sophisticated to me, in her red macramé halter top and white denim short-shorts. Oblivious to my father’s stare, my sister whispered into the handset of the olive green rotary wall phone as she twisted the cord around her finger.

Pop snarled at her, Hang up that damn phone, or I’ll put your head through the wall.

My sister ignored him. She rolled her eyes and muttered something indistinguishable to her boyfriend at the time. My throat tightened. I shrunk down in my seat and tried not to move, terrified that my father might shift his fury in my direction. If I could’ve, I would have made myself shrink so small that I disappeared.

Pop slowly curled his fingers into fists then pounded them on the table, sending our plates and cutlery clattering. He leapt up and knocked his wooden chair over backwards as he stormed toward her. My sister stumbled backward and stretched the twisted phone cord with her. Pop lunged for her long, straight auburn locks. My sister shrieked and dropped the phone onto the linoleum kitchen floor as my father gripped a fistful of hair near the base of her skull. He yanked her head toward him, then shoved her forcefully in the opposite direction. My stomach lurched as I heard the crunch of bone against plaster. Pop pulled her back again, and I could see a skull-shaped hole smashed through the eggshell-colored wall, which exposed the crumbling drywall behind it. Horrified, I cowered on the bench between my siblings.

Pop slammed the phone onto the cradle then dragged his daughter by the hair into the dining room. He shoved her towards an empty folding chair, where she collapsed in stunned silence. None of us, including Nanay, dared move a muscle to comfort or even acknowledge what just happened to my sibling. Her shoulders heaved as she sobbed silently. Clumps of white dust and plaster still clung to the back of her head. Unsure of what to do, I stared down at the food on the table. I noticed that the grease on the edge of the pork chops had started to congeal, the butter on the canned corn began to solidify. My one daily allotted glass of fresh milk grew warmer with each moment.

My father dropped into his chair and recited through gritted teeth: Bless us oh Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen. As he spat out these last few words, I peeked open one eye and saw the muscles in Pop’s jaw tighten. Sometimes it seemed like he controlled our entire household, including my mother, by clenching his jaw muscles. It was as if Pop feared that if he relaxed one rule, one commandment, or even one single ligament in his jaw, the whole world would unravel.

As my father slowly chewed a bite of pork, his fury seemed to dissipate like steam rising off a fresh pot of rice. In its place, I thought I spied a glimpse of something else in Pop’s eyes. The word remorse wasn’t in my vocabulary then. Was it possible he felt ashamed or embarrassed? A sickening concoction of sadness, anger, fear and confusion churned within me. While I truly felt sorry for my sister and the pain she suffered at my father’s hands, another part of me resented her. Why did she have to cause such trouble, especially during dinnertime when we just wanted to sit quietly and enjoy Nanay’s cooking? After all, Pop never struck any of us without provocation. It was always prompted by someone breaking one of his many clearly pre-established mandates. This was my stance as a child, you got what you deserved.

Like the time one of my brothers accidentally struck Nanay in the face during a fit of anger, or when another sister refused to come home from a high school party after being ordered to do so. These acts of outright aggression or defiance resulted in beatings so severe—my brother’s head smashed repeatedly into the cement sidewalk, my sister’s abdomen pummeled until she was black and blue—that Reverend William Heine, our family priest and one of Pop’s dearest friends, had to be called in to calm him down. My injured siblings were sent away for their own safety while they recuperated.

For some reason, we little kids were generally spared the more severe forms of punishment. We heard horror stories about how when the big kids misbehaved, Pop made them kneel in the corner on a pile of raw rice. The sharp grains dug into my siblings’ bare knees, while my father stacked a pile of heavy books onto their outstretched arms. As their triceps burned, and sweat streamed down the sides of their faces, they inevitably began to lean forward from the strain. Pop barked at them to straighten up and they immediately snapped back into attention.

I usually managed to avoid my father’s wrath. I had spent too many years watching the big kids and their run-ins with him. I would be different. I would be the good one. If I outshined all my siblings—then not only wouldn’t he hit me, but he might even love me. I didn’t realize it then, but even if I was just a witness to Pop’s violence, it infected me. I would spend most of my adult life trying to uncover the source of my father’s ire—his secret experiences, the pain he endured, the ghosts that haunted him.

And then haunted me.

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CHAPTER 2

I AM OTHER

We say we are Filipino; we say we are American; who are we; more so, what are we; brown or white; or are we still ‘other’?

—Fred Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, 1983

I was the ninth child of Claire Mickey Tolentino and Martino Martin Trogani—my Nanay and Pop. Born in 1966 in Newark, New Jersey, I came into the world at a dark time when horrific headlines dominated the news—the war in Vietnam butchered the nation’s young men; mass murderer Richard Speck killed eight female nursing students in Chicago; race riots burned buildings in Los Angeles, Cleveland and Atlanta.

My parents were too busy tending to their ever-growing family to be drawn into the counterculture of the 1960s. Pop spent his days hunched over hammering, sawing and sanding at various carpentry jobs. My mother stayed at home where she washed, wrung and hung our cloth diapers on a frayed clothesline suspended outside the kitchen window. In between loads of laundry, Nanay swayed barefoot on the linoleum kitchen floor as she sang along with Frank Sinatra who crooned It was a Very Good Year on the transistor radio above the kitchen sink. She tested the temperature of the baby bottle on the back of her hand, with one child propped on her right hip, as another clung to her left thigh. My elder siblings sat cross-legged in front of the TV and watched the colorful, yet campy shows premiering that year—including Batman, Star Trek, and Lost in Space.

According to family lore, when my twenty-six year old father married his seventeen year-old Filipina-Irish bride in July of 1956, they boasted to their wedding guests that they planned to have a dozen children.

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Figure 2. Claire Mickey Tolentino and Martin Trogani (my Nanay and Pop) married on July 7, 1956

Almost exactly nine months later, my eldest sister, Anna, was born. Their next seven children—Martin, Guy, Marie, Gregory, Maureen, Monica, and Martine—each arrived almost precisely thirteen months after the previous one. I broke the cycle by being born nineteen months later. I then was forced out of the cradle by my youngest sister, Marnie—baby number ten—who arrived in December of the following year. Thirteen months later, she was thrust from her sleeping place by baby number eleven, a boy named John Joseph after both of our grandfathers (but whom we nicknamed J.J. or Jay). Seven years thereafter, my parents’ wedding day prophecy was finally fulfilled when Nanay gave birth to her twelfth and final child, my youngest brother, Michael.

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Figure 3. The Twelve Trogani Siblings

Once I was ousted from the wooden crib that remained a constant fixture by my parents’ bedside, I joined my elder siblings in the room next door. My parents squeezed eight of us into four single beds in the upstairs living room, which they’d converted into a makeshift bedroom. I tucked myself into the bottom half of a twin trundle next to my older sister, Martine.

Rather than read bedtime stories night after night, Nanay sometimes tried to lull us to sleep by playing soundtracks from our favorite Disney musicals on a portable record player. Her strategy usually backfired as the more soothing songs—like Trust in Me from the Jungle Book—were often followed by more toe-tapping tempos like Bear Necessities or I Wanna Be Like You. Rather than drift off to sleep, we broke out into impromptu dance and sing-a-longs until my father inevitably stomped in. Pop’s mere shadow in the doorway sent us scurrying back into our beds where we slept with arms and legs entangled, always fighting for another inch of space on the tiny twin mattresses. Jammed in next to the breath and bodies of my tribe, I was imprinted. This overwhelming closeness defined and dominated me as I grew up. We were like the overlapping hands in an Escher print. To this day, I struggle to differentiate. Where do I begin and my family end?

Most of my mixed-race relatives have prominent Filipino features: dark almond-shaped eyes, broad flat nose, tawny complexion, and thick, crinkly black hair. Only two of my siblings favor our British forebears in appearance with pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Then there’s me—the mutt. My brown, waist-length hair was thick and frizzy, so I wore it tightly braided like Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. I inherited the flat-as-a-pancake nose and curved eyes, but my pink pallor and bright blue irises generally allowed me to pass for white. I was not in any way what Pop considered the Perfect Filipino Cookie.

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Figure 4. My family in matching Easter outfits handmade by Nanay (1976). I’m second from right in front row ⁴

Although I knew it would infuriate Pop if I ever denied my Filipino heritage, I constantly fought the temptation to do just that. As a fourth-grader in St. Leo’s parochial school, I completed the usual government-sponsored standardized tests. Number-two pencil in hand, I began to fill out the test form and was making good headway until I came to the section labeled Race. There were four circles: White, Black, Hispanic, and Other. I had no doubt which blank I should fill—Pop had told us many times before: we weren’t white, we weren’t black, we were Other.

Still, I hesitated.

I hated being Other. I hated that most members of my family were short and brown and frizzy. I hated that our house constantly stunk of peculiar pungent smells. That Pop offered my friends fried fish heads with rice when they visited our home. That our kind consumed bizarre foods like pickled pig’s feet, unfertilized duck eggs, or if the rumors were true—dogs. I didn’t want to be any of these things, even if it made me the Perfect Cookie in Pop’s mind.

As my pencil hovered above the paper, Sister Virginia ⁵ loomed over me and peered down at the unanswered question. She screwed up her lips, then tapped my desk with her ruler. You’re white, she snapped. Fill in White. I knew the repercussions of correcting a teacher, especially a nun. Plus, I secretly loved that Sister Virginia thought that I was white.

I wanted so badly to be white. To have a house that smelled of fresh flowers and lemons. A father who read the paper while sitting in his leather armchair. A mother who stitched needlepoint in a pastel cardigan draped over her shoulders and served sandwiches made with Oscar Mayer lunchmeat on Wonder Bread. I desperately wanted these things, even if it meant I had to deny my heritage and my family, earn another whack of Pop’s belt. Still, I shuddered when I imagined my father holding a printout of my test scores and seeing the word white next to my name.

When Pop told us the Cookie Story, this wasn’t the first time that he’d tried to educate us about our Filipino heritage. At dinnertime, over plates of steaming pork adobo, he described the Philippine flag with its red and blue trapezoids beside a white triangle dotted with three yellow stars in each corner and a golden sun in the center.

He also made us count in Tagalog—the primary language of the Philippines: "Isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima, anim, pito, walo, siyam, sampu." I struggled to recite between bites of stringy pork. I never made it above ten and only retained a few other simple words like mabuhay (hello) and salamat po (thank you). I stewed over those dinnertime Tagalog lessons as Sister Virginia waited.

No, Sister, I answered meekly, I’m Other.

She looked me up and down, then frowned. I peeked over at my two best friends, Stephanie Wiggins and Josephine Torrisi.

Stephanie had thin blond hair, a slightly upturned nose, and a smattering of light brown freckles. Josephine was Italian with thick black hair, an olive complexion, and a slightly hooked nose. Although I longed to have Stephanie’s WASP looks, I would have traded places with Jo in a heartbeat, too. After all, this was New Jersey during the 1970s and all the cool people were Italian—Frank Sinatra, Sylvester Stallone, Frankie Valli. I’d gladly have traded Filipino for Italian.

People often mistook me for an Italian. Like most Italian families in our neighborhood, our surname, Trogani ended with the letter i. When people casually made this assumption, I didn’t correct them. But this was different. This was an official government document that could end up in my father’s possession.

I decided to set the record straight. Actually, Sister, I’m Filipino.

Lids narrowed, Sister Virginia leaned over the desk to inspect my face. I could feel everyone’s eyes in the classroom boring into the back of my head. At last Sister Virginia straightened up with a curt, Fine, you’re—you’re Other. She shuffled away, her long black habit rustling as it swayed from side to side. The blood rushed to my cheeks as my classmates snickered. I didn’t dare look at any of them, not even Stephanie or Jo.

At one time, we were one of the few Filipino families in Irvington. When I told my classmates at St. Leo’s that my nationality was Filipino, they stared blankly at me, as if I had said I was from Mars. I felt like a freak. I desperately wished that I could disappear, or at least be somewhere else; a place where no one knew anything about me or my family. Somewhere I could just go along with the assumption that I was Italian or anything else that was considered more normal.

Fortunately, we Troganis found a way to take advantage of our racial obscurity. On frigid winter mornings when we couldn’t afford heating oil, which meant no hot water to wash or shower with, Pop would call the school and say it was a Filipino national holiday and the children would be staying home that day. Once he jokingly told my eldest sister, Anna, that our great-great-great-great-great grandfather threw the spear that killed the explorer Magellan when he discovered the Philippine Islands. She took him at his word and proudly repeated this information to her class, and it was accepted as fact. Another time my oldest brother, Martin, hung an old striped beach towel from a flagpole in our yard. When a passerby inquired about it, he fibbed and said it was the Filipino national flag and the man believed him.

People knew so little about the Philippines, we could make up anything and label it a Filipino tradition. If that didn’t work, we pilfered traditions from other cultures. Our massive extended family celebrated special birthdays and anniversaries with elaborate luaus, complete with whole pigs roasted over an open fire. When I questioned whether luaus were actually part of our culture—weren’t they Hawaiian?—my uncles rolled their eyes and explained, "These are Filipino luaus." Slap the word Filipino in front of anything and we somehow owned it.

As years passed, more Filipino families moved into the Irvington area. I befriended two other Filipinas who enrolled at St. Leo’s—Rosemarie Filart and Marie Antoinette (or Toni) Cruz. Both girls were born in the United States, making them pinays or Filipina Americans. Since I was only a half-blooded Filipina, I was considered a mestiza pinay. Luckily, this made no difference to Toni and Rose. These girls accepted me into their circle, never questioned my pale skin and eyes.

One of the best things about being friends with Rose and Toni, beside the fact that they were funny and kind, was how beautiful they both were. Rose’s face was striking, round as the moon, with heavy, down-curved lids framed by thick black lashes. Her nose was broad and flat, but the way it spread across her smooth brown face, it seemed delicate, not misshapen like my own. Thin pink lips framed a brilliant white smile. When Rose laughed, warmth reverberated throughout her body and shook her slight frame.

Rose’s father was a doctor, her mother a nurse. Though both had been well educated in the Philippines, Mr. and Mrs. Filart spoke to Rose and her two siblings in the pidgin or broken English common to most Filipino immigrants. I can still hear their mother’s high-pitched voice:

Roh-lund, durn off dat noisy delevision! It aches my head.

Leeza, you such a lucky girl to have good schooling in America. Hang up de phone and study, study, study!

Rose-muhree, give your friend more to eat! Mee-net, you want some chicken? We have plenty chicken, good to eat.

Yeah, sure, Ma. In a minute…, the Filart children would respond.

Toni’s appearance wasn’t as delicate as Rose’s, but she was what my father called a true island beauty. Thick black hair shiny as silk framed her oval face. Her complexion was darker, with a thick pouty smile and deep brown eyes filled with mischief. Toni’s mom was also a nurse, a common profession for Filipino immigrants. But unlike most Filipinos who were devout married Catholics, Toni’s mom was part of a growing 1970s American demographic—the single-mom. This provided Toni with an inordinate amount of freedom for an eleven-year old, often returning home after school to an empty apartment. On occasion I would join her, thrilled by the rare lack of adult supervision. Freed from the typical threats of nosy siblings, disapproving nuns, or glaring looks from my father, I’d run up, down and around the scarlet red carpeted staircases of my friend’s apartment building. The two of us would skip, shriek and annoy the other residents until Toni’s mother returned home from her shift at the hospital.

Mrs. Cruz would cook us pancit—a tangy Filipino noodle dish—and lumpia—crispy spring rolls fried in oil. We would munch down on the delicious food while her mom regaled us with stories of her childhood in the Philippines. Although extremely religious, Filipinos are also highly superstitious. One evening, Toni’s mom told us the story of a haunted graveyard. She lowered the lights and began:

"When I was little girl in de Pilippines, I never, ever go alone into de jungle, especially at night. My nanay warns me, de aswang come and steal little children away. De aswang is eeevil, evil spirit, live inside de trees. At night, de aswang breaks free from its roots and flies into de sky. If naughty girls or boys wander away from de village, de aswang swoop down and steal you away. Sometimes dey take puppies, pigs, or chickens, one time a fat carabao. My nanay cuts up spicy peppers and sprinkles dem on de tree stumps in de jungle. Dis is de bottom of aswang, still off hunting. He gets nasty surprise when he comes home!

"One night, we saw de fireflies dancing in de distance. My sister and I sneak away into de jungle. We forget about our nanay’s