The Nausea of Post-Colonial Limbo

By Reece Canonigo / Winter 2025

I.

I wish I could start this essay with a masterfully written passage reflecting on my childhood memories. I’ve read so many essays who manage to capture familiar and familial feelings to the point where I’m moved to tears. Are these tears out of jealousy? Or is it that sinking feeling that I missed out on some emotional connections I could’ve had?

Because for as long as I’ve known, there’s always been a strange loneliness in my heart. It’s one that swells and aches when I hear people talk about hanging out with their family, when I hear my friend talking to their mom in the same language, when I can’t keep up with family conversations in the Philippines because they’re speaking Tagalog too fast for me to understand.

I wish I could talk about spending my time playing on a family farm, finding peace in the shade of trees, having good times with friends, growing up with them together. I’m sitting in class and I’m living in these people’s stories and their struggles as if they were my own. The truth is, my childhood was a blur and every time I try to conjure up a beautiful scene in my mind, it’s all fuzzy. They’re all images of places I don’t feel like I have a connection with, and I want to reconcile with these now-liminal memories because even today my mind feels unclear.

My dad was in the US Navy, so growing up for me was all about moving around. I spent half of my life in Japan and Bahrain. In both these countries I was taught in American schools run by the Department of Defense inside of military bases. Every single kid in there was the child of a proud patriot, me included.

I found being in those bases fascinating, a feeling of safety, naivety, and isolation from the outside world. Even though these bases were thousands of miles apart, the buildings and the people were the same. It felt like a portal to another place. Inside these walls was the American dream manifest. Giant commissaries with revered US- imported goods, filled with famous American fast-food chains, American-style bowling alleys, even the way the roads were built looked as if it were chipped out straight from the U.S. and grafted onto these countries.

I talked to proud patriots in uniform, I made friends with American children, Japanese American children, Bahraini American children, Filipino American children. We spoke only English, and it was the only life we knew. When people asked me what my nationality was, I’d say proudly with my chest, “I’m American!” And within these cream- colored concrete walls is where I felt my home was. Sometimes my family and I’d go out to the streets of Tokyo, and downtown Manama but I always felt scared to leave the gates because my parents always called the outside dangerous because “you never know what could happen with these people”, and that at least inside the base you’ll be nice and safe with all these military people.

For years, I genuinely thought I was American even though I’m Filipino. I only ever spoke English even though I could understand Tagalog. I even spoke to my own mom in English, and we’d have trouble conversing because for her I spoke it so fast that she couldn’t keep up with me. I’d tell her, “Mommy, why don’t you just learn it faster?” Every time we’d go to the Philippines to visit for a month or two, we’d have big family gatherings, and they’d always ask me,

“Reece, do you know what [some Tagalog word] means?”

Reece, can you try saying [some Tagalog sentence]? Just try it!”

“Wow, Reece, your English is so good, you’re just like an American!”

Even my native country, I felt alienated. Like I was being paraded around to our family almost like a symbol of our migratory success. Look at this basically American child! He speaks such good English; do you hear his accent? He’s going to be our first doctor, or lawyer, or engineer making a huge salary so he could bring it back home and help us! I had no idea who these people were, nor did I care. My mom insisted that they’re close family and that I should be more open to them. I’ve never seen them before. It’s ironic that at that point I haven’t even stepped foot in America, only its territories.

II.

It was when I moved to the Philippines at 13 when I got to live there after being away all those years. I lived there until I was 20 years old. Once again, I was swept into this strange new place, and I hated it. Everything was just so loud. I thought it was so dirty and so rowdy. I pinched my nose when I walked by rain gutters overflowing with trash. I looked at the roads filled with cracks and potholes, and I’d scoff. I covered my ears from the loud noises of cars, tricycles and jeepneys. I cursed at the heat and humidity as I fanned myself. It was a world so different from mine that I refused to believe that this was my “homeland”. This is the Philippines? This place? I came here with a different pair of eyes that were so fixated on “American” standards. This led me to believe I had some feeling of superiority over Filipino people because anything foreign I considered as “less civilized”.

At school, I’d interject when someone would mistake me as “from here”. I’d say, “No, I’m not Filipino, I’m actually American!” and I’d say that with so much pride and dignity in my words. I look back and see that those words were only loud to mask the shame I felt in being Filipino.

My parents told me that this is where we’re staying, for good. At the time I didn’t understand why that mattered because we didn’t really “stay” anywhere. Once I started going to high school, I realized that meant accepting the circumstances, settling down, making friends, going to university, getting a cushy job somewhere, and dying in the Philippines. And so, I did that and lived there for nearly a decade. I planted my roots in the soil, made meaningful relationships with people, close friends, and had cherished experiences. Over time I didn’t think about America anymore, nor would I ever consider myself to be one in the end. Being Filipino became my pride, even though I still couldn’t speak Tagalog. My friends and I would often mock how “white people” acted and spoke. Friends would ask me if I’d ever live there and I’d say never. I could never be “one of them”, “they’re so white”, “they all sound the same”, “what could I have over there that we couldn’t get over here? Life is just so much simpler here”. I believed things have finally changed for me and maybe this place is my real home, the place I grew to love, where I could finally find my roots.

There was something funny about that dissonance. When I first arrived, I was looking down at the uncivility and dysfunction of the Philippines, proclaiming myself as American, only to later reconnect with my Filipino identity and start to build resentment and disdain towards that same American “whiteness” I was so proud of. Inside of me was two spirits that wanted nothing to do with each other. This tore apart my being and left me with a liminal blurriness I can’t seem to make clearer.

III.

The struggle with my identity created rifts not only within myself, but between me and my own family. In the Philippines, I regained contact and lived with my two uncles and my one grandmother whom I called Nanay (mother in Tagalog). For a long time, it felt like I was living with strangers who claimed to know me. Sure, we talked, but there was an inherent language barrier that kept me from sharing things about myself, and vice versa. I spoke to them in English, and they replied to me in Tagalog. I even do the same now with my mom and it makes me feel like an outsider.

Nanay was ill. She’s been living with us and had a stroke when I turned three. She couldn’t walk without a cane, she could barely talk because the muscles in her jaw were weak, she couldn’t carry out fine motor movements without shaking so she couldn’t cook. All she could do without having any pain was sit in front of the TV and play cards in silence.

As a kid I’d be shy with her because I didn’t know her that well. My mom would tell me stories about the things we’d do together. Nanay used to take care of me a lot when we’d visit the Philippines. She loved to cook, sing, and dance. She loved to knit and play cards, tell me stories as she cradled me, and loved to make me laugh. I can’t remember any of these moments because I was just too young.

I used to sit across from Nanay at the dinner table in silence. There I was, her only living grandson, and we were strangers. I couldn’t really speak to her, the rift between us just too big. Years later, when I turned 16, she suffered another stroke that left her bedridden, unable to move any part of her body. For the next four years, all she could do was lay in her bedroom, one that I watched turn into a makeshift hospital room over the years. There’d be oxygen tanks stocked in the corner, multiple IV poles by her bedside, the room constantly smelled like rubbing alcohol and soap. My mom bought her a medical bed, so it’d be easier to have her sit up or turn to the side, with the metal railing to keep her from falling over. She could only look around with her eyes and most of the time she stared at the ceiling with her mouth agape.

That entire time I was afraid to go into her room to say goodbye when I left for school or greet her when I came home. There I was, her only living grandson, and I was afraid to look at her. Her only living grandson, in her final years, and I’d only see her once or twice a day. Or on some days, not at all. Mom would tell me that she can hear me, and she misses me, but I didn’t believe that.

One night during the pandemic, Nanay fell extremely ill. I woke up that morning and realized my family had left in the middle of the night to bring her to the emergency room. She passed away a month later in the hospital. I didn’t get to visit her. The next time I saw Nanay, she was in a casket. I remember going to her wake and even then, feeling hesitant to look at her. However, I felt that I owed it to her, so I did.

She looked nice. She had on an olive-green dress. Her makeup was done, and her hair neatly tied up in a bun. Not at all like what I feared at home. I rested my hands on her casket and my eyes settled on her face, I felt nothing but shame. I felt a hole grow in my chest that turned into guilt. There I was, her only living grandson, and only now I had the courage to look at her.

What kind of grandson refuses to look at her grandmother in the eye? Or gets scared of her? Or becomes a stranger to her? Is it that I’ve spared no love in my heart for family? Did I fail her in her final moments?

Today, I still ruminate on my relationship with Nanay. There were tears that fell on her casket, but at the time I thought I didn’t deserve to cry. How could I deserve to say I was “in mourning” if there was nothing for me there to mourn; no memories for me to reflect on, no shared moments of joy, sadness, or anger? I’m writing about her in this essay, as if I ever had a deep conversation with her, asked her how her day was, or laughed together, but the truth is, I feel like I abandoned her in her final moments.

I admit, there’s a viscous feeling of guilt that oozes from my fingers as I write this. But the reality is, my relationship with Nanay was a product of forces much larger than the both of us. There were forces that coerced me into ripping out the fabric of my very identity out of cultural shame. There were forces that brutally stripped the language out of my tongue. There were forces that kept me from hugging my own grandmother, greeting her in the morning, or looking her in the eye before she died.

Months after my Nanay had passed, dad got a backpay of disability benefits and, to my dismay, my parents decided that we would move to America. The very notion of that idea brought me sick to my stomach and drove me into months of anxiety and depression. I had to scrap everything. But as I’m writing this now, I feel like what I can recall from memory can’t do justice to describe how I truly felt in those moments of pain. My friends would ask me funny things like,

“Oh my god, Reece, you’re gonna be so whitewashed!”

“Do you think you’ll get your accent back over there? Haha!”

“Don’t forget to bring me pasalubong (gifts), okay?”

Which later turned into,

“So, when am I gonna see you again?”

“When are you coming back to the Philippines? Are you like, leaving for good?”

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“I hope you don’t forget about us.”

I felt betrayed by my family because they were forcing me to leave. I felt deceived. I felt like a fool to think that my migration stories were over. My parents told me that I’m going to find success there in America. You’re going to get a better education, a higher salary, more than you’ll ever find in the Philippines. “You’re going to complain and be angry now, but just trust us, you’ll change your mind and it’ll be worth it!” They said, but I wasn’t going to hear it. As far as I knew, they were killing me. I, someone who once took pride in my American identity, who believed they had finally reclaimed their roots in their real home and scoffs at the American dream, must find meaning once again in a different and stranger land.

IV.

For years I never told anyone my story. It wasn’t because I was guilty to tell them, or because I was avoiding my past. It was because I didn’t know that there was even a story to tell. I’ve been so wrapped up in trying to figure out whether I was a Filipino, or whether I was an American, that I didn’t see that I was really living a post-colonial identity. This is the identity I’ve been struggling to define, the one that gave me this liminal and lonely feeling I get whenever I try to answer the question, “Who am I?” History has revealed to me that I’m not alone in this struggle. I, like many others, have been engulfed by forces so far beyond our control, beyond generations.

The Philippines has a rich, long, but brutal history of imperialism and colonialism. It encompasses many stories of being colonized, the fight for independence of the motherland, the martyrs who gave up their lives for it, the national heroes who were steadfast in the faces of their enemies.

The Spaniards settled in the Philippine archipelago in 1565 while they searched for riches on islands on the Eastern hemisphere. Filipinos were subject to abuse from the Spaniards. There were malignant acts of slavery through the encomienda system. Extreme taxation and forced labor destroyed the native people as they were forced to abandon their religion and language to learn Spanish instead. After three centuries of domination, the Philippines finally freed itself from Spanish rule after winning the Philippine Revolutionary War in 1898. The revolutionary forces drove them out in the Battle of Manila Bay with the help of the American Navy, who’d also conflicted with Spain at the time (Cullinane & Hernandez).

After the war, the American forces, despite promises of Philippine independence, remained in Manila and refused to let Filipino forces back into the city. American diplomats started negotiations for the purchase of the Philippines. Insistent on maintaining their sovereignty, America bought the Philippines from Spain for 20 million US dollars (McCoy). This marked the beginning of the Philippine-American war and the next four years of bloodshed. The Filipino army was crushed, its people brutalized: 200,000 civilians dead, maybe more. There were endless instances of Filipino genocide that ravaged the islands until the end of the war in 1902 (Natividad).

The Philippines was now owned by America. What followed for the next half century was the homogenization of the Filipinos into the practices of a more “civilized” West.

Conflict destroyed the unity of the people, poverty was rampant, infrastructure was broken, and the country was struggling. America, in their benevolence, sought to uplift the people via democratic governance. American leaders worked closely with Filipino landowners and money-lenders, members of the elite classes, to bring land, economic, and educational reforms to the country which later proved successful. Though, suffrage restrictions were implemented by these same democracies where only a small percentage of the people could vote, reinforcing the power of the Filipino elite. The implementation of western-style economics through US trade policies allowed their products into the country without paying any import taxes. This made American products cheaper and made it harder for local businesses to compete in the new free- market capitalist economy. Because of this, the Philippines focused on exporting agricultural goods like sugar into the US which were protected from taxation. The people who saw the most profit from this were members of the Philippine elite class: the landowners who owned plantations and mills (Cullinane & Hernandez), the same people working with the new government. In addition to their political power, these trade deals gave them economic power–they finally had the key to the nation which eventually became a weapon to be used against the working class and the poor.

The Philippines eventually found independence from America after World War II, but it wasn’t without struggle. It’s imperial perceptions that the first governor of the Philippines had, William Howard Taft, in 1908, where he said that 90% of the Filipinos were densely ignorant and incapable of self-governance or independence (Immerwahr) that made it so hard to find our freedom. This is the same perception who imposed on us their own ideas of civilization, abandoned it, and let the country decompose.

By the time the Filipinos were free, they had suffered through several wars. Their existence was defined by occupation from more powerful nations, cultural domination, and economic struggle for centuries.

When the dust had settled, the elite had already taken all the wealth and power. Philippine independence after the war bled an era of spiraling economic downturns. For the next decades, the Philippine administrations, fattened by nepotism, corruption, and violence plunged the country into the depths of the third world.

Just like that of the West, the Philippines was founded on neoliberalism. It’s what was given to its people, and the only thing they may ever know. With every elected president, the national debt rose higher and higher. The economy became overdependent on exportation as a source of income because of pre-WW2 regulations, leading to a shortage of manufacturing facilities and jobs. The agricultural sector employed poor farmers; underpaid and overworked to serve the landowner families who came from old money. 20% of the population is in poverty, working daily wages not enough to feed even a single person, let alone an entire family (Goodman). It’s a heart- wrenching manifestation of the extreme neoliberalism that came from a failed independent state. It’s the symptoms Monbiot describes where the country’s crises were used as an excuse to deregulate the corporations and drain the public sectors that are already barely functioning due to a lack of government funding (Monbiot). That’s precisely what’s happening in the country today, they’re echoes from an imperial decision that rippled on for centuries.

From the rubble of a tumultuous civilization rises a small fire of the migrant dream to the Western world–an idea that’s been implanted into Filipino minds for generations; an idea stemming from a place of misguided colonial inferiority complexes and self-hatred, but also necessity and duty. And so, begins the mechanization of the Philippines into a labor-exporting state. The extreme poverty of the Filipino people leads them to look outwards. Now, the desperate and the vulnerable can become the perfect producers to fuel the neoliberalist views of countries like America, who outsources their work for cheap wages. It’s the perfect system.

V.

One morning during breakfast, I talked to my mom about the research I’ve been doing for this essay. We both didn’t know about the Philippine-American war prior until now and I said to her,

“I wonder what the Philippines would’ve looked like if America kept staying there.” “Maybe it would’ve been cleaner, and we wouldn’t be as poor as we are [the Philippines] now. But imagine if we didn’t go to America?”

She laughed.

“You probably would’ve ended up as a garbage collector or something!”

This wasn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. She was serious. In her laughter, I could see she wasn’t joking and there was a fear in her words, not as an individual, but the universal fear shared by a nation that equates foreign opportunity with survival.

We knew to speak of the weak and vulnerable with compassion, I was taught to pray for them, be charitable, to have zeal for service. But me and my mom talk about poverty as if it were a natural part of life. When Chomsky talked about the eighth principle of the concentration of wealth and power, “Keep the rabble in line”, he said that neoliberalism aims to inhibit class consciousness, and how “we simply don’t talk about class” (Chomsky). In the Philippines it’s almost like everybody knows their place. Squatter homes built from corrugated metal and scraps can be found right across the street from the richest, gated neighborhoods. They will live side by side in this broken ecosystem, where both the poor and the rich believe that this is their deserved place in the natural order. I was taught there was nothing I could do about it, that it’s “just the way things are”. Perfect hegemony. Little was I taught to raise my arms in protest for the marginalized. Little was I taught about the government that stealing from them blindly. Little was I taught about the imbalance of power that exists in our administrative history that fueled their suffering. I just had to be aware and pray for their survival. This is an extreme form of class unconsciousness and a testament to the effects an imperialist past had on society.

Imperialism turned America into an invisible singularity, one with a pulling force as natural as gravity, one whose center is at the heart of the empire. It defines a Filipino’s success story as departure from the very country they were born in. One filled with promises of wealth, stability, and success at the sacrifice of their culture.

These ideologies wrecked my perceptions of my home country, as I shared the same mentalities as its colonizers. It’s the perception where one views themselves as more civilized than the other, insisting on owning the native lands, denying the natives the right to live on that very land, and leaving it to rot because of their own “superior” competence (Said). At the same time, I’ve also carried the same mentality of inferiority and resentment towards America. It’s nauseating to be shaken up in all this whiplash. The history of both Americans and the country it colonized ripple through me constantly, displacing the core of my soul, leading to a blurred identity–one filled with vague memories and displaced patriotism, one of inferiority and superiority, one of loneliness, and one of alienation. That is the neocolonial identity, and it aches inside of me and those like me.

There was a bitterness I held against my parents all these years for bringing me to America, for having me grow up lonely. For raising me away from my family, plunging me into the depths of western society, forcing me to continuously set my roots ablaze. For having me be disgusted by the lands with whom I share an ancestral connection with. For breaking any connections that I could’ve made with my Nanay to the point where I could barely look her in the eye in her final years. But really, I see now that despite how angry, lonely, and confused I felt, their decision to raise me that way ultimately came from a place of compassion.

Dad joined the US Navy to escape poverty in rural Manila. For 30 years he worked to send money back to the Philippines, to take care of his mom and six brothers, and help them immigrate to America. Mom worked in Bahrain to escape poverty in rural Manila. For 15 years she was a singer in a hotel band, using her talent and passion to send money back to the Philippines. To take care of her sick parents, to pay for her siblings’ educations.

I exist because of their migrations. I exist because of the Filipino’s long history of colonization. And though I read about the imperialist and neoliberalist systems and burn with loathing, I failed to recognize that they’ve dictated everything about my parents’ lives, about my life, about Nanay’s life. I’m not without history. I’m not without identity. And though these systems fragmented my family, and I thought I’ve been left with nothing to care for, I have a history that I just never saw, because they’ve been lost in untold stories. With this history I can look back at myself with kind eyes, one that keeps me from cursing myself for having such an unstable identity. Even though I still live in this state of liminality, where my family tree is scarce and thin, there surely exists an ocean of power within my roots, one where I can either choose to simply skim across its surface and live with righteous indignation or, instead, dive deeper and let the power of the untold stories fill me, to let my two clashing spirits finally rest.

References

Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. Vintage Books Edition. Vintage Books, 1992.

Monbiot, George. “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems”. Accessed 16 Mar. 2025

Chomsky, Noam. “Requiem for the American Dream”. Kanopy, 1 Jan. 2016.

Cullinane, Michael, Hernandez, Carolina G., Borlaza, Gregorio C.. "Philippines". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Mar. 2025. Accessed 16 March 2025.

Paniza, Marc. “The legacy of American imperialism in the Philippines: From colonisation to modern-day neocolonialism” Honi Soit, 4 Sept. 2024. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.

McCoy, Alfred W. "The Philippines: Independence without Decolonization" in 'Asia-The Winning of Independence' Edited by Robin Jeffrey (1981), Pp. 23-70.

Daniel Immerwahr. “Philippine Independence in U.S. History: A Car, Not a Train” Pacific Historical Review 1 May 2022; 91 (2): 220–248.

Natividad, Ivan. “Why the story of the United States needs to be challenged” UC Berkeley NEWS, 12 Apr. 2022. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025

Goodman, Peter. “‘There’s No Other Job’: The Colonial Roots of Philippine Poverty” The New York Times, 5 Jan. 2024. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025