Navigating Cultures, Forming Identities

Teresita  Ang See, Carmela Ang See

doi:http://doi.org/

Abstract

This paper recounts the personal history of the Ang Family, focusing especially on three generations of women, starting with the family’s matriarch Carmen Davenport Barraca Ang, to her daughter Teresita Ang See, and lastly to Carmalea Yinching Ang See. Each life account brings out stories of bravery, creativity, and perseverance amidst hardships and challenges in a difficult environment. Carmen, for instance, was a Filipina married to a Chinese, who lived in China and then in Binondo. She endeared herself to her husband’s Chinese family by learning how to speak Hokkien fluently. Teresita Ang See attended conservative Chinese schools in Binondo but used her experience as a student of political science at the University of the Philippines in helping her late husband Chinben See found in the early 1970s Pagkakaisa Sa Pag-unlad; this was a non-government organization which fought anti-Chinese racism in the country. The story ends with Teresita’s children, Carmelea Yinching and Sean Benson, and how they were raised to be comfortable as Filipinos foremost, with the primary identity as Filipino and yet take pride in and promote the duality of their heritage. Through the narratives, the authors aim to give a glimpse of the complexity of identities and identity-formation, shaped as they were by the objective environment and the necessities of the times.

Keywords

Identity, ethnicity, ethnic Chinese, Chinese Filipino, Hokkien, family

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Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

Navigating Cultures, Forming Identities

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