Text: Julianne Gazzingan Illustration: Cherie Kwok
Many of my greatest childhood memories as a second-generation Filipino are being nestled inside someone’s house, surrounded by rows of steel chafing dishes loaded with food and karaoke filling the rooms with song. Certainly, it was always my favourite time of the week.
It’s 2024, and I still find myself in similar circumstances. Except this time I’m older, sat around a table with parents, titos (uncles) and titas (aunts), reflecting on the importance of the fiesta as a community-building practice.
Truly a necessary mechanism for Filipino migrants and an embodiment of bayanihan – a Filipino Indigenous pedagogy capturing the “lifestyle, consciousness, decision-making, and character of Filipino communities.” I look around and wonder, how has this community been established so quietly yet sustained so resiliently?
Text: Julianne Gazzingan Illustration: Cherie Kwok