Aila Dinglasan 6° Language Arts 5/17/95

Race in Me

Though I am young, I am constantly asked

to define myself as one race

But only fill in one box

I think and think, and question it But how can that be?

I'm not just a race, but a mixture...

In me I have an old elderly couple

The woman speaks Tagalog, Visayan, and English as one

The man speaking the same, but also Chinese and Spanish

The woman, my grandma, talks to me in her tongue

Listening in fustration, I still don't understand

I'm not just a race but a mixture...

I have a father in me

Who chose not to teach us Tagalog, our main dialect

Or about his family's ancestral languages:

Irish, Danish, and Chinese... I've learned none, but I still know

I'm not just a race, but a mixture...

Although my mother is neither,

she follows the life of a Polonesian and Mexican

Trying to speak Hawaiian and Spanish, respectively

but with the wrong accent... They rub off on me a iii', but I still know

I'm not just a race, but a mixture...

In our family we all look different

So when somebody looks at me in the eye,

they ask," What's your race? " I

just reply," Eurasian American-Filipina, Irish, Danish, German, Spanish, & Chinese" because

I'm not just a race, but a mixture...

At last my decision, I choose" other"

And fill in Eurasian American

Beneath that, my races

Because it has to be known, read, and heard that

I'm not just a race, but a mixture...

So, as I look back at those" choose a race" forms

all that I am, I remember unforgettably

And what I knew then, I know now, and will always know

That I can't be " just a race ".... There's more to it than that because I'm not iust a race. but a mixture...