For this week's assignment, I played editor on Grace's excellent "Election Day" post.
Food and the Filipino Joy Luck Club
Last week Jon and I attended a party to celebrate birthdays within my parents’ group of friends. I call this group the “Filipino Joy Luck Club” because, everyone in the group is a Filipino immigrant. Most of their extended families remain in the Philippines and they have created “family” among their friends in the Charleston area. These parties feature enough food to feed an army, so we (mostly American-born) children of the Filipino Joy Luck Clubbers tend to show up, eat, and leave the “old people” to do their thing.
This weekend’s party prominently featured pancit palabok -- noodles over which you can add sauce and other toppings. It's the savory noodle version of an ice cream sundae. At this party the toppings included diced boiled eggs and bits of fried garlic, which had a delightful crunch. The sauce was brown and slightly sweet; perhaps it was chicken or shrimp sauce. (At most Filipino parties, even Filipino-Americans are as clueless as our non-Filipino friends about what’s in the dishes. We either ask the older folks what’s in there, or we just shrug and eat.)
There were many other delicious dishes, but they were pretty well decimated before Jon could snap a picture of them.
Quite a few desserts accompanied dinner, though Jon also had a hard time getting a picture of them before the ravenous crowd descended. He did, however, manage to get a shot of a dessert containing ube, or purple yam, an ingredient that always makes non-Filipinos gasp, “What is that?” Though cursed with a preternaturally purple hue that makes it look inedible, the yam is harmless. For some reason, Filipinos love to put it in desserts, including pastries and even ice cream. I don’t find ube desserts objectionable, but they don’t excite me, either. So while it was fun to get a picture of the ube ice cream at the party, I did not partake of the violently purple fare.
South Carolina – It is a-changin'
Spending time at this intergenerational, international, mixed-heritage gathering made me realize that, as this presidential election nears, the American electorate is increasingly diverse. Not only are we ethnically diverse, but the structures of our families continue to change. Many of my peers at the party were single parents or cohabiting without marriage. None of them talked politics, but I’m sure that, among my peers, there was a healthy mix of conservative and liberal views, while our parents, for the most part, hold conservative views.
What does all this diversity have to do with the election? Well, in South Carolina, it probably won’t have an impact. South Carolina is the second or third most “red” state in the Union. However, if my generation is already so different from our parents, what will the grandchildren at the party be like when they are old enough to vote? What will South Carolina be like in 15 years?
Our state has one of the fastest growing Hispanic populations in the country, and Charleston is already full of us Filipinos. I don’t know if the state will be more conservative or more liberal, but it will certainly be different. Whatever the changes are, I’m optimistic they will be good ones. A diversity of experiences and points of view generally leads to positive change, even if it takes a while for the changes to be reflected in the halls of power.
My parents and their friends, who are all naturalized American citizens, take their civic duty seriously and rarely miss voting at elections, even the local ones that don’t get much media coverage. Here’s hoping my generation and the ones after follow their lead and realize what a privilege it is to vote and make our increasingly diverse voices heard.
