Filipina American writer and speaker, Angela Garbes (pronounced gar-BEHZ), is a vocal proponent of mothers, mothering, and the generations of good that can come of it—and she knows firsthand that being a “mother” is just one facet of a person’s identity. The Beacon Hill resident recently won the Jeanette Williams Award from the Seattle Women’s Commission to honor her work, leadership, and advocacy for women’s issues through an intersectional lens. Garbes sat down with Carolyn Bick for the Northwest Asian Weekly to talk about the experiences that shaped who she is today, and how she hopes to help weave a better future for her children’s generation and generations yet to come.
Angela Garbes
Northwest Asian Weekly
I’d like to start with your earliest memory of growing up Filipinx in Philadelphia. But instead of just asking what it is, I wanted to also ask why it sticks with you, and how it may have been a seed who rooted and from whom a part of you grew?
Angela Garbes
That’s a really good question. I would say that the first thing I really remember, it’s not like one particular meal—but I remember eating Filipino food, growing up, and being aware after being around friends that our food was different.
There was a dish that my mom would make on the weekends called champorado, which is an unsweetened rice porridge that has chocolate in it. And then you serve that with what’s called tuyo, which is a dried fish.
[She] would fry it, and the whole house would smell like fish—like a pungent, dried, aged fish scent. And then you would have to very carefully scrape off the scales and then pull the meat from the very, very little bones, because if you ate them, they would get stuck.
I would always complain, and I was like, “Will you please take the meat off of the tinik,” which is what the little [fish] bones are called.
I think that that’s so many things about my life. We grew up in a predominantly white community, but my parents raised us speaking English. So, assimilation was definitely something that was taught in my family. But even with assimilation, my parents just could not give up Filipino food. They cooked Filipino food very regularly, and I always loved it. And I think it also was … the way I felt most connected to that identity, because I felt so far away from the Philippines. … There was, like, one Filipino family that we would see. And so there was something there where it was just like, “Okay, this is how I know I’m Filipino, because we eat stinky fish and chocolate porridge for breakfast (laughs). We don’t have cereal.”
I think part of the reason why it sticks with me is it’s … the food. And it’s thinking about my parents, because I always was trying to understand them and where they came from, and why [we] were here in America. I had a lot of questions. I think they were like, “Why do you have so many questions?” But it’s such a sense memory, because there’s that smell—which I can still sort of smell when I talk about it—which is very powerful. And also it’s the memory of my mom doing that for me, that kind of care that she took to take the fish—kind of painstaking and annoying, to take the meat from the bones, you know, all of that work for what is really not that much fish because they’re only like this big (holds up fingers). And so she would do that for me. It’s just one thing that’s kind of wrapped up in a lot of things that I think about.
Northwest Asian Weekly
Thank you for this. This actually brought something up because, in your writing, you mention “Filipinx,” and then you just said “Filipino.” What would you prefer?
Angela Garbes
Thank you for asking. The way that I approach it is when I’m talking about my own experience, I usually say “Filipina” or “Filipino,” and when I’m talking about the broader diasporic experience, I like as much as possible to use “Filipinx,” because it’s more inclusive. But I tend to use that about Filipinx American culture. When I talk about what happens in the Philippines, then I call that “Filipino.” That’s me. And I think probably any other Filipino person you talk to might have a different take on it.
Northwest Asian Weekly
Thank you. That answer about your mom cooking for you is a really great segue into the next question. In your most recent work, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, you assert that “mother” is simply an aspect of who you are. While it is a powerful aspect, what are your other aspects? How do they show up in your life and how are they informed by your own personal experiences and the experiences of generations past?
Angela Garbes
That’s a big question. [Before I was a mother,] I was just a person. I was just Angela for 37 years, before I gave birth and became a mother. So “mother” is an absolutely transformative thing, becoming a mother, and it’s a big part of my daily life. But I was myself longer than I was “mother,” longer than I’ve been a mother.
“Mother” is—I guess it’s an identity, but it’s also, in many ways, it’s a job. It’s a position in the world. So, I think about myself as, I’m just me. I’m Angela Garbes. I am a Filipina American. I’m the daughter of immigrants. I’m a writer. I am a karaoke fan. I’m a dancer. I’m a reader. I’m a TV watcher. I’m a very loyal friend.
I don’t think that mothering is the work that has dominated my life. For the last 10 years, for sure. But it won’t be. It will be a very important role that I have for the rest of my life. But as my children get older, they need less of me, day-to-day, they need physically less of me, and so I feel like I’m able to re-inhabit all of those parts of myself. And then, you know, the transformation of motherhood.
Becoming a parent is—I’ve been very humbled, because it really forces you to reckon with how you were parented, and how you want to present the world to young people and help them form consciousness. And so I think that I feel very much of what I do as a parent is in relationship to and in response to how my parents raised me, which is in itself a reaction to how they were raised by their parents, and going back generations.
So it does feel—to get to that second part of your question—that it is like an ongoing dialogue that I’m having with myself, and with my ancestors and with my culture, along with the parts of me that are … Filipino American.
So much of my personality and my identity has at times felt really at odds with my home culture that I grew up in. And so it’s making peace with that and squaring being a first-generation person in the United States, and navigating that with the culture of my family, my culture of origin.
Northwest Asian Weekly
I was able to read a bit of your book before [this interview], and in the bit I was able to read, I noticed some interesting language choices. I don’t know whether this was conscious, so I really do want to ask: In the introduction to your most recent work, I saw that you refer to the food that your parents would make, the Filipino food, as “their food,” versus “our food,” “our cultural food.” And I was wondering whether that was an intentional choice, or whether there is still some part of you that might be growing into the space of fully owning different identities, including being Filipino American.
Angela Garbes
That’s an incredibly insightful question. It was not conscious. Yeah, I didn’t even realize that. So, yeah, that’s huge. That’s a really great observation. I think I probably thought of it as “their food,” growing up. It is very much a process.
I actually worked as a food writer for years. This was the early aughts. At that time, it was harder than it is now to write about food from many cultures. You know, it was very like, “Oh, it’s noodles or pasta,” “fine dining,” and “ethnic food,” even though we’re all ethnic.
I 100% went into food writing and writing to be like, “I’d like to write myself into these stories”—people like me, our food, my food, my family. So we would write “immigrant food,” that kind of thing. I do think I feel some sort of guilt, because for a while, I feel like I turned away, and I think I kind of was like, “Oh, yes, I should know about French cuisine, right? I should know about Italian food. I should know about American food, whatever that is,” … maybe at the expense of exploring that of my own.
I’ve always been a really confident and curious cook, but I stayed away from Filipino food for a very long time, in part because I was like, “Well, I could never make it as well as my parents. And I already know what this is supposed to taste like, because I’ve been to the Philippines.” It tastes totally different.
I wouldn’t say that’s the case now. I wonder if I were to … write the book now, I think maybe I might say “our,” or there would be that transition.
I just made adobo last night for my daughters. I make a lot more Filipino food. It’s such a good question that you ask, because … I don’t have to make it the way my parents made it. I don’t have to make it any particular way, except for the way that I like it, and maybe the way that my kids like it.
I had bought a pork shoulder for an unknown reason. I was like, “Oh, I’ll make something with it (laughs). Maybe I’ll braise it or whatever.” And then I was like, “Well, I’ll just make adobo, because it’s fast.” And so I cut it up because it was a whole shoulder. It was so good, and I was like, “Oh, this is what I’m going to use from now on. This is the cut that I would use.”
Before I would have [thought], “I should use ribs,” or “I should use like sirloin,” or whatever—I should use what my parents would use. And now I’m like, “Well, no, I’ll just do what I want.” I think I’m more secure in my identity and how it manifests in my cooking.
Northwest Asian Weekly
There is a certain generational aspect to mothering and caregiving, even as care figures work to create a better experience for the people they are caring for. In your own experience in your caregiving aspect, what parts of your caregivers show up? What are they?
Angela Garbes
My parents tended to my body very physically, in my early years of my life. There’s a scene in the book where I write about, when I think about the feeling of safety, and being held, it’s my head in my mom’s lap, while she’s cleaning my ears with a little ear spoon. That’s my very favorite thing to do with my daughters. That’s like a memory that was shaken loose by the experience of—I’m always like, “Come, come on, I’ll clean your ears.” And I make them put their head in my lap.
I liked to cut their toenails when they were babies. I like to snot suck. There’s a thing called the NoseFrida, where you put this little thing [into their nostrils], and you suck. And there’s a filter, so you don’t inhale it.
I think about how English was not my parents’ first language. And I think a lot about how, when you’re pre-verbal … you can tell a 2-year-old, “I love you.” They don’t actually know what you mean. The only way that you know that as a child is it’s felt in the body. And so one thing that I know I do, because I’m just in this very animal, mammal body, and I take care of them. In that way—still, I mean. My 9-year-old is probably like, “We can put a little distance between us (laughs).”
But that’s what I remember—that that feeling of safety and security in my body was established very, very young.
That’s a wonderful thing that I got from my parents. But, as I got older, I was actively encouraged not to express my emotions. I was told not to cry, just learn how to hide my feelings. To suffer in silence.
That was like the legacy of what my parents inherited, and that was really confusing for me. And I think, also, it was not great for my development. But it’s interesting, because I never stopped feeling loved by my parents, and I think it’s because of that very, very physical, somatic feeling that I had from an early age. There’s a whole lot there that has been plenty to complicate that sort of love and care relationship, including being encouraged to put language to my emotions. Not feeling like I was allowed to fully express who I was. And so, that’s something that I’m very intentional about doing with my children.
Everyone’s caregivers, whether they’re your parents, people in your life—they show up, and they do so much, but we’re imperfect people and so there’s no way that you could do everything right. That’s something that I think about a lot.
Northwest Asian Weekly
In the introduction to your most recent work, one of the sentences that really caught my eye was a sentiment that was the exact same thing I said to an elder at a local Pride festival the other week, regarding activism. The sentence is, “You must believe in your ability to forge a future that is better than the present we currently inhabit, even if you never live to see it.”
To me, this feels very much core to your entire ethos of how you approach life, from the smallest hints in your writing—like when you drop the small detail of your just-learning-to-read 7-year-old asking you, “What’s a GMO?”—to the broader, unveiled statements by way of questioning the systems that exist.
All of this is to ask: To you, is mothering a form of activism? What does this mean for you?
Angela Garbes
Yeah, absolutely. I think that all social changes, major social change … [is] slow, and it’s generational work. I think about where we are right now, is such a—it’s really bleak. I just want to be realistic. People are saying that people in this country don’t have a right to exist. That my children don’t have a right, I don’t have a right to my body. That people in power can do what they want and won’t be held accountable.
Life has never been easy for people, but we live in a really distinct time. And I think about climate change, and I’m just waiting for my children to be really upset with me. … I sometimes worry, “Will they be mad at me for bringing them into this world?” That’s the fear that sometimes comes into my mind.
There’s a lot of work to be done. It’s a privilege to be hopeless. It’s a privilege to give up on change. Even if it’s hard to imagine the way out of things, or it’s hard to imagine what that change looks like, or how we’re going to bring it about, from my point of view, we need everyone doing whatever they can to effect positive social change and real equity.
I’m just realistic. I don’t know if I’m going to have full body autonomy in my lifetime. I just don’t know. But it’s so important to me that my children have that and their peers. It’s so heartbreaking for me to think that that’s not possible. I want it to be possible for them. I want it to be possible for them to be the people who make that possible for other people.
It’s helping each other get free, and mothering has been such a physical day-to-day, kind of down and dirty, very gritty, part of that activism. I’m not gassing moms up and just blowing smoke up their ass. [Mothering] is the seeds of social change … if you’re raising children who believe that they are enough and that everyone on earth deserves human rights like health, housing, pleasure, ease. I think that we really shape people’s entrance into the world and their consciousness. So, yes, I do. It’s not my only form of activism, but it is. It is. Absolutely.
Northwest Asian Weekly
If there’s one thing you want readers to take away from this interview, what would it be?
Angela Garbes
Since this is for Northwest Asian Weekly, it’s really nice to be interviewed for a community newspaper that has a long history with the community, the Asian American community here in Seattle. When I wrote this book, I told myself I wasn’t going to have explanatory commas. I wasn’t going to define Tagalog words, or what Filipino dishes are. If I wanted to describe a dish, because I take pleasure in describing it, I would do that. But I didn’t have to say, you know, “comma, a pork stew, comma.”
This is my second book. With my first book, [Like A Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy], I wrote this book that I felt like—I was just happy to be invited to the publishing party. It was a book about pregnancy that I never thought I would be writing—this turn in my career, where my career is now, is very different from what I imagined. I write a lot about the body and the physical reality of pregnancy. And I really wanted to make sure, as a Brown person, that the body on the cover looks like mine. And that was actually really hard to achieve. The rounds that I got for the book were a body in a moo moo. I was told that an ambiguous skin color might be … more inclusive of lots of people. I really had to kind of fight to get an image that I felt looked like me.
And so, there was something with this book, [Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change,] where I felt, “Oh, I have a certain amount of success. I wanted to leverage that.” When I was writing about pregnancy, I felt this weird obligation to be more universal, because that’s what pregnancy guidebooks are. I don’t feel like I was really writing fully as myself. And with this book, I gave myself permission to do that. And I was like, “I think [this book] will resonate with people who are, you know, interested in social change, who are mothers who are caregivers, who are parents, but it will not resonate with them in the same way that it will resonate with a first-generation, Filipina American—and not all of us, because … we are not a monolith. But when I hear from Kenai women, Filipina women, who are like, “This spoke to me, this made me feel seen.” “This is my mother’s story.” “This could be my family.” I just can’t even really describe how gratifying it is and how much it means to me.
This is the book that I would want. I write books that I want in the world, and the books that I needed. And so I gave myself permission to be fully myself, and to grow down deep into details of my life that before I might have questioned if that was like appealing a wide range of readers. And now, that’s been my most successful work.
So … I don’t know if I have a takeaway. I think that’s what I want to share, especially for Asian American readers, that we need more Asian American stories. We need more specifics. We need to complicate the narrative of the Asian American experience or first-generation experience, the immigrant experience, because there’s just endless stories. And we can’t be fooled into thinking that we have to make our stories palatable or castable for other people. There’s an audience of people waiting for the books. We are that audience, and we need to write those books.