Book 1, Post 2 - American Like Me by America Ferrera

Book 1, Post 2 - American Like Me by America Ferrera 

As I've been reading America Ferrera's, American Like Me, I honestly feel so much more educated on the matter of living in American culture as an "outsider". Many essays in Ferrera's book are filled with personal stories and recollections from real-life experiences of people who have grown up in America as immigrants or as relatives of immigrants. One particular story stood out to me more than any other story in the book. It was a chapter written by Geena Rocero, an immigrant from the Philippines who now lives in the U.S. and is a successful model, host, producer, and trans rights advocate.  

Geena grew up in Manila, Philippines with her family and talks about how she was surrounded by a vibrant Catholic community that even though very conservative, would celebrate the Catholic religion with Fiestas which involved transgender beauty pageants that would occur on a monthly basis. As a young child, Geena always felt like she was a female, which her mother was very accepting of. After her mother moved to San Fransisco so that it would be easier for the rest of her family to move to the U.S. eventually, it left Geena and the rest of her family to live in the Philippines as they awaited papers approving them to move to the U.S. Although Geena desperately missed her mother, she found a mother figure in a transgender beauty pageant queen named TigerLily who acted not only as a mother figure to her but as a coach and manager who inspired and encouraged Geena to compete in Manila's transgender beauty pageants. From the very first time Geena started competing, she thrived and was very successful and met a vibrant community of like-minded individuals in the pageant realm that she says became her family. When competing in pageants she felt accepted and celebrated for who she was. She eventually was notified that she and her family were now eligible to move to the U.S. with her mom, and although she was happy to be reunited with her mother, she was very upset to leave the community and family she had found in pageants. Once she moved to California, she felt homesick and out of place until she found a group of people her age who had immigrated from Manila. The group quickly became close-knit friends for her and they encouraged her to compete in a local transgender beauty pageant where she ended up doing well in but now as well as she could have done because she said her English had not yet been perfected to realistically showcase her personality. She realized that a key difference between being transgender in America and being transgender in the Philippines was that in the Philippines, transgender individuals were "highly visible" and very celebrated in pageants but they were not "politically recognized" whereas in the U.S. it was the opposite. In the U.S. transgender individuals were more politically recognized but less visible and celebrated and she made the best of her situation and said she was very grateful that she got to experience both of these different cultures. 

Although Geena and I are very different, as I am a straight white female born in the U.S. and she is a transgender female who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines, I noticed that we have a lot of similarities. As a child and teenager, I used to compete in pageants like the Miss Massachusetts Teen USA pageant and it was the best experience of my life. Like Geena, having been an extremely shy kid, when I was on stage at pageants I came out of my shell and felt so celebrated and confident so I can relate to Geena's love for pageants. I find it so amazing that she was able to make a career out of pageants. I wish I could because competing used to be my favorite thing in the world.