The Serafino-Agars

Styling by Alexander-Julian

What is an American?
I think an American is someone who's decided to stay or be here in the United States. I also think that term itself, American, it's much broader, but people in the United States have decided that we're the only ones in America, even though there's North America and South America. We've decided to take the term and think it's just about us. 

What are the values of the Philippines and Lebanon?
I was raised in the United States. At the same time, my family is from Lebanon where the values were very much around entrepreneurship, business, making opportunities happen, and also the Philippines where the values were to work hard, to be accountable, and to provide for one's family.

What does the American Dream mean to you?
The American dream, in its many shapes, is really an idea of opportunity and the idea that it's possible for one person to have greater control or agency in shaping their life, and in exercising choice in their life. For me, it means something different than it did to my parents or grandparents, but we'll get into that in other questions.

What did the American Dream mean to your parents?
I think it meant different things. For my mom, I think the American dream meant creating something for herself that was wildly different than what her parents had wanted for her, but was unique for her and felt right. I think for my dad, the American dream meant coming and having what looked like where the benefits of this country and this lifestyle and working hard and then providing those opportunities to his children, whether that was skiing, doing things that his father never had a chance to do, or it was helping us go to college, or it was having a house and having the Beamer, the BMW, and doing what a lot of the other people did. It was being here, living life, working hard, and for my dad, it was going with the flow and assimilating into what was normal and surviving. Surviving, but doing well enough to notice that.

Who is able to thrive in the United States of America?
I think that's a really good question because sometimes there can be way more opportunity than other places, other countries of origin. It often seems like there's an open playing field and, at the same time, it's not a meritocracy. There's not a clear line of ‘do the work and then reap the rewards’ because of white supremacy and patriarchy that are such deep, deep parts of culture in the United States. My initial idea, thought, as who's able to thrive in the United States, initially, I think, white, middle class, upper-class people, generally. At the same time, thriving can take many different forms. You can be thriving because you faced adversity and figured out a way to hold on to your humanity or grow it because your life has purpose. You found a purpose, and you've been willing to follow that and have the opportunity and support to do that.

I think, who's able to thrive in the United States is really the person that decides to take the time to know who they are, what's important to them in their life, what they want to get done in their life before they die, and then the person that's working to make those things happen, that leads to ultimate fulfillment. That doesn't matter if you're in the United States or elsewhere. Although I tend to think in the background, subconsciously, United States is the best country in the world, and on a conscious level, I know it's not. I know, so many other people in the world have so much more figured out. It's just arrogance. That's part of this identity or this culture that we have in the US.

Who dies in the United States of America?
I think everybody dies and, at the same time, there are people who die more often from more horrendous experiences, particularly black and brown in the United States. Then because of racism or white supremacy, and because of capitalism and patriarchy, those big, big terms, but I think there's another death as well and that's a death of soul and that's a death of purpose. I think what is needed in this day and age, if we are to survive this transition around human-initiated climate catastrophe, is for people to awaken or reincarnate there, go have a death of normalcy and really find what is significant to them and what piece they have to offer for dealing with the world that we actually live in. It's the same world that we live in now versus the future. It's just because the future is now, we don't really think about it, but anything that we can figure out for ourselves in the future is a gift to ourselves. If we can have clean air, clean water, clean soil, productive healthy soil, then we're going to really change it. The question of who dies in the United States, yes, a lot of inequality we all do, and it really brings to light what we need to do to live.

Are you free in the United States of America?
I think I'm more free than I am in other countries and less free than I am in different countries. I don't really have a perspective, aside from seeing all the deaths and killing that's happening in the Philippines right now, for people who speak up against that current president there or the current regime that's in power. I think that if I were to start saying a whole bunch of different things on social media that I could get locked up. I really do. There's limited freedom, but within certain realms, I have a lot of freedom. I think the part that's empowering is the ability to visualize where we are, where we're going, and to work with other people to create structures that can help us make that transition, in this case, from capitalism to something that's better. That includes an environmental sustainability consciousness that really is self-preservation. The term that's been used often as a just transition, so just transition away from capitalism and exploitive, extractive businesses. I think that's an area to exercise freedom because it's needed, and it's needed to thrive.

Freedom I think is different. There's freedom to survive, and then there's freedom to really thrive, and thriving is harder. Thriving takes courage, and it takes being different, and really taking a whole level of responsibility as well. Because it can't just be one person thriving. It really has to be an interconnected group of people doing it. It's just so much more satisfying if that can happen. That is hard. That is hard to do in a very individualistic culture.

Are you patriotic towards the United States of America?
No, I don't think I am patriotic toward the United States. If the United States is doing something that really is of benefit to other people, versus self-interest for businesses, multinational corporations, and a very few rich people, then that would be different. I don't see that happening very often. I think the United States has a long way to go to implement and to test its experiment in democracy. Am I patriotic toward the United States? Not particularly.

Are you patriotic towards the Philippines and Lebanon?
I have empathy for the people there, to a certain extent. I have more because I've been to the Philippines multiple times. I've not been back to Lebanon, but I also don't like seeing what's happened because I do feel a connection with people there. Am I patriotic towards my country of origin? Again, it's not so much about the country. It's about people, the connection that I feel, and the humanity that I feel with them, so empathy.

Why did your parents emigrate from the Philippines and Lebanon?
On one side, it was my great-grandparents coming from Lebanon. On the other side, it was my grandfather, and father, and grandmother, and aunt coming from the Philippines. They came here because there was more opportunity to provide for their children and their families, and they wanted to experience and make something different. My family in Lebanon left. It was Syria then when they left around 1908. That was before World War I and the Ottoman Empire was collapsing, which led to economic chaos. I just think there were better jobs or opportunities in the United States. There was this huge entrepreneurial spirit for the Christian Lebanese Arabs. Yes, they could come here to the United States and when they came here, they were ambiguous but when my grandmother was, let's see, four years old. Then it was ruled that people of Lebanese, Middle Eastern descent, their skin was white enough to be that of an American so they got the white privilege of being here. In that way, they've got opportunity in whiteness.

For my dad, my Lolo, my Lola, they came for a better life for their children and their grandchildren. Definitely the opportunity to go to college. The Philippines had been bombed immensely in World War II. Manila was mostly leveled with all the bombing that the United States did while it was occupied by Japan. I think that with people dead and the opportunity to go, which came from my grandfather being in the Philippine Scouts, and then coming and being a part of the US Army, that was just a much clearer choice because they were leaving a country that had been absolutely devastated.

What is your favorite thing about the United States of America?
My favorite thing about the United States is the courage, and the idealism, and the organizing, and the sticking around and fighting to define what the United States will be. That's happened over the years and it's continued to happen and the progress that's being made. I think this is a huge experiment in people coming together and attempting to figure out how to live. There's a spirit of possibility and confidence, I think, as part of the culture here in the United States.

What is your least favorite thing about the United States of America?
My least favorite thing about the United States is the level of trauma that we have here and the lack of awareness about it. That's also an opportunity as well because what's happening in the United States I see and many others see as really a continuation of the trauma that Europeans experienced and acted out upon each other, and then acted out upon people of African descent through slavery and forced servitude, and then justifications for treating people, some people better than others, particularly black and brown people, or the last few wars people of Asian descent. All those narratives and all those stories and all those justifications are floating around, and they're out there, and there's this soup of trauma. It's not yet been really understood and recognized. This will get into the next question of, what would you like to see happen in the US? I'll save that for the next question.

What would you like to see happen in the United States of America?
In the United States, regardless of who you are, whatever your background is, there is a bond around trauma. It looks different, but everyone, whether you're a millionaire or billionaire, whether you're a white male, whether you're trans, queer, person of color, there's trauma that you've experienced that's there or something that your ancestors have experienced. I would really like to see an awareness of how to use somatic healing, body-based mindfulness, experiencing what's happening in your body, being able to breathe, being able to feel the feelings gradually, and have an understanding about how humans heal from trauma and painful experiences, and how emotions move through our bodies, and how we can deal with these things so that we can picture what we want to see happen in our lives.

We can dare to dream something that feels really scary or feel the fear and do it anyway. We can brave having that conversation about next steps for climate change because we care about people in our lives, or we care about ourselves and we extend that care to other people. There's the saying, "We go from me to we, and from them to us." I think that can happen in the United States. If people start to peek under the hood, if we start teaching, and practicing, and sharing our own journeys of healing, and what those can look like. It can be good for each of us, it can be good, particularly for the planet, it can be good for our health, which our diet has a huge impact. Transportation diet, the huge impact on global climate change and catastrophe, and the United States is such a leader in the world. I would like to see awareness and education, and really a fluency in dealing with healing, with working with emotions and trauma in the United States, because I think the implications are global.

What is an American?
They have a lot of job to work and a lot of activities to do. Compared in the Philippines. The opportunity to have a lot of jobs here than in the Philippines. That's why I left the Philippines.

What are the values of the Philippines?
They respect the old woman, like grandpa and grandma and they work hard in the Philippines because we have nothing there.

What does the American Dream mean to you?
There's a lot of opportunity here in United States. Like the family, they can go to college, like you know, to work hard too, opportunity to work more here in United States.

I did it. If I am in the Philippines, I don't know what would have happened to me there, so here I make it. I can drive, I have a new house and I can do everything, what I want.

Who is able to thrive in the United States of America?
My husband, Grandpa Freddie is successful here. Working hard here, that's why he can buy a new house, new car, everything, what we need.

Are you free in the United States of America?
Yes. I'm free here because I can go any place I want, not like in The Philippines. They're very strict there. Here you can go any place you want. Whatever what you do here. Whatever you want to go to work or not.

Are you patriotic towards the United States of America?
Yes. Yeah, I believe whatever what they want to do, the president to ask me to. I like the new president now.

Are you patriotic towards the Philippines?
Of course, yes. I'm born there in the Philippines, so I'm still, you know, Filipino.

Why did you emigrate from the Philippines?
Well, I'm fifth preference from the Philippines come over to the United States because, Auntie Mimie, my sister who bring me here, that's why they call it, the fifth preference, the first, preference is the husband or wife like that, so I'm the fifth preference coming over here in United States, sister by sister.

What is an American?
An American is someone who is born in the United States of America or someone from another country who becomes a citizen of the United States of America.

What are the values of your country of origin?
I was born in the United States, and from our pledge of allegiance, is justice, liberty, and justice for all, and other things were, for opportunity, individualism, progress, freedom, equality, democracy.

What does the American Dream mean to you?
The American Dream for me is to be successful in my own way, to make my family proud. I was the first graduate, college graduate, from my family, so that my successes are my parents successes and my ancestors, so if I succeed in America, that means they succeed also. I mean, that’s the reason they came here, for the American dream.

What did the American Dream mean to your parents?
My parents immigrated from the Philippines. My dad was from Cavite, and my mom was from Pangasinan. And they immigrated here, my dad immigrated here mid 60s and my mom late 60s. And for them, and I think for their family in the Philippines—if you were an American or you go to America, you could live not like you lived in the Philippines where there is a lot of poverty and you can’t move on or be successful because their families were poor. And they felt like moving to the US was the way to get out of that. If you work hard you will be able to buy a house. You could buy a car, a new car. You could have a good job. And I think both my parents felt they did that, coming here to the US. My dad working as a merchant seaman working really hard to get what he wanted, and my mom she was a beautician with her older sister and they owned their own beauty shop and their success was keeping that business alive and also their success was through my older sister and myself going through school. I think their success was, because they weren’t college graduates, that we both graduated from college. I know from my great grandfather, that he wanted his granddaughter, which is my Auntie Mimie, to go to America and then bring everybody else who she could to come here to the United states. She married one of the townsmen who went there to find a younger wife and he picked her. So she sacrificed her life in the Philippines to come to the US to marry this old man who she called ‘this old man’. He was 33 years older than her, but when she got here, that was her way, that’s how she got her sisters here, my mom first, and then that’s how she got her mom and other sister here to the US. So it was through her sacrifice, my aunty’s sacrifice, that she became American and was successful. Where the people in the Philippines feel like this is the way, to be successful is to be an American.

Who is able to thrive in the United States of America?
I think mostly people who have generations of success or money are able to thrive more than others. Mostly white Europeans who didn't have to struggle through as much as other people of color, especially brown and Black folks. There are still ways that people of color still can't get to the status of those rich white people because things are handed down to them and they have more opportunities.

As a Filipino American born and raised here in San Francisco, I think we were successful in our ways because of the community that we have. My mom, again, she was a beautician and she worked for white people who wanted their hair done. But it was also with the community that we, I guess with their help, they got to navigate through what it is to be an immigrant from the Philippines here in San Francisco. But it was difficult. And yeah, ways that as an immigrant daughter, I hope I did my ways, or in order to make my parents successful in our ways as immigrants.

Who dies in the United States of America?
Anybody who's on the land of the United States. People who came here to colonize and take over, they took over and killed the people. Millions of people who are already here in the United States. I think that maybe the question goes, well, what, um, more deaths now are because of white supremacy. Those who die are mostly brown and Black people. But it's this sense of superiority of mostly white Americans that brown and Black people died.

Are you free in the United States of America?
Yes, I do feel free in the United States in different ways. I'm not certain if the United States protects all. There are groups of people, Black and brown people, who have to struggle more to be free when it's said that we're free.

In my community here in San Francisco, I feel free to speak what I want. But because of the protection of the people around me, I may not get hurt with the anti-Asian violence that's going on now. It is scary. I get scared for my mom, for her safety. She's 75 years old. But yeah, not all. I mean, there are these freedoms that we have, but it's not guaranteed for all.

Are you patriotic towards the United States?
I wouldn't die for this country because the country hasn't been fair to all of us. I wouldn't wear red, white, and blue. I do my ways of being patriotic by voting. But I wouldn't say that I would be the person you would see carrying a flag and say I'm proud of being American. We're not all protected. All peoples here who live in the United States aren’t protected in the same way.

Why did your parents emigrate from their country of origin?
My dad, Alfredo Serafino, came here when he was 18. His mother was trying really hard to get him to come to the United States because of the opportunities that he could have here rather than in the Philippines. And then with my mom again, for the opportunities that she would have here in the United States compared to what she would have had if she stayed in the Philippines.

What is your favorite thing about the United States of America?
I love the diversity of people of different cultures here. Instead of the word ‘the melting pot’ that they used in some of my social studies class growing up, it’s more like a salad, everyone contributes their part for that salad, instead of melting and not noticing the differences in people or similarities of people.

What is your least favorite thing about the United States of America?
My least favorite thing about the United States is claiming that we are all free and equal and in actuality, we're not, because of the hate of people who are not being accepted. Acceptance of all the people who are here of different origins, different ethnicities, and not being open to that. This land is not even ours, we are settlers here, and this is Native American land, which was stolen. We're on stolen land. It's sad that we're supposed to be all free, and we're not.

What would you like to see happen in the United States of America?
There's so many steps that the United States needs to take in order to give justice back to what happened to many people of this land, starting with the Native Americans, starting also with African Americans who were forced to come here through slavery and the injustice of different Americans here of different ethnicities or heritage. Like, for example, for the Japanese Americans who were put in internment camps, or just injustice of all people.

And for our future generation, there needs to be fairness in our government. My hope is that there is more justice if that's what the United States stands for.

What is an American?
For me an American is someone who is born or lives in the South America or North America continents or who is born or lives in the United States of America.

What are the values of the United States of America?
Well since you’re in America, I think they’re more focused on making products –like California makes a lot of vegetables and fruits.

What does the American Dream mean to you?
Huh, that’s a hard one. I don’t think I know.‘

What did the American Dream mean to your parents?
Huh, I don’t know. I’ll ask them later.

Who is able to thrive in the United States of America?
Well I think it's more of the white people because of racism but also the Black and Brown people because they have more community and culture.

Why did your grandparents emigrate from the Philippines and Lebanon?
Well it's basic. For a better life for them and their children.

What is your favorite thing about the United States of America?
Well, for me it's all the possibilities and programs that we have here in the USA.

What is your least favorite thing about the United States of America?
High rent.

What would you like to see happen in the United States of America?
Well I would like to see lower prices for rent and healthier foods.