I am a second generation American of various Asian descents. My mother’s, Iris Lirios, side of the family begins like a cheesy love story. My grandmother, Edita Tiozon, was born in MacArthur, Leyte in the Philippines to a Chinese man and a Filipino woman. Her mother raised three daughters as a single mother, a very stressful feat during that time. My grandfather, Nereo Lirios, on the other hand lived in Tanauan, Leyte. They met in the high school shared by their two towns and began talking because my grandpa was too poor to afford the textbooks for their class but luckily, my grandma was willing to share. When the districts were reconfigured and my grandmother was to attend a different high school my grandpa decided to go there with her. They became high school sweethearts (although my grandma was very stubborn and didn’t give in too easily to my grandpa’s advances). My grandpa would visit my grandmother often and help out the girls with strenuous yard and housework, which ultimately won my grandma over. Then, after they graduated, my grandpa joined the US-Philippines Navy and my grandmother went away to nursing school. For a while my grandpa spent some time in Chicago, Illinois with a close friend of him and my grandmother, Trinidad. After finishing nursing school and working in a rundown hospital for a brief time, she moved to Chicago and there she waited for my grandfather to meet with her. They were the only ones from their families to move to the United States. They married in their thirties and managed to juggle seven children, while constantly moving around the United States and living at various military bases, including in Jacksonville, Florida, where my mother was born in 1968. Finally after living in a military base in Los Alamitos, California, where the high school I attended is located, they found a house in Cypress, California where they raised their kids and currently live.

On my father’s side of the family the story is more of a Romeo and Juliet situation with much less of a tragic ending. Grandma Alice Higa’s family was originally from Okinawa, Japan but moved to Oahu in Hawaii at a very young age. Luckily because of her father’s career and education she did not have to suffer in the Japanese internment camps which were created following Pearl Harbor. Her family did have to make some tolling cultural sacrifices though; all the texts and artifacts, which her parents had managed to bring from Japan were either destroyed or buried. Futhermore, my grandma and her siblings were receiving schooling from their mother on Japanese culture and language but unfortunately they were forced to discontinue these lessons, an event which my grandma is deeply disappointed by. She went on to live in Oahu and work on the Dole and sugarcane plantations when she was in her teens. Similar to my grandmother’s story, my grandfather, Lawrence Sur, is Korean and his parents were originally from somewhere in South Korea but he was also raised in Oahu, Hawaii where much of my family lives now. He fought in the US Military during World War II and eventually met my grandmother. Their parents did not accept their relationship, especially my grandmother’s, as Japanese and Koreans have a history of conflict. My grandma was kicked out of her house by her mother and shamed by her family for falling in love with a Korean man, but regardless she married my grandfather and together they raised seven children. In the 60’s, when my father, Randal Sur, was about seven they decided to move to California and found a house in Garden Grove.

That brings us to my parents who met in California. My father went to school with a couple of my mom’s siblings and in college became best friends with my uncles. He house a regular fixture at the Lirios household and can even be seen in some of their holiday photos from before he dated my mom. My Uncle Wade, who was closest to my father, warned my dad against dating my mom because as he put it “she’s trouble”. Despite my uncle’s advice to stay away from my mom, they began dating in secret. This caused a bit of a conflict but it blew over quickly. They got an apartment together and he helped raise my older sister while finishing schooling at Cal State Fullerton, while my mom went to nursing school in Cypress. After 8 years, they got married in Seal Beach, California and about a year later I was born, on March 20, 1996, during my dad’s midterms. For the first four years of my life we lived in a condominium in Anaheim, California, because of its proximity to my mom’s places of work, Disneyland and Saddleback Memorial Hospital. After my brother was born in 1998, they started looking for a new house and decided to search around the quaint beach town where they got married, Seal Beach. They found a nice house about an 8 minute walk from the beach and there they raised my siblings and I.

Now, after 14 years of living in my sheltered, coastal town of Seal Beach, I have ventured to Harlem, New York City to attend school at the City College of New York.