Writing Rights: Diane Pasague (16) - Race, Identity, Language and Belonging.

Diane Pasague (16), is originally from the Philippines and moved to Lusk, Co Dublin with her parents and brother when she was just four years old. Diane talks about how she and her parents keep their culture alive by speaking the native languageTagalog, and cooking Philippine food. Diane even speaks 'Taglish', which is a mixture of Tagalog and English. The right to both her Philippine and Irish identities and language is very important to her. It is who she is and a key part of her human rights is that right to be able to express herself and her identity openly and freely.

Accompanying Music: 'Mr Magpie' by Ana Gog. http://www.anagogmusic.com/

Fighting Words is a creative writing centre established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love. http://www.fightingwords.ie/

Transcript Below

00:00 Music Diane: I’m Diane and I’m 16 years old. I love swimming. I love books, I collect a lot of books. And, actually I love TV shows. Like, I could just binge on TV shows for three days straight.

I was born in the Philippines but when I was 4 my mom moved to Ireland, because she’s a nurse so she got a job here as a nurse and then 4 years later she brought me and my brother and my dad.

My grandparents on my Dad’s side are from the city in the Philippines. It’s in Manila. It’s the main city of the Philippines and my Mom is from the countryside, ‘cause her parents, like, generations, generations, they just lived in the countryside and then went to the city and then my Mom, when she was around 19, she went to the city to go to university and then I guess, she graduated and then got a job in the hospital there and that’s where she met my Dad. Yeah, the year after they got married they had me and then another year after, they had my brother. And 4 years later my Mom moved to Ireland and then we followed after.

With language, my parents speak their Tagalog, they don’t really speak English. they’re very into the traditions like, even the food here. They buy all the stuff and they cook Filipino food. They cook Irish food as well. But, usually they cook Filipino food because that’s what we’ve grown up with as well.

I speak Taglish. Taglish is basically a mix of Tagalog and English. It’s kind of like, a slang word. It’s really weird but it’s way easier than just Tagalog or English. Because sometimes my parents don’t understand when I’m completely speaking in English.

But, everyone uses it nowadays. It’s like, because English is becoming the main language of the world, so, everyone speaks Taglish, especially, like when you’re in the Philippines when you go to shops, people, you can just catch out English phrases. And everyone in the Philippines can speak English as well.

I think it’s pretty cool I can speak more than English and Irish, like speaking Tagalog as well. When I tell people that, they think it’s really cool.

I guess, if I hadn’t come to Ireland and stuff like that, I wouldn’t have realised that there are actually different cultures rather than the Filipino cultures.

The right to my language and to my culture is really important to me Being attached to your culture, I think, if you’re not from Ireland, is really important because, you just, you'd always wonder, 'Where do I really belong?' Because you’ll see other people doing different things than you do that’s what I said to myself, well why am I different like that but I just realised, recently actually that, I love Ireland but like, I do like to keep the culture going because I love the Philippines as well so, it’s nice to have a difference between the two.

Music

02:58 End