Follower Fridays is a series of profiles highlighting members of Gaysian Third Space to showcase the diversity of gaysians in the Community. This week’s featured member is @acentoadroite.

Who are you?

André (he/they), a recent college graduate slash idealistic millennial funemployee – your typical queer Filipinx INFP Aquarian who spends too much money on boba.

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in the 408 – that is, a /hella/ large part of the South Bay Area in California. I was born in Mountain View, attended school in Santa Clara and San José, and my family lives in Sunnyvale. However, I have since moved to Berkeley, where I went for undergrad, and it’s basically my new home. Recently, though, I’ve been trying to connect to my Filipinx roots back in Pasay and Makati.

What do you do?

I currently work part-time at a print shop in Berkeley, but have been making slow freelance pushes into academia, teaching, and translation. I offer language tutoring and have also been considering returning to fieldwork in language reclamation and revitalization efforts. Due to my proximity to campus and my love for the space, I am also still involved with Cal Q&A, the queer and Asian organization on campus, and QACON, the annual queer and Asian conference.



For fun stuff, I’m a huge fan of Steven Universe and spend a lot of time theorizing with each new episode (Summer of Steven is a real doozy, isn’t it?). I’m also really into a cappella, and I’m sure the residents in my apartment complex can tell you what songs they’ve heard me singing all the time (“And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls is probably the most common). Lastly, I’ve been trying to increase my repertoire of board games and card games! Takenoko, anyone?

What are you passionate about?

If you haven’t been able to tell already, one of my greatest passions is language and linguistics! I’m a linguist by trade, but I’m also a polyglot hobbyist. I have studied various languages, both theoretically and practically, and can often be found perusing used bookstores for obscure grammars.



Aside from that, I am a huge advocate for mental health reform and education, and am especially critical of the capitalistic industrial complex, its encroaching effects on academic spaces, and its disposability of minorities, especially mentally- and physically-disabled folx.



Finally, and perhaps most crucially, I am all about deconstruction of identity. Though an arduous task, I find it really important to unpack what one has been socialized to be (from family, schooling, and society) in order to truly construct one’s sense of self. I’m constantly learning new things about myself everyday!



What is your dream job (real or fantasy)?

I… don’t really have a set answer for this yet. Ideally, I’d like to merge my passions in language and social justice, so I’ve thought about going into interpretation in marginalized communities (though that would take many many more years in school), though I also really enjoy teaching. It’s still up in the air, I guess!

If you could change the world with one idea, what would it be?

Never stop speaking your native tongue. Cherish it, believe in it, and strengthen it. As somebody who lost fluency in Tagalog long after his childhood, a large part of my struggle is finding level ground between the intersections of my identities, but my sense of Filipinx identity has been heavily marred by years of internalized colonialism and linguistic hegemony. If I were to ever become a language teacher, this is the point I would want to stress the most: learning English does not mean you have to compromise your cultural identity.