At home, my immigrant parents didn't talk much about being Filipino. Both my parents were the first in their families to emigrate (my mom in 1965, my dad in 1969), in search of opportunities for their then-hypothetical children. They said goodbye to their parents, siblings, and friends, not knowing if they would ever see them again. They made a new life in California with the help of a few older relatives (who arrived decades prior and worked as farmworkers and laborers) and each other.

When I was a teenager, my parents told me about the hardships they experienced when they first arrived in the U.S. While they were promised opportunities and open arms, they were actually greeted by racism and ignorance. My mom, a nurse, regularly encountered World War II military veteran patients who said horrific things to her because they assumed she was Japanese. They called her a “Jap” and an “Oriental.” Patients refused my mother’s care because they thought she was “the enemy.” When she’d say she was Filipino, the veterans usually relaxed, since they believed Filipinos were American allies — and sometimes even the “little brown brothers” of the U.S.

My dad, on the other hand, tried not to acknowledge racism at all. He believed no one should have the right to treat him as inferior or as a second-class citizen because he had a college education. Whenever someone assumed he didn’t speak English well, my dad would reply with his version of a perfect American accent, having learned English as a child in the Philippines.

As a teenager, my experiences were varied. Some saw me and my peers as “model minorities” — ambitious children of hardworking Asian parents who knew the importance of education. I knew many non-Filipino adults who enjoyed talking to my parents, because they spoke English fluently. However, many of my classmates made fun of my parents — thankfully, only to me — because of their heavy accents.

Others considered me a “troublemaker.” I’ve been pulled over or harassed by police officers for no reason. Security or store clerks regularly followed my friends and me around in stores or malls. At school, a few teachers and counselors stereotyped the Filipino students as gangsters and did not encourage us to our full potential. I remember a high school counselor telling me I shouldn’t take certain honors classes because he didn’t think I'd do well in them. He later insisted I should go to a community college.

It wasn't until I went to college at University of California at Irvine that I started to really develop my Filipino-American identity. My campus was 60% Asian-American and about one out of every eight students on my campus were Filipino. I joined — and later became president of — Kababayan, the Filipino-American student organization, 600 members strong. I danced the tinikling and singkil in our Pilipino Cultural Nights, and we sang the Philippine National Anthem at weekly meetings. And I finally read Rizal and Hagedorn and learned about the Bataan Death March.

In my Filipino-American Studies class, I learned that Filipino farmworkers like Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz led the Delano Grape Strikes of 1965, one of the greatest labor movements in U.S. history. In my Asian-American Psychology class, I learned about the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which put an end to immigration quotas and allowed for the influx of Asian immigrants like my parents to migrate to the U.S.

I was in college when I learned that October was Filipino-American History Month (FAHM). FAHM was originally founded by Fred and Dorothy Cordova and the Filipino American National Historical Society in 1988, and October was chosen to commemorate the first Filipinos who landed in the Americas: a small group of Filipino seafarers and servants who jumped ship en route to Spain. They landed in what is now known as Morro Bay in California in October 1587, decades before the Pilgrims would land on Plymouth Rock.

For the next 20 years, many states, like California and Michigan, and cities, like New York and Chicago, recognized the month with official proclamations. In 2009, the U.S. Congress and House of Representatives passed resolutions that officially recognized the month. And this past year, the White House hosted its very first FAHM celebration, as President Obama acknowledged that Filipino-Americans have "helped expand our Nation's promise throughout every aspect of our society."

I celebrated FAHM every year in college, so I was disheartened when I enrolled at Michigan State University to pursue my master's degree and discovered that no one celebrated the month. I became the adviser to the small, but growing, Filipino-American student organization there, and it was through these students I learned even more about my Filipino-American identity.