My father used to say that I was an American made of Filipino raw materials, so for a long time I’ve thought of my body as composite and cybernetic (cybernetic because my American part is definitely electronic—which is to say, nostalgic and prone to random temperamental breakdowns—and in any case, the Filipino part alone is already synthetic, has been synthetic from the year 1521).

And yet I am often surprised when I remember that I’m actually an American: that I like ketchup and peanut butter, that I still think about Dwayne Wayne interrupting Whitley Gilbert’s wedding, that I say “hella.”

The idea that I am an American writer is even stranger to me; I have trouble finding my way into American stories, let alone inventing them. Having never grown up with anyone, or indeed ever even lived with anyone, who spoke English as a first or only language. (Except for my youngest brother, another composite.) Everyone who has ever formed my life, or been allowed into it through a tiny hole I made in a vein here or there, has thought of home as somewhere else. Somewhere else other than the ground we’re nervously standing upon. Ground that isn’t ours. You have to stop thinking of the ground as something you can belong to. It hurts at first but then you get used to it. Like every other unbearable thing.

Now I live in Europe (well, sort of: England, and that’s a big sort of), having had one foot in Europe since I was seventeen. No, earlier than that. Since before I was born. No, earlier than that Earlier than that, and backwards. Other way. Europe has had a foot in me. Also since 1521.

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