By Victory Witherkeigh
As a kid, the melting pot of my family’s ancestry often made for exciting discussions about storytime. My great-great-grandmother apparently had enough “Portuguese” blood to have bright, fiery red hair, while my great-great aunt would trace our bloodline back to the islands that now make up French Polynesia. My cousins lived everywhere—from Hong Kong, Italy, Hawaii, and Tahiti.
Various dialects would clip my ears running around the dinner table, waiting for the next round of food to be put together for the kids’ table. Yet I always felt awkward answering the American school questions about “Where are you from?”
There have been several articles and journals detailing the “othering” many first-generation Americans feel in their respective communities, significantly heightened if they also experience colorism of any kind, as I did. I grew up with enough of my international family members greeting me when I visited with the announcement that their “favorite American” was coming here.
In their minds, my primary identity was from the land I was born in; as much I tried to explain to them that to most of my American classmates, I would always identify as the mixture of Pacific Island nations our family came from – the Philippines, Tahiti, etc. But even as I tried to explain my mixture of identities to new acquaintances or friends, they often made remarks about my appearance, dictating what “boxes” I could declare for myself.
“Oh, you aren’t dark like the other Filipinos or Islanders I’ve met.”
“It’s good you’re so fair-skinned – it’ll help you in the future.”
“Are you sure you aren’t Chinese? I’ve never heard of the place you are talking about?”
After so many people questioned my identity, I often refused the question or even avoided responding to those who would think to ask it. For a good portion of my youth, I found myself lost and trying to find my identity in the books I read or the media I consumed.
I thought I could try to dull down the Pacific Islander parts of me to appear more Caucasian and white – fitting in and fulfilling the dreams of my Green card-holding relatives. But that denial of my “brown” heritage also brought shame and embarrassment when my relatives or friends called me out for essentially lying to myself about the most exciting things about me.
During the release of my first novel, ‘The Girl’, I’ve spoken about using the legends and mythology I grew up with as part of my inspiration for the story of a girl who has been told her whole life that she will grow up evil. As an author, writer, and creative content maker, it is more than just trite words that I say I write for the young Brown girl I was who didn’t find herself in the media and books she tried to see herself in.
The world, with the fully realized 360-degree complexity of what it can mean to carry multiple identities, is still only starting to be up for discussion. With my second novel, ‘The Demon’, releasing October 1, 2024, I add the second layer to the world I created in ‘The Girl’ by exploring the idea of getting everything you thought you wanted.
In my second book, I begin layering in the questions that come in when you ask yourself what your personal identity is over just the cultural identity. What makes the second book more intimate and a much deeper exploration and conversation is that the Demon’s individual identity conflicts with her expected cultural identity.
She finds herself at odds against her former associates – the other generals of Death as the history of the people who once worshiped them no longer seem to exist in the modern world. The Demon finds herself debating whether there is a right or wrong answer to the idea of traditional and Indigenous peoples evolving and adapting to include the modern, or should there be a push to keep the sanctity of the old ways?
I’m excited to share this next chapter with my audiences because exploring the themes requires hard introspection and exploration, which is very rewarding. I hope to add to the diversity of what it can look like to find your personal identity with and without your cultural brethren, opening more stories and discussions about what this journey means to kids today.
These trials and their contribution will only add more depth to the protagonists of the future and their journeys, just as I hope you experience with my second novel, ‘The Demon’.
Victory Witherkeigh is an award-winning female Filipino/PI author from Los Angeles, CA. Her debut novel, ‘The Girl’, was published in December 2022 with Cinnabar Moth Publishing. ‘The Girl’ has been a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award and was long-listed in the 2022 CIBA OZMA Fantasy Book Awards. ‘The Girl’ won Third Place for YA Thriller in the 2023 Spring The Bookfest Awards. Her creative content creation for her Author TikTok also won First Place in the 2023 Spring The Bookfest Awards for Creative Content. Victory’s second novel, ‘The Demon’, will be published on October 1, 2024. You can see more of Victory’s work on her website, or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.
