Home, No Longer - Audrey Pe

I don’t miss home nearly enough as I should. Despite more than a year of absence, of phone calls converted 15 hours ahead and spiceless dining hall food claiming to be Asian, I still can’t quite bring myself to actually wish that I was there. I feel almost guilty for admitting this, for claiming that the place that I am merely allowed in because of a paper and a stamp vouching for my legal residency is where I should be instead of where I was raised for almost two decades. The United States is welcoming, in some aspects, but hostile in many others. My mother’s emergency calls to the US Embassy of Manila, Philippines, remind me that had my parents and I not gone beyond what was one the website, the “essential travel only” poster, had we done what others did and accepted that the visa application process was shut down due to the pandemic, I would not be here.

I don’t miss home nearly enough as I should. Despite more than a year of absence, of phone calls converted 15 hours ahead and spiceless dining hall food claiming to be Asian, I still can’t quite bring myself to actually wish that I was there. I feel almost guilty for admitting this, for claiming that the place that I am merely allowed in because of a paper and a stamp vouching for my legal residency is where I should be instead of where I was raised for almost two decades. The United States is welcoming, in some aspects, but hostile in many others. My mother’s emergency calls to the US Embassy