Besides the normal growing pains of any North American, children of immigrant families also have an extra set of issues related to having to negotiate between two cultures. We would begin each day in a Filipino household, and then go off to an American school. The dominant North American culture often made me feel like the Filipino culture that defined our household was strange and worthy of mocking—eating with a spoon and fork or sometimes with our hands, parents with accents, the smell of fried fish in the house, the Filipino decor of our house, etc.—all these things reminded us that we were a strange people living in a strange land.