Shadows of my heritage as I walked Argyle on the Third of July

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

Tonight, I walked along Argyle St.—Chicago’s north side Asian enclave—where the scent of grilled meats, the hum of conversation in several languages, and the bass beat of a band on stage brought the street to life.

People gathered eagerly at the food stalls, mostly for the novelty on this opening night of the weekly summer Night Market.

I wandered through the crowd and found myself standing in front of a table serving onigiri—those simple Japanese rice balls held together with a strip of nori.

Across the way, empanadas, fried and crimped shut, filled with stews like they were in the old plantation kitchens.

I took in the scene, and suddenly, I saw not just the present but the past.

I saw the shadows of my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and their brothers, Ilocano men brought from the northernmost parts of the Philippines to toil in the sugarcane fields of the Territory of Hawaii under contract labor.

Their days began with watered-down pineapple juice or overly sweetened coffee, often lukewarm and still bitter. Meals were quick, efficient, and cobbled together from whatever was left from the day before. The food I saw tonight—so lovingly served, so vibrantly received—might have reminded them of those bygone days, or maybe just reminded them of survival.

As I passed a stall fluttering with an American flag, something caught in my throat.

I wondered, what did they think of the Fourth of July?

Of all the speeches about liberty and justice and the fireworks that lit up a sky that did not belong to them?

Could they feel patriotic?

Could they even afford to hope?

What does “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” mean when you’re a “dumb colored oriental,” as they were once called—trapped in a system just short of slavery, where wages were docked for barracks housing and plantation store goods, and the future was written in someone else’s ledger?

I take a lot for granted.

I walk these streets free, educated, a citizen.

I drink iced coffee by choice, not because it’s been sitting out all day.

And yet I carry their silence—the questions they never got to ask, the pride they had to swallow, the celebrations that were never really for them.

Tonight, Argyle Street was alive with joy.

But tucked in the corners of my heart were ghosts—men who gave everything for a dream not their own, so that one day, I could stand in the light of freedom and ask, “Was it worth it?”

And somehow, I think they’d say yes.