Sara Cantos Kline is an international development professional with a Masters in Development Management born in California and raised as a nomad. Based in Washington, DC. She has a vision to one day open a food truck and a community kitchen to teach children from underserved communities how to cook their homeland cuisines and various foods from around the world.
Sara in front of a food truck in Washington, DC (Photo by Faye Saechao/SEAT)
She talks to us about growing up as a second generation Filipino American raised in Southern California walking the lines of two identities being raised as an American in a white household, and exploring her American, Latina and Southeast Asian identity through different hobbies such as dancing, traveling and cooking. Through her multifaceted experience she eventually grew to be comfortable in her skin.
How do you identify yourself (ethnically or culturally)?
My name is Sara Cantos Klein. I’m from California, but my family moves around a lot due to being a State Department family. I've lived in quite a few places over the course of twenty years. Currently, I work as a government contractor as an International Compliance Analyst.
I identify as Filipina. My last name is German, because my mom remarried when I was four. For a while, a huge part of my identity was with my Caucasian family members, which was nice. As an adult, it became difficult because there was this kind of loss of my Filipino identity in a sense, because I wasn't seeing my Filipino family as much due to timing and then living overseas, I was only seeing them about once a year. In that sense, I felt white and it felt weird when people would point out that I wasn't white and it forced me to reflect on what it means to be Filipina and to try to rediscover that for myself.
To connect with my Filipino identity, it was a little hard at first in college. I identified with being Filipino as “oh, I eat chicken adobo”, therefore I'm Filipino. When I went to college, I tried to join a Filipino Student Union. It wasn't so easy. I got the questions of, “oh, why didn't your mom teach you Tagalog? Why don't you know how to cook Filipino food?”, “why have you never been to the Philippines before?”
It was really disheartening to have people tell me all the things I was doing wrong and why I wasn't Filipino enough. That was actually really hard for me to grapple with.
I ended up joining other student union groups. I was part of an Indian Student Union actually for a while because I lived in India for two years and I love the food. We connected on things like food and dancing. The really funny thing was there was another Filipino in that group for the same reasons that I was in that group. Then we both discovered in our own way, we were maybe Filipino just due to the foods that we were eating and how we bonded with people over food. I used that to rediscover being Filipino. With my Lola, my grandmother, I started taking cooking lessons with her. And that was really interesting because I could see why she spent all of her time in the kitchen while we were watching TV or in the living room trying to get her out of the kitchen. The kitchen is where she feels safe and where she feels truly Filipino. That's how I started feeling truly Filipino was through the recipes that I was learning.
My paternal last name would have been Reyes. I am also part Mexican and part Guatemalan. For me, it's the case where I started getting connected to my Latino roots, not by choice, but I was in Peru for my step dad’s first job posting when I was in seventh grade. I just remember people started talking to me in Spanish and thinking, “why are you talking to me in Spanish?” And then I realized, “Oh, I’m part Hispanic.” It's just something that I didn't really identify with. Because I feel Filipina or white by association. That was not by choice actually, when I moved to DC five years ago, I started connecting with that side of me when I started taking salsa and bachata dancing classes, and I got to know the culture that way. My interest in dancing also led me to a trip to Mexico city in 2018. That was really eye opening for me, because that was the first time that I went and I saw people that looked just like me. I remember that feeling that I got when I went to the Philippines too. It felt a feeling of familiarity and a similar feeling of where it seemed people just got me, even if I didn't speak Spanish. That's how I felt in the Philippines too. I felt like people kind of got me even though I couldn't speak to Tagalog.
Given your mixed background, how do you think all of that makes you who you are today?
In my experience, I found that each place I moved to created a little identity for myself. I wouldn't say so much Peru because that was in middle school and that was a different experience. But in high school, for example, when I moved to India, we became like a family to the point where I felt Indian.
"I like being able to explore the city on my own, to be exposed to the culture of my friends and family. For a second, I forgot about my other cultural identities, because I was still immersed in that one. I think that's what happened in each of my experiences, because I wanted to experience everything."
During the Peace Corps when I was in Thailand I would say that was one of the most culturally confusing experiences in my life. Because the perception of Filipinos was different in Thailand than it was in the US than it was in India. In Thailand I was considered a “dirty” Asian because my skin was dark. I distinctly remember it was during my second or first month at the village, I was getting dressed up for the village festival, I remember the elders put white powder on my face. They kept saying, “Sara sii dam”, which means Sara is the color black. Put the white powder on, now “Sara sii kaao”, she's white and she's beautiful now. For me, I was always proud of my skin color and that was one of the first times where I felt ashamed of my identity and how I looked. It was really hard to watch other kids also be covered in this white powder and being told that they were ugly because the color of their skin was dark. Also I have a very distinct nose, I guess, because I'm part Latina. Pregnant women always have me rub their bellies because they wanted to pass on my “strong” nose to their children so they also have a strong nose.
When you were growing up, what did you want (or still wish) to be? Did you always know you wanted to be in education?
When I was a kid, I wanted to become a pediatrician because I really liked how when pediatrician’s treated the kids you ended up getting like a lollipop at the end of the day. But then I learned in high school that I wasn't a fan of science, so being a pediatrician went out of the window.
There was a lot of pressure from my family to become a doctor or a lawyer. And in the end I ended up joining the Peace Corps because I wanted to help kids.
So maybe not in a pediatrician kind of way, but in a youth and international development way. It was really rewarding. That was actually one of the things that my Lola was the most proud of. She was proud to say that I was a Peace Corps volunteer because she wanted me to be able to travel the world and help others. She also said it would look really good on my resume. Like any Asian parent or grandparent would say this would look good on the resume.
I have two dream careers and they're both food oriented obviously. One of them, I would like to teach children from underserved communities, how to cook different types of foods around the world. Because I know that I am very privileged in the sense that I was able to travel around the world with my family, through my step dad's job and other people aren't able to. So just to be able to create some sort of safe space where kids can come and learn how to make chicken adobo or lumpia or whether a food from outside of the Philippines I think would be really cool. My second idea is that I want to have a food truck that serves egg rolls and burritos because the concept is very similar to a bunch of fillings being wrapped up. And I feel like I'm like an egg roll and a burrito. I have a bunch of different fillings.
What social, economic/financial or cultural barriers did you encounter? And how did you overcome them (if at all)?
With me being an extreme introvert I think it is a big social barrier. My family was pretty nuclear in the sense it was a small four person family. We didn't really hang out a lot with my cousins, aunts and uncles just because we were traveling all the time. When I was trying to enter the Filipino student union in college, I was really overwhelmed by the big crowds of people and not knowing that this was a cultural norm- where they have a big family of aunties, uncles and cousins. And for me, I felt lost in a sea of Filipinos trying to find myself.
What resources or role models/ representation did you wish you had growing up?
My mom is my role model but I wish she was able to pass along Tagalog to me because she's able to understand it, but she can't speak it. I think that she likely could speak it if she tried. That was just something that I wish I had. Another thing would be learning how to cookI learned how to cook from my mom, but it was following regular recipes. I didn't really learn how to cook Filipino food until I was twenty-five. I was never good with languages. I'd have a hard time retaining languages if I'm not using it regularly. I tried taking a Tagalog class and that did not go well. Also taking a language class during a pandemic was hard. In turn, for me Filipino food that's the language that I speak.
As for mainstream role models, for me, unless it was Rufio- a Filipino actor from The Hook, whose real name is Dante Basco, Filipino role models didn't really exist for me. Even though there are Chinese celebrities, that was what was considered a role model to me. Because that was Asian representation right there. Other than that I didn’t really have one, besides my grandmother.
What would you say to young girls, women and LGBTQ+ individuals such as yourself that you wish you heard growing up?
I want to say follow your dreams. It’s corny, but that is something I wish that was pushed on me more.
"Also there was something I heard along the lines of, 'we should motivate children to aspire to what they want to do to help the world and not necessarily the label behind it.' So if you think 'I want to help kids', there's many ways that you can do that and you should explore every avenue for that."
It doesn't have to be becoming a pediatrician. Instead we should help kids to think about, “what do you want to help?” From there, see where that takes you.
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