Barbara-Ann Gamboa Lewis was born in Manila, Philippines, of a Filipino father and an Irish mother. She is the author of Barefoot in Fire: A World War II Childhood (which in the U.S. was published as Pocket Stones).
She has a B.S.in Chemistry from the Philippine Women’s University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1979 she joined the faculty at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University, IL from which she retired in 2006. She is a Distinguished Lecturer on the Search for Life on Mars. Her awards include several for teaching and the Palladium Medal for Engineering and Conservation. She is married to Roy S. Lewis, has 3 children and 6 grandchildren. She may be contacted at this email address.

One favorite theme of science fiction stories is the ultimate development of a robot which is capable of more and more complicated calculational pathways, with more and more sophisticated electronic connections.  One day, unknown to its human developer, the robot hums into its “Awake” position to ask the question “Who Am I?” This question is not so different from that of a child (or an adult, for that matter) raised in a biracial home, often shunned or isolated by potential playmates in a homogeneous community, whether it be homogeneity of skin color, culture, or religion.

Awareness of the question “who am I” may not always be clear to a child, who may, instead, experience a sense of being different, have trouble with identity or simply a general bewilderment. I was born in the Philippines to a Filipino father and Irish mother in 1934, when interracial families were rare. The fact of being “different” was not troubling to me, as I was blessed with a strong-willed, principled parents who brought me up scrappy and independent, but also understanding and considerate of others, and tolerant of people’s narrow-mindedness. Another blessing from my parents was a love of books. Books were our only material wealth. Lining the walls of our living room , the books served as places where the little grey house lizards laid their eggs, and little girls found history books and poetry. Books were a sources of wonderful smells that I still seek today in every book (except electronic ones!).

Missing from my life, however, were grandparents. This lack might have had a reinforcing effect on my difficulties with self-identity. Where did I come from? My father’s parents died during the Spanish-American war in the Philippines. There was only one story handed down to me of my grandfather as a young soldier, carrying his pregnant wife through swamps and forest to escape the raging war.  He was eventually killed in that war; his wife, my grandmother, dying not long after.  My mother’s family had its roots in Ireland and England, with a path that led her father and mother to Africa as Presbyterian missionaries.  Her mother seems to have died in the flu epidemic of 1918, when my mother was a child.  Her father brought her to America where she eventually met my father at the University of California in Berkeley. This inter-racial, anti-religious relationship was strongly condemned by my mother’s family, leading the young couple to elope to the Philippines, where my siblings and I were born.  My grandfather refused to acknowledge us until after World War II, and he remained a vague figure in faded photographs. Seeing the very house where my mother’s mother was born, during a recent trip to Ireland, hearing stories of her and her sisters, and sitting in the green garden, looking at the same Irish Sea she had looked at, filled a need that, until then, I did not know I had.

Stories of my parents’ past were cherished and became very important to me as I was growing up. They helped me to understand, albeit in some childish way, my sense of difference from my peers and seemed to lessen the stigma of difference.  In my later years, I was led to write a story of my childhood for my own grandchildren, with the hope of giving them some sense of identity as they grow up “different” from the majority culture. The book was published in the Philippines as Barefoot in Fire and in the US as Pocket Stones.

As I was writing the story, I realized that there were huge gaps in my narrative past that could have been filled while my own parents were still alive, but opportunities for questioning them in the right frame of mind rarely came up.

I am convinced that families need to record their remembrances of their family past, not simply facts (unless that’s all that can be found), but also experiences, attitudes and the ups and downs of relationships.  As families or individuals emigrate away from their native land, or immigrants move into foreign lands, these records will help the new generations to find their identities, and feel their connection to the past.  Human beings, I believe, need to make those connections to maintain a feeling of belonging, rather than isolation, in this increasingly disconnected society despite the ubiquity of the internet. Important connections are not just those we make in the society we live in but also those with the people and societies of the past.  Schoolroom history books alone cannot do that.  We, children and adults alike, need the stories.

Posted October 2009