Bayani Catapang immigrated to Canada from the Philippines in 2004, along with his father and sister, to reunite with his mother, who had moved to the country for work in 1999. Today his nuclear family consists of five members: a father, a mother, the eldest child (brother, the protagonist), the middle child (sister), and the youngest child (sister). Catapang’s father and mother come from similar backgrounds: humble families of working-class farmers and labourers. By acquiring higher education, they both overcame poverty (in its modern conceptualization) and eventually rose to the middle class of the Philippines. Both of Catapang's parents are successful professionals in their own regard: his father has a background in electrical engineering, mathematics, and post-secondary education, while his mother has a background in communications, nursing, post-secondary education, and social work. The Catapang family lineage originates from the native inhabitants of the archipelago, with mixed lineages from separate ethnolinguistic tribal groups falling under the category of the “Ilocanos.” Prior to the archipelago’s colonization by the Spanish Empire, the various tribal communities of Luzon held similar ways of life: subsistence farming, hunting local wildlife, and practicing different variations of nature worship. The Catapangs speak Ilocano and Tagalog, the former being the Lingua Franca of the Luzon tribes while the latter is the most widely spoken indigenous language in Luzon (with an estimated 22 million native speakers). Today’s version of the Tagalog language is a mixture of the original Tagalog tribe’s language (approximately 55%), Spanish (approximately 30%), and English (approximately 15%). Read more about this authorRead less about this author