NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The first book that I bought for my daughter, prior to her even being born was a children's book that focused on the tale of the slaves who killed their captors aboard the ship The Amistad and after a long legal struggle were allowed to return to Africa. I only read it to her a few times over the years because the subject matter was difficult and the historical and racial politics difficult to unpack.

Over the years I've tried to do the same with other books, especially liking to read to the kids books that focus on the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans. Parenting is a convoluted endeavor no matter what ethical commitments you do or do not feel. There are always problems, limitations, blindspots and ways in which your best intentions or goals backfire. But pushing your children to accept difficult truths and also feel the both responsibility and capacity to change things for the better is essential.

It is one reason why, in my own creative works, including …

If you are interested in purchasing the new Chamorro/English children's book Sumahi and the Karabao or the new Chamorro/English comic book Makåhna, head over to the website:

The Guam Bus

This is a new venture that my brothers and I recently started, where we aim to finally find an outlet for all the creativity that we were blessed to be born with. These two items, the book and the comic are just the start. We are already working on other texts. I'm actually writing the next book right now between blog posts. Stayed tuned to the website above and this space in general for more updates.

In the meantime, we have been fortune enough to have received some local media coverage about our books. See the articles from The Pacific Daily News and The Guam Daily Post below. Si Yu'us Ma'ase to Lacee Martinez and Amber Word for their articles!

***************************

Bevacqua brothers join forces to create Chamorro-language books as The Guam Bus
by Lacee A.C. Martinez
Pacific Da…

The past few weeks have been crazy. You may or may not have noticed this on the lack of posting. The sparse amount of posts in no way means that I haven’t been doing anything. The truth is the opposite, I have been doing way to much lately. Sen tinane’ yu’, ya esta liso yu’ para bei lalango.
I am working on two Administration for Native American Grants. One to standardize Chamorro curriculum at the college level. The other to create a publishing house at the University of Guam that will publish Chamorro children’s books. I’m not writing them alone, but for those familiar with ANA grants, there always seems to be an endless amount of workplans, appendixes and so on to tweak and fine tune.
Another grant that I need to finish by next month is for the Guam Preservation Trust, and is requesting support to hold a mini-conference in the fall on language and culture shifts amongst Chamorros today. I am working with Faye Untalan, who teaches Chamorro at UOG on this project.
I also had to f…

In choosing books for my children one of my favorite types to get for them are Native American style storybooks. Over the years I've collected several for them, each from a different tribe. When I was in Washington DC last week at the First Stewards Climate Change Symposium, I took some time out to go to the gift shop at the National Museum of the Native American Indian to see what kind of books they had. I asked my kids, Sumahi and Akli'e' what type of books they would prefer, meaning what kind of animals or stories would they like. Sumahi, as usual said she wanted horse. Sesso taiguihi i manachaamko'na na famalao'an, mankinenne' ni kabayu siha. Akli'e' is a bit more complicated and requested something about turtles. Ti hu tungo' sa' hafa ayu i ginagao-na. Sesso mama'leon gui'.

There were so many to choose from at the museum I'll admit it was difficult. I ended up picking three books. First is The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Story by …