NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One of the presenters at the "Primus Circumdedisti Me: Claves de la Primera Globalizacion" conference focused primarily on the life of those who traveled with Magellan on his voyage. What were the things that they ate? How much did they get paid? What were the rules on these ships? What was the hierarchy like? Were captains the lords over these ships and the men like slaves? Or was there some democracy as we see on pirate ships?

Much of this presentation I was already familiar with from my own study and even from the numerous pirate based video games that I enjoy playing. But there was one part that I found particularly interesting, about how men passed the time on the voyages, or what they did for fun.

Trade voyages to the other side of the world, followed known routes, but still took months and years to complete, the level of ennui on these journeys must have been severe on small ships without may diversions, and a crew too poor and too cramped in to bring much with them.…

Este i nuebu na hinekka ginen as Craig Santos Perez yan i asagua-ña si Brandy Nalani McDougall. 

Anggen ti un fåhan este trabiha, put fabot, yemme' i link gi papa'. 

Meggai na gefpå'go na tinige' ginen i mantitige' yan manyiyinga' ginen i islan Guåhan yan i islas Hawai'i guini. 

Banidosu yu' sa' unu na tinige'-hu "Ga'pang's Quest" mana'saosaonao gi este na hinekka. 

Gof maolek i prisu lokkue', ti gof guaguan. 

Dosse pesos ha'.

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Home(is)lands: New Art and Writing from Guahan and Hawaii, edited by Brandy Nalani McDougall and Craig Santos Perez.
Purchase from Amazon here.
“Despite the vast distance between Hawaii and Guahan (Guam), these islands and their peoples have experienced similar cultural, historical, ecological, and political struggles. Writers and artists from both places have been engaged in unwriting colonial representations and envisioning decolonial futures. This anthology acts…

After World War II, Chamorros launched into a period of aggressive Americanization, which you could argue is still going on until today. This Americanization had many levels and dimensions to it. There were clear desires amongst most Chamorros take on the material and consumer comforts America seemed to offer. There were also clear moves by some to ensure that there children were properly or at least passably Americanized, most notably through the refusal to use the Chamorro language with them. There were frameworks of economic, social and political dependency that were created and eventually celebrated by Chamorros themselves. There were also dramatic shifts in lifestyle due to land loss and trauma from the war, which made things such as cultural maintenance difficult because occupations and life-ways were changing so quickly.

Alot of these shifts could not be helped, but simply came about because the US is so much larger than Guam, and it produces ideological content and material g…

Some updates on ongoing Chamorro language related efforts. Most promising is the fact that there are two groups that are actively pushing now for Chamorro language (one full Chamorro, the other bilingual English/Chamorro) immersion schools. I have my own ongoing efforts, but as usual life, teaching and other obligations get in the way. Over the summer, I can at least thankfully report that my good friend in Chamorro language revitalization Ken Kuper (who is currently getting his Ph.D. in Hawai'i) organized a number of important events and got some media projects started. Look forward to those coming out soon over social media and in local events.

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Chamorro immersion program ensures Guam's language isn't lost
by Isa Baza
8/15/16
KUAM News


With fewer and fewer children speaking the Chamorro language every year, the Guam Department of Education is stepping up to create a Chamorro immersion program that may help keep our island's native tongue fresh in the mi…

I read Murakami as a younger man and enjoyed the first book I read, but disliked the next two and so I, in a way said abayo to Japan literature for a while after that. When I spent a month in mainland Japan over the summer I quickly ran out of English books to read and resorted to picking up some Japanese texts translated into English. I don't think I'll ever give Murakami a try again, but some of them were worth the time. I really enjoyed the book  Confessions of a Yakuza by Junihi Saga. I ended up giving a copy of it to my brother, as research for the Asian gangster books or films he is always dreaming of penning. I read two books by Keigo Higashino Salvation of a Saint and The Devotion of Suspect X, which were interesting and led me to get a copy of the rebooted Millennium series with a new author at the helm.

I saw this article on Facebook and became intrigued. I might try to pick up a copy of it.

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Natsume Soseki goes to hell and back in "The Miner…

--> The island of Pagan, in the northern Marianas has made international news as it might soon become yet another beautiful island to be destroyed by the US military for its testing and training purposes. Although now I regularly hear news about Pagan, in years past I scarcely heard about it in a Chamorro context, but rather always in either a strict environmental context or in a Japanese historical context. Environmentalists are the first line of defense in some ways against militarization, although history has shown they often have trouble working cooperatively with the locals and natives who claim those lands. For them Pagan is an ecological paradise and needs to be protected. I would hear random tidbits about Pagan in this regard, as being a place with exciting species (including snails) that should be researched and explored. 
I also heard about it in the context of Japanese, as settlers lived there during the Japanese colonial period in the CNMI. In fact in historical terms,…

During this trip to California I am meeting up with people I haven't seen in years, in some cases, I haven't seen or heard from them in close to a decade. It is interesting to experience the memories that people have of you after a long stretch of time. Are you frozen in time to them? Have they imagined  future for you even if it matches nothing that you have done since you last saw them?

Today I met up with someone who heard me read poetry a long time ago in San Diego, when I was attending grad school at UCSD. We had only met a couple of times, but for him it was an important meeting because I was the first person from Guam, he had met, who talked about Guam in a critical way. He had heard me read a poem on Chamorros being a footnote to the American Empire. It is something that struck and stuck with him ever since. For me, I cling to moments like this, and I thread them together to create my personal necklace of relevance. It is so easy sometimes to feel like nothing I do ma…

Si Yu'us Ma'ase to Mar-Vic Cagurangan for her mention of my column "When the Moon Waxes" and NaNoWriMo in her column earlier this month in The Marianas Variety.
For those who want to know more about NaNoWriMo from a Chamorro perspective or ChaNoWriMo, please check out the Chamorro Studies Facebook page. 

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Stranger than Fiction
Mar-Vic Cagurangan
11/8/13
The Marianas Variety

THE hardest part of writing is coming up with the opening sentence.
With every new piece, you are a virgin – even if you have had this job all your adult life.

You embark on the process with nothing but a blank screen and frequent but unnecessary trips to the bathroom, hoping for the first atom of an idea to emerge. Writer’s block can be crippling.

For news writers, the challenge is to write a catchy lead with an interesting angle, coupled with the difficulty of digesting a 100-page document, a one-hour interview or a two-hour forum into a 500-word (or less) articl…

I'm pretty sure that I am the #1 of Jack Reacher on this island.

I never heard of Jack Reacher until late last year when I took my girlfriend to watch the movie. She normally hates most of the movies that Hollywood makes and doesn't like Tom Cruise either, but found herself enjoying the movie. I am a fan of Tom Cruise and I really enjoyed the movie. I am one of the most open person in terms of movies. I even enjoy moves that are terrible or that are just messed up in terms of their politics or representations. I know that Avatar or The Lone Ranger were messed up in terms of their politics, but I still enjoyed them. Yes they reimagined and reinvigorated stupid tropes that have marginalized and twisted the ways that we imagine indigenous people for centuries. But all that said, I still enjoyed them.

It is not difficult for my to enjoy movies or see some possible redeeming dimension in them. I enjoyed Jack Reacher at lot, but I was surprised at the way I enjoyed it. Cerebral and…

My kids, like most kids love reading Dr. Seuss. Their favorite book, by far is The Lorax. I enjoy reading Dr. Seuss as well, the sentences can be find not only for your mind, but for the physical parts of your mouth. The sentences seem like they are pieced together in such a way that your tongue gets a satisfying workout as well. One problem I've often found with reading Dr. Seuss to my kids is that I translate books we read into Chamorro, and so it is often more of a storytelling time with pictures, than actual reading. Some books are easily translated off the top of your head. Dr. Seuss books are not. Sen mappot este para u mapula'. The language is fitted for English and its mannerisms, its flow. Many times words are made up and formed out of various things to create some amalgamated, overflowing idea or character. Translating the basic ideas of Dr. Seuss is easy, since the themes are generally universal. But capturing that animated and vibrantly creative quality is somethin…