NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Being back in the states has made me nostalgic for when I was a grad student. The nostalgia primarily comes out around book stores, because that was one of my favorite pastimes while I lived in San Diego. A friend of mine who I haven't seen since I left grad school and finished my Ph.D. is on the verge of defending her dissertation in Ethnic Studies. All of this is for some reason reminding me of my dissertation. The days I would spend in coffee shops working on it. The hours spent poring through books and articles researching it. The times I would spend while driving across California contemplating it and then rushing to write hasty notes on anything I could before a random, but precious thought escaped me. One of the central scandals that drove my dissertation was the issue of "symbolic" or "fake" votes for the delegates from the colonies of the United States. It was a site that was so rich with material for illustration my arguments, I could have written

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

I just noticed that I passed a pretty big milestone yesterday. As you can see from the image to the left, I recently passed 300,000 hits on this blog. This means that according to Statcounter, pages on this blog have been loaded 300,000 times, and it does not necessarily mean that 300,000 people have read my blog ( olaha mohon na taiguihi). What's weird is that if I follow the internal counter that Blogger uses, then I've had 300,000 hits for quite a while, since Blogger's counter always counts twice as much as Statcounter. Needless to say, this is an exciting day for me and my blog. I started this blog in August 2004, and this post is my 1,431th. I meant to commemorate the 7th year of this blog last month, lao maleffa yu'. In 2004, my blog posts were brutally short. Sometimes one or two sentences, sometimes a paragraph. Sometimes I would post several tiny posts in a day. Although I only had this blog for 4 months in 2004, I still posted 120 times, meaning at least

Whenever I read about some new development in Arizona, it constantly reminds me why Ethnic Studies is important as an academic discipline. Since graduating from Ethnic Studies UCSD, I've been trying to get a job at the University of Guam. I haven't been successful yet, and sadly I don't have much hope for the future either, lao sinembatgo bai hu konsigi. One of the reasons why I don't have alot of hope, is because while you could say that all academic departments or schools have their conservative or archaic elements, UOG, as a mixture of a colonial and a "isolated" institution is tough to beat. Most of the faculty, in all departments at UOG have never heard of Ethnic Studies (or many other similar critical disciplines which have come into being over the past 40 years), and have no clue as to what it could be. I'm used to non-academics not knowing and assuming that the degree has something to do with anthropology or "mere" culture, but its stran

Last week, I finished what was literally a long road in the course of my life, when I officially stopped being a student and completed my dissertation. I've been in college in some form or another for 13 years straight now and so I am very much looking forward to this period of my life where hokkok i umestudiante-ku, or I'm through being a student. I first started college in 1997, at Cuesta Community College. I spent three semesters there before transferring to the University of Guam. By spring of 2001 I graduated with a double major from UOG in Fine Arts and English/Literature. While I was an undergraduate at UOG, I had two one-man exhibitions of my artwork, the first in 1999 titled "Typhoon: An Island's Intensity" and the second in 2001 titled "I Matan i Kuttura Siha." I was most known during this time for having paint on my clothes all the time, and some people still remember me as "that painted guy." From there I jumped into the Micronesi

I am almost out of graduate school, and almost an alumni from my Ph.D. program, Ethnic Studies at University of California, San Diego. I say almost, because I'm just waiting on word from my committee to submit the final draft of my dissertation to the graduate school. As I've been waiting for their approval, I've been closely following what's been going on on campus there lately. To say that things have been explosive at my school of UCSD lately would be an understatement. For a campus which I remember for being so large and yet so apathetic, what has been happening there lately has been mind-blowing, in both a positive and negative sense of the word. While I enjoyed my time at UCSD as a graduate student, the school nonetheless had a reputation amongst both undergraduates and faculty for not being very diverse and not being a great place for people who weren't White or Asian. When I was more active in the department it was almost impossible to get African American

I know that Guam's educational system is in turmoil right now, but in truth, education is under attack all over the place, especially in the places (California and Hawai'i) that I have close friends and relatives. On Guam, the local Department of Education is going to have its Federal funds managed by a third party receiver, because of the Federal DOE has complained for years that Guam's DOE just can't take care of itself and can't manage properly the Federal funds it receives. For most people on Guam this is an important and progressive step since DOE, like any local agency is always envisioned to be the most corrupt institution in the universe, and can signify nothing but incompetence and can accomplish nothing. It is in contexts like this that we can perceive most clearly the colonial psychology of Guam, where the Federal Government, in the many forms it takes whether it be Marines, military or their DOE, always appears on Guam as some sort of angel, or more app

Hafa hinassosso-mu put Si Judith Butler yan i che'cho'-na? Annai hu tuthuhun i lina'la'-hu gi eskuelan Grad, guaha nai ti komprendeyon i tinige'-na siha, pi'ot put "gender" yan "sex." Estaba kalang taya' sensia-ku put asunton "gender yan sexuality" pues ti hu hulat gumacha i tinige'-na Si. Ma gof dingu i chi-na siha i hinasso-ku. Lao ti apmam, mana'payon yu' gi i hinasso-na siha. Dumidide' dumidide' hu tumutuhun kumomprende hafa kumekeilek-na, ya pues humuyongna na hu gof agradesi taimanu ha puga' asunto siha put hemplo gender, sex yan i tahtaotao. Lao para i mannatibu na feminists siha, fihu ma sangan na Si Butler gof conservative, pat gof liberal. Ha sangan na apa'ka na palao'an gui' ya pues todu tiempo manunuge' gui ginnen ayu na estao. Ti sina ha dingu i estao-na, pues achokka' gof "radical" i tininge'-na siha gi este na banda, gof otdinario gi i otro banda. Gi i

If you are in San Diego with nothing to do, then you are cordially invited to my Yanggen manggaige hamyo giya San Diego, ya tåya' bidan-mimiyu, pues manmakombibida hamyo para iyo-ku DISSERTATION DEFENSE Ethnic Studies, UCSD June 8, 2009, 9:30 am University of California San Diego Social Sciences Building Room 103 "Chamorros, Ghosts and Non-Voting Delegates: GUAM! Where the Production of America's Sovereignty Begins." by Michael Lujan Bevacqua Taotao Chumalamlam Familian Kabesa yan Bittot If you have any questions please email: mlbasquiat@hotmail.com An guaha finaisen-miyu put fabot email ha' yu' gi: mlbasquiat@hotmail.com Maila yan Fanekungok yanggen siña hamyo!! Thank you! Si Yu'us Ma'åse! Yanggen malago un tungo’ mas put i tinige’-ku yemme’ este na link. ********************************* Below are five pictures of my dissertation

Hami yan Si Sumåhi para bei in hanao gi agupa'ña para lågu, ya ti para ta bira mågi Guahan este ki i tinituhun July. Para bei hanao lagu put iyo-ku graduation gi i otro mes ginnen iyo-ku Programman Ph.D. giya San Diego. Gof ya-ñiha i familian-måmi gi lagu na manali'e yan Si Sumåhi. Meggai matulaika-ña siha esta gi i ti apmam na lina'la'-ña. Manlinemlam i familia siempre. Estaba kulang “eggplant” gui', fihu kumetu, ti siña kumuunanaf, ya-ña chumalek lao taya' kuentos-ña. Sesso, (pi’ot annai mampos machalek Si Sumåhi) siniente-ku minahalang para ayu na klasin haggå-hu. Achokka’ ya-hu este na nene-hu på’go na momento, sa’ siña umakuentusi ham, ya esta humuhuyong ginnen Guiya iyo-ña personality, sen mannge ayu na mas hoben na nene lokkue’. Ayu na otro nene mas fa’set para u na’maigo’, ya gof ya-ña mumaigo’ gi pecho’-ku. Este na nene-hu på’go, kada na manna’oppop gui’ gi i pecho’-ku, manggaogao “I wanna baila!” Ai adai, hu komprende na todu i famagu’on mangguaha mi

Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies A Symposium hosted by the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCSD For a schedule of all panels, please see below or go to the event blog at: http://iss0509.blogspot.com/ Date & Time: Friday, May 8, 2009, 9:30am-5:00pm Location: Room 107 of UCSD’s Social Science Building If you are not familiar with the geography of UCSD, go to- http://maps.ucsd.edu and type “Social Science Building” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mission Statement: As scholars in the Ethnic Studies Department at UCSD, we stand incredibly proud of the cutting edge critical race and ethnic studies work developed in our department, and in its potential to push the limits of the larger Ethnic Studies project. In this spirit, we find that in order for Ethnic Studies to move beyond the usual emphasis on immigration, diaspora and slavery paradigms, the critical potential of Indigenous Studies should become an integral part of ou