Stuff I'm Reading...When I Should Be Writing

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Chamoru Love Sayings

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A student from my Zoom Chamoru classes recently asked me for some suggestions for some Chamoru sayings or words of wisdom that she could use for a speech she had to give for a friend's wedding.  I get this type of request pretty frequently and so over the years I have a number of lists of ways to say "I Love You" in Chamoru. For years that was one of the my most visited pages on this blog, a simple page that had more than a dozen different ways to say "Hu Guaiya Hao" ranging from the poetic and deep, to the silly and sexy.  When I looked at many of those lists, I realized that the majority of the ways love was expressed, was indeed written in Chamoru, but not necessarily rooted in Chamoru. What I mean by this, is that alot of the sayings were simply translated from English or variants of ways that love would be expressed in English.  For me, I am definitely in support of these sorts of things, I love having our language adapt and take on new forms, especially wh...
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Jean-Michel Basquiat

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  I don't paint as much as I used to, but I'm still an artist gi korason-hu. Achokka' ti mamementa yu' kada diha, manhahasso yu' todu tiempo put pinenta yan atte.  I have been inspired by many artists over the years, especially when I was an undergraduate and graduate student at UOG. At that time, I was painting a great deal and displaying and selling my artwork around the island.  One of the biggest influences on me, and something which made me the butt of a great deal of "måtai na pepenta" na jokes, was my looking up to Jean-Michel Basquiat.  He was one of the consummate bohemian artists, who challenged artist norms in his time, was used by the artworld during his short life, and then died.  When I first created an email account for myself in 1998, I was so enamored with Basquiat, that I didn't use my name, but instead blended our names together. Rather than mlbevacqua, I instead entered mlbasquiat. ...
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Island of Massacres

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Every July Guam becomes transformed into an "island of massacres." As the collection memory of the island becomes focused around recalling and recounting the tragic final weeks of I Tiempon Chapones on Guam, the month seems to move from one horrific story to another. July 1944 was filled with more atrocities and more suffering than the 31 months of Japanese occupation that preceded it. Pale' Jesus Baza Duenas is killed. Chamorros are forced into concentration camps. Massacres take place in Hagat, Yigu, Merizo and Hagatna. War stories from war survivors build towards a brutal climax at this point. This brutal period however is the prologue to the happy end to Japanese rule. Within days or weeks of these atrocities taking place, Japanese guards have disappeared from concentration camps and stories of American troops being spotted are traveling around with lightning speed. War narratives at this point jump from opposite sides of the spectrum. They go from being ...
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