Where the Wild Things Speak Chamoru

 

One of of my oldest child's Sumahi’s favorite books growing up was “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak. 

 

She loved the artwork and the story and would sometimes request that we read it for several nights in a row. For those unfamiliar with the story, a young boy Max is causing so much havoc in the house that his mother sends him to his room without supper. While there he undertakes a journey that takes him over a great sea to the land of the wild things. He becomes the leader of the wild things and they dance and have a great time. Eventually Max grows tired of the freedom being a “wild one” gives him, and he decides to sail home. When he arrives in his room he finds he supper waiting for him; and it is still warm.

Part of the difficulty with reading books to my kids is the fact that I only speak to both of them in Chamoru. Even if I am reading to them a book like “Where the Wild Things Are”  which is in English, I have to translate it as I’m reading it. 

 

Today, there are more and more Chamoru children's books being published all the time, but this was most definitely not the case when Sumåhi, who is now attending college was young. 

 

At that time there was no UOG Press yet. Some Guam and CNMI kid's books did exist, but there were very few that were in the Chamoru language. I recall a few from Saipan such as "Kao Siña Hao?" and "Despensa Amigu." There were far fewer that came from Guam, unless you count the hard to find ones produced for GDOE. Most, such as those published by Gerard Aflague featured just a few Chamoru words here and there, but weren't much help if you were trying to immerse kids in the language. Those books, like most of life in general reinforce more the idea that "speaking Chamoru" means just speaking English, but using a few Chamoru words here and there. 

 

Today, there are far more Fino' Chamoru children's books out there, but if you are someone like me who is only speaking to your children in Chamoru, you run out of books quite quickly, and soon wish there was more. 

When I would read “Where the Wild Things Are” the one word that I would struggle with was “monster. Some would use the term “taotaomo’na” since that is the word most commonly associated with scary and menacing phenomena on Guam. But, for anyone who knows anything about Chamoru history and cultures, it should be immediately apparent that the term is not appropriate. Taotaomo’na aren’t the zombies of Destination Truth and they are not the wild things of the story.

Do you instead give them a name from some aspect of them instead? For example, the monsters are behemoths, huge beasts, so would you call them “mandångkolo' siha?” I thought about this, but since I already translated that to mean “the titans” as in “Clash of the Titans” I felt I needed to go another route. Would you instead describe them from their sharp claws or sharp fangs?

Chamorus do have a couple words that you would use for monsters, but people are sometimes divided over when it is appropriate to use one instead of the other. Plantasma is something you should used for specters or apparitions. Birak is a more generic term. Bikilo’ is supposed to be a child’s term for a monster. Anufat is the team of an infamous taotaomo’na that I’ve heard some use in place of the term monster. There’s another long list of terms for monster which focus primarily on the aspect of monster that frightens others, these terms such as na’ma’a’nao and fafa’na’gui

Maurice Sendak passed away in 2012. 

 

In one of his last interviews, he told Stephen Colbert about one aspect of his career that many people have missed. 

 

Even though Sendak was known as a great figure in children’s literature, he never saw himself as such. “I don’t write for children. I write, and somebody says, “That’s for children.” This is an interesting point and one of the reasons why I still continue to enjoy this book even as I haven’t been a child for a long time. 

 

For a child, they may fixate on the monsters and the magical world that Max visits. For adults the messages are much deeper. There are messages about family, home and the importance of finding someone who will love you no matter how wild and crazy you might be.

While for Sumåhi and Akli'e', who are now my teens and adult children, the practice of translating books at bedtime into Chamoru was an ordeal, today for my younger children, it is a much easier process. Although, when the story is complicated or would become boring in Chamoru, sometimes I might embellish or take it in a very different direction. 

 

For my four-year old Lulai she would hate this for a time period. Knowing that the Chamoru story I was telling from the book, was not what was truly written on the page would frustrate and anger her so much.

 

But now as she has become much comfortable in the language and is finding her own voice and her own joy, she likes hearing the Chamoru version go off into some wild and new original direction.