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Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia
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Edited by:
Evelyn Flores
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With contributions by:
Baltazar Aguon
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2019
About this book
For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding—and distinctly Micronesian—voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia’s historical and literary landscape.
Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region—from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors.
Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia’s resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: “Origins” explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; “Resistance” responds to colonialism and militarism; “Remembering” captures diverse memories and experiences; “Identities” articulates the nuances of culture; “Voyages” maps migration and diaspora; “Family” delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and “New Micronesia” gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices.
This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Evelyn Flores
Evelyn Flores is associate professor of literature at the University of Guam focusing on post/counter-colonial studies, Native and women’s studies, and Pacific Island literatures.
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Contributor: Emelihter Kihleng
Emelihter Kihleng is a poet and author. She has held academic and other professional positions in Pohnpei, Guam, Hawai‘i, and New Zealand, and is a curatorial research fellow at the MARKK, Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg, Germany.
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Contributor: Craig Santos Perez
Craig Santos Perez, 2023 winner of the National Book Award for poetry, is a Chamoru author and editor from Guam. He was most recently professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
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Contributor: Anne Perez Hattori
Anne Perez Hattori is a native Chamorro, born and raised in Guam. She is professor of history, Micronesian studies, and CHamoru studies at the University of Guam.
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Contributor: Chris Perez Howard
Chris Perez Howard believes that his adventurous spirit and endless curiosity are responsible for his unconventional life. Among his experiences, he served in the U.S. military; worked for the American Express Co. in New York; struggled as an artist in Rome, Italy; lived in Yap, the Seychelles, and the Philippines; and went to Africa to see wild animals in their natural habitat. In Guam, he has worked as a teacher, a news editor for the Guam Tribune, an assistant to the president of the Guam Community College, and a press secretary for the Governor of Guam. Academically, he attended the University of Alabama and Indiana University, and he graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor of fine arts degree. Chris is also a CHamoru rights activist, and is a former chairman of the Organization of People for Indigenous Rights (OPI-R) and has presented testimony before the United Nations and the US Congress. Presently, he is working on his novel – I Mestisan Engles.
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Contributor: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is Climate Envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the director of Jo-Jikum, an environmental nonprofit.
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Contributor: Craig Santos Perez
Craig Santos Perez, 2023 winner of the National Book Award for poetry, is a Chamoru author and editor from Guam. He was most recently professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
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Contributor: Katerina Teaiwa
Katerina Teaiwa is associate professor and deputy director Higher Degree Research in the School of Culture, History, and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, at the Australian National University.
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Contributor: Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa
Associate Professor Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa (1968–2017) was an influential scholar, teacher, activist and poet, and director of Pacific Studies and Samoan Studies at Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Reviews
The value of this collection is immeasurable, for both Micronesian readers and others. The need to find oneself and one’s culture represented in literature in the face of overwhelming cultural imperialism and Westernization, what coeditor Evelyn Flores (Univ. of Guam) refers to as a “recovery and assertion process,” cannot be overstated. And it is past time for non-Micronesians to pay attention to these important voices.
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Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia is a potent lyrical lamentation from over two thousand islands in the vast Northern Pacific. In this inaugural volume of the New Oceania Literary Series . . . islanders address centuries of still-festering wounds inflicted on their atolls by the world. The authors write to uncolonize themselves, paddling to stay afloat in rising water that’s been globally warmed and radiated. They splash rightfully outraged ink all over these pages. Here are tales from inside the reef, from atolls that remember the past and islands that fear the future. . . . The entire volume is a literary manifesto—a symbolic Belauan storyboard, Marshallese stick navigation chart, Pohnpeian urohs skirt, CHamoru creation myth, or Yapese rai stone.
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A much-needed and timely collection. This volume not only provides a comprehensive overview of the literature and art of a region that long has been underrepresented, but gives voice to the beauty, diversity, and power that has developed and strengthened these islands’ cultural legacies through their dynamic interactions with both the region and the world. This should be required reading, not just for Pacific literature but all literature courses interested in the ways that local knowledges engage global currents.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
vii -
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Maps of Micronesia
xiii -
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Preface
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Acknowledgments
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Introduction
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Garlanding
5 - Origins
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I Tinituhon/The Beginning
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Fu’una and Pontan
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Time
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Uchelel a Tekoi Chuab, Kotel Belau
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Chuab—Belau
21 -
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Merry Ancestors
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Nei Mwanganibuka/ The Legendary Fisherwoman
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To Swim with Eels
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I Have Seen Sirena Out at Sea/ Gua na hu li’i’ si Sirena
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Halom Tano’
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Nareau’s Return
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Ode to the Fisherman’s Hat/ Te bwara te taraai
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Return to the Sea
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Tinaitayon Hinanåo Såkman Saina/Prayer for Safe Journey
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Gutos i Finihu I Hinacha Hinanåo/Rite of First Voyage of the Sakman Saina
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Quipuha’s Sin
44 -
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Silent Warriors
46 -
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Fino’ Finakpo’/Final Words
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Manotohge Hit/We Stand
49 - Resistance
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Forefathers
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Lbolb/Wolf
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The Lord’s Prayer
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What Am I
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Excerpt from “Freedom”
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To Belau
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Belau Be Brave
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Nauru in 2001
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Tampering with Bible Translation in Yap
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“Local”
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Inside Out
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My Mother’s Bamboo Bracelets A Handful of Lessons on Saving the World
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The Mango Trees Already Know
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Juan Malo & the Tip of America’s Spear
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Juan Malo & Where America’s Day Begins
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The Storm
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Dance
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More than Just a Blue Passport
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My Island Is One Big American Footnote
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The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified
105 - Remembering
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From The Constitution of the Federated States of Micronesia, 1975
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History Project
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Thieves
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Guåhan
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From I Dos Amantes
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From An Ocean in a Cup
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An Ode to Our Unsung Heroes
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From An Island in Agony
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A New Invasion
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From Mariquita: A Tragedy of Guam
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From Cheffla gi i Manglo
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From Nasarinu
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Nauru Women Picket a Government-Sponsored Flight to London for the Stage Play Leonardo da Vinci, May 27, 1993
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Egade
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The First Woman in Parliament Ruby’s Story
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Ti Mamaigo Si Yu’us— God Never Sleeps
166 - Identities
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Sun Burns
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Crash
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Juan Malo & Da Real Chamoru
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My Blood
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Téétéén Kúen
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The Micronesian Question
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Micro-Eye-Class
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Kaki se (a coconut)
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Echukeison in Maikronisia
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Bomb the School System
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“Unfit”
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English Only Law Impact
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Language with an Attitude Palauan Identity with an English Accent
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Culture for Sale
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In Search of What Matters . . .
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Kul
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FestPac neni
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Kao siña hao fumino’ Chamoru?
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Memory Revising, As My Diasporic Queer Self
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Grass
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English Major
226 - Voyages
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Raiarecharmoracherchar
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What Grandma Sinsilmam Knew
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Flying to Makiki Street
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Tomorrow
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The Monkey Gate
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Moon Sickness, Green Cards, and the Taro Patch
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Bare-Breasted Woman
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Homes of Micronesia
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The Cry of Oceania
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We Are Human at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
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Imbibing Native DNA at a Pacific Science Meeting in Australia
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A Journey of CHamoru Self-Discovery
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The Five Stages of Being Micronesian in Guam
270 - Family
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My Urohs
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The Tree
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Mechikung
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Rubak
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Red Shoes
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Sky Cathedral
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Ngedeloch
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Food Thoughts
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The Boys
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Auntie Lola’s Champion Chalakiles
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What urohs say
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Beloved Sumay
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Fino’ Gualåffon/Moonlight Talk
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Portrait of Grandmother Eating Mango
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Hineksa Anonymous
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I am from . . .
311 - A New Micronesia
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Pohnpei Outer Space
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Development
317 -
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Map Gazing
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Look at It This Way
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I could be Miss Guam Tourism
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Well, we’re all eating chå’guan now
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My life is a poetry reading
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Hiking
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The floating world
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I Will Drink the Rain (For Toma)
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Flip Flops
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Black Coral
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On the Occasion of the Quarter Century
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Archery
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Tidepools
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Afterword
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About the Contributors
347
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 4, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780824877385
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780824877385
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
