Wind chimes made of shell casings, a sepia toned desert, and the lush greens of an island. Images throughout Nathan Fitch’s film, “Island Soldier,” a documentary on Micronesians serving in the US military, are at once crisp and remarkably beautiful, and yet, like the stories it tells, they are also incredibly heartbreaking. Nathan, a former Peace Corp volunteer who used… Read More
The first thing Terse says when I arrive to learn jaki-ed weaving from her is that this type of weaving almost disappeared. She says I need to write about how she revived it. How she pulled the strands of leaves and the patterns that look like stars unblinking from worn out photographs in the only museum on island. Despite the… Read More
I’m back to rainy Portland, Oregon, after I spent three weeks of September in Majuro for a weaving training. For three weeks I learned from master weavers back home – mostly under Terse Timothy, a woman elder from the island of Ailinlaplap. Terse has been credited with reviving the traditional jaki-ed weaving. It was an honor to learn from her…. Read More
Note: this was originally posted for prel.storytellers.org. This past week I’ve been in Palau attending the Pacific Education Conference where I presented on “Activating Youth Voices for the International Stage” alongside my friend, photographer Daniel Lin from the non-profit PREL (Pacific Resources for Education and Learning). After the presentation, a woman came up to me. She said she had… Read More
My latest poem video has finally been released. This was a simpler poem video than my last one (Islands Dropped from a Basket) created for the Honolulu Biennial this past February. “Butterfly Thief” was a poem that was curated by an energy company in London called Good Energy whose mission is to “is to transform the UK energy market by helping homes… Read More
Poet and scholar Teresia Teaiwa passed away last week. She was a mentor and a teacher to me and and as a fellow Micronesian her writing has influenced and guided so much of my work – but more than anything she was just simply an amazing person and friend. She was her work and her writing, but she was also… Read More
“A book to be read slowly. Savored. Admired for it’s precision of language and emotion.” – Alice Walker