Tantan/Tåntan/Tåntån (Disclaimer: As of now, there is no Tantan, Tåntan nor Tåntån in the Chamoru dictionary) By Edward Acfalle Jr.
Siña hu hasso’ i Siniente
(I can remember the feeling)
Ginen i lina’la’-hu ngai’an hu tantan
(From my life when I tantan)
“Tåntan i håfyen kåtre fan”
(“Go tantan the bed sheets”,)
tåntån i kuttina, i sábanas,
(Tantan the curtains, the blankets,)
Tantan i atfombra, i guafak, i magågu,
(Tantan the rug, the mat, the clothes,)
Tåntan hokkok gi gima’-hu yan Guahu
(Everything in my house and myself)
yan ginen ennao na mumento, Ennao na
(And from that moment, In that)
Metgot na Minatatnga na Magåhet na
(brave, strong, true)
mumento ginen i tiempo, Eskåpa yu’
(moment from time, I escape,)
Eskåpa yu’ para i yo’-ku anitin gela’
(I escape for my queer deities)
Eskåpa yu’ para i yo’-ku gela’ taotaomo’na,
(I escape for my queer ancestors,)
Eskåpa yu’ para i yo’-ku manggåfan gela’,
(I escape for my queer family)
Sa’ gela’ yu’, gela’ guahu, Guahu gela’
(Cause I’m queer, I’m queer, I AM queer)
Yan ngai’an hu tåntån, Hu siente ginela’
(And when I tantan, I feel queerness)
Ngai’an hu tantan kalåmten yu’ kulang i langhet
(When I tantan, I move like the sky)
Kulang Guahu i pakyo, Guahu i ichan
(Like I AM the typhoon, I AM the rain,)
Guahu i atdao, Guahu I pilan, Guahu i isa
(I AM the sun, the moon, the rainbow)
Yan maseha håfa hu tåntan kon Guahu
(And whatever I tantan is with me)
Lao mås impottante Guahu i manglo’,
(But most importantly, I am the wind,)
Guahu i manglo’ Yan Guahu i manglo’ gi langhet.
(I AM the wind, I AM the wind in the sky)
Sa’ Guahu i manglo’ para todu Gela’ taotao
(I AM the wind for all queer people)
Håyi tåntån hokkok gi gima’-ñiha sa’ Malago’-ña
(Who tantan everything in their house)
siente didide’ na gela’ yan i manglo’ bei hu ayuda
(because they want to feel a little queer)
todu hita. Sa’ kada tiempo hu tantan, un tåntan
(and the wind will help us all. Because)
ta tåntån, ta bohao I parehu månglo’ ginen
(everytime I tantan, you tantan, we tantan,)
gela’ taotaomo’na. Pues maila’ ta fan tantan
(we fan same wind from queer ancestors)
Sigi ta fan tåntan i langhet para i isa
(Go tantan the sky for rainbows)
“Rosary Soup” I made some “rosary soup” today. I call it rosary soup, because it’s the only soup I see exclusively at rosaries; I don’t eat it anywhere else. You know which one I’m talking about right? The one with the chicken or ground beef? Writing during COVID-19 has been and continues to be difficult. I never thought myself a poet or a (creative) writer, but I recently discovered it to be a great medium to talk about things that I don’t understand. Still, even poetry and freely writing is hard. I can write my feelings down in a beautiful prose and it’ll sound twisted, disgusted, jaded, and angry.
I think some people put like tomatoes and tomato sauce and potatoes and celery. It’s the one that has the rice noodles. Those clear, slurpy ass, soft, rice noodles. On top of that, the unrest regarding the murder of George Floyd has also agitated fears and anxieties. Most days, I’m paralyzed to do anything because I open social media and its death, #NoJusticeNoPeace, FUCK 12, disappearing activists, police brutality in response to uprisings because of police brutality. I’m reminded of the encroaching feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. This isn’t counting the times I go into the PDN or PNC news articles and see Guamanians saying, “All Lives Matter,” or “This doesn’t concern us.” It makes me think of my own history. How settler colonialism has left a deep wound in my memory, heart, and body and how it has allowed anti-Blackness and colorism to fester within the minds of people back home. So, getting to this piece, to this submission, has been a long process.
It’s a must to put mixed vegetables in. The one with the lima bean, the string bean, the corn, the cubed carrot, the peas that comes in frozen packs at the store. But don’t get the freezer burned one, less nutrients or something I open the document. I close the document. I open the document. I close the document. IoPEnthDocuMeNtiClOSethDoCmENt. I OPEN THE DOCUMENT. i close the document. I open the document…I
close the document. I. Open. The. Document. I. Close. The. Document. It’s as if the energy to think about things that hurt(s) me evaporates the second I look at a blank page. I mean what can I even say. What is there to say about queerness in Guåhan? That it really sucks how Catholicism, a place I had initially found strength, contributed to my fleeing to the continent to look for more, only to find out that that more has been inside me all along? Then why do I feel like home isn’t home, but the continent definitely is not home either? I’m stupid and decided to go to grad school straight out from undergrad? After the four years I had being assailed with so many hurtful things, so many traumas…my dumb ass knew I should’ve gone home instead? I deserve to feel homesick and fatigued every day. Or maybe I have Coronavirus. It’s not like the government is doing anything to prevent it.
Season it with salt and pepper—I know some folks have exact measurements, but are you even CHamoru if you don’t season to taste? A pinch of salt? With the forever liquid absorbing Vermicelli noodles? Might as well eat the white man’s bland soup. That too was, is, and will be weighing on my mind. But I’m here now to talk about queer things and love. In fact, I just finished reading a beautifully written book by Lani Teves and one chapter talked about queer Kanaka Maoli diaspora. The story she told struck a chord within me and I found myself feeling emotional. Do queer folks leave Guåhan because of we are queer?
I asked people on Facebook what they think of when I say, “rosary soup.” I was sure there was a name for the soup. But the thing is, I didn’t know what people would think of when I say rosary soup. They might think of corn soup, arroz kådu, or the soup I described. People did not disappoint. Queer, as I have learned from a loving friend, is a verb. It is something we do; it is an action; it is being. Central to CHamorus value system is inafa’maolek—“to make good.” Following Lani Teves’s thinking on aloha as performance, this implies that
inafa’maolek is also a way of being and doing, a way performing. So, to call myself a queer CHamoru, that means I’m doing double the work and I haven’t lost a pound doing it. Shet man.
One person said they’d get a Yeti mug full of the stuff from the gas station before going to class...in 80-degree temperatures…with NO air con on. That person is kuksika, but I admire the island-ness of it. This translates into why the fuck I went to grad school straight out from undergrad after being assailed with traumatic experiences at a Jesuit institution called Marquette University (YES, that is Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the home of the Golden Eagles and Performative Action that talks big game about social justice but can’t even practice it on their campus for their Black, Brown, and Indigenous students that they struggle to retain year after year because they would rather react to racism on campus than addressing it from the start before it happens) for four years. I want to know how queer CHamorus are being in this world. What are they doing to live their true self? What does that involve? What are their challenges? Umbi I just wanna network and be gay with other CHamorus—we’re all probably related somehow, so I may not be open to dating. I want to collect stories and strategies of queer CHamoru resistance. I want to understand how we are loving ourselves and others even if the world would rather tell us, “Don’t talk about that,” or “You’re not that way.” I want us to know one another and our experiences and how we might consider how to be CHamoru is to be queer and to be queer is to have embodied insights into decolonial futures. (settler colonial) society, as a dear Kalihi scholar-friend has told me time and again, is tethered to a cisheteropatriarchal view of the world.
Another person thought about Kådun Tan Kandelaria and what else you would grab at the rosary: a tuna/egg sandwich with no olives or relish. Now that is something to think about. How many people like olives or relish in their sanguich? I don’t mind it, ‘cause I’m just focused on how good that rosary soup is.
This is love—I think—for a queer CHamoru. It is to know that we must navigate so much more than our sexuality and gender identity; we must also grapple with our Indigeneity and racialization. This doesn’t even include the other intersecting identities or affinities we have. It is to love the world even if it doesn’t love you back. You embrace it and all its ambiguity—cause leche, some of us really are walking around and people are wondering if we’re a boy or a girl. One time, I flew through the Korean airport and I went to use the men’s bathroom. As I was washing my hands, a dude walks in, looks at my long hair, earrings, leggings, and sweatshirt; he turns around and walks out. I passed by him right outside the bathroom staring at the men’s sign, confused. I was misgendered, but in that moment, I was cracking up inside because he deadass thought he walked into the women’s restroom.
My mom thought of corn soup, chalakilis, and the soup I described (kådun tan kandelaria, as I had suspected, but it is also referred to as kådun sutanghu). Also add in an empanada, turnover, and a sandwich and you got dinner. To which another respondent commented, “not to bash or be ungrateful…but seems like everyone brings donuts now. What happened to the variety?” My mom insightfully responded, “Cheaper & easier to grab at Winchells [sic] or the bakery, no one believes in soul food anymore…Go to the South for rosaries, they’re more traditional.” I think people call it…“da souf in your mouf.” This is love—I think—for a queer CHamoru. It is to exist and perform our queerness and Indigeneity in a way that is genuine to us. It is navigating spaces that we may be settlers upon and finding ways to remain deeply connected, deeply relational to the idea of being the displaced and the displacer. To be queer times two is to have a responsibility to the values we grew up practicing without realizing we were doing so.
My niece said what I expected to hear: “see thru noodles 8)”. Indeed, the noodles are an important part you can’t forget. Here my mom revealed some of her thoughts about the
name kådun tan kandelaria. “I always wondered why they would name a soup after some beautiful lady? How was I supposed to know it meant candle?” she wrote to my niece. My niece replied that she’d found an inspiration for her future daughter’s name. I feel for my future niece, Kandelaria, already. This is love—I think—for a queer CHamoru. It is a disrupted narrative, a story of two kinds. One where I’m reveling in the CHamoru part of me and the other where I contend with my queerness. Just by existing as a CHamoru, I am already queer. To add the fact that I am queered again by external forces, to have queerness and Indigeneity thrust upon me as a citizen of a nation that puts me in its footnotes (as we are reminded by Dr. Michael Bevacqua), as a displaced migrant from my island in lands that are not my own, as a human being fighting off all the demons that are trying to kill me that is. It is learning to be at peace with the fact that I will never know everything, I will never be as articulate as colonialist institutions will want me to be or as extractive as their more funded departments. And yet, I exist and continue to think about better futures that may be a bit romanticized, but that’s just how I love. It is radical. It is relational. It is queer. It is CHamoru. Much like how kådun tan kandelaria, I’m that soup that has no real name, no real place, or home, but everyone knows me when they get to know the pieces that make me. They recognize, because I’m still that cousin who liked the color pink or always liked the superheroines over their less compelling male counterparts. I am that son that sought and seeks to be recognized on my own terms. I am that grandchild that is grappling with the difficulties of militarization and the violence of settler colonialism in the Pacific. One thing I am not, is my niece’s daughter, Kandelaria. But what do I think about sex!
Queer CHamoru sex…is like…gollai hågun suni. But that’s another conversation.