Cultural Resume

Lourdes U. Alonso​

My personal reactions' journey is my main focus of this multicultural resume.  The spiritual values instilled in me at an early age helped me screen out the ugliness and allowed me to move on without begrudging anyone.   I was born to Ursula Adriano Untalan and Thomas Flores Fleming.  Born in Barrigada, Guam by a midwife named Nankala'.  I was born and raised in the wooden house my Dad designed and built.  I moved to the mainland when I was 14 years old.  

RACIAL EXPERIENCE

0 TO 10 YEARS OLD -  BARRIGADA, GUAM  -  1956 – 1966 Early on in our home, roles were assigned without question according to one’s age and gender. For example, my Mom did all the cooking, cleaning, and raising all 9 children.  Cooking and cleaning were Mom’s work, the breadwinner was Dad.  Our job was to excel in school and the art of music.  Every sibling had to learn an instrument by grade school.  Prayers replaced depression.  It is these early years too that I learned that suicide is a sin, and death is entry to the everlasting life.  

When I was ten years old I experienced my first racial slur. The neighbor’s whispers about our family name (Fleming) being ‘Americano’ and that we looked ‘mixed’, and known to be ‘of‘Gupalao’ race’,--- and I remember hearing an adult neighbor said it out in a disparaging tone.  I never repeated it to my Mother as I considered her feelings.  Gupalao is a derogatory word for Micronesian.  It was my own feelings of inferiority, for my Mother, of her dark skin and my curiosity of how she kept to herself and her family.  Still I sensed her power of having a deep sense of herself and probably never even was affected by mine and others’ ignorance.   My Mom’s mix of ¼ blood Filipino and Chamorru and alas, born in Yap Island, was immediately a gossip item that increased as her art in the garden flourished.  And still, I find the need to defend her by saying to myself little did they know that a book was written about her in the early 1930s for their fashionable and refined lifestyle when she was very young growing up in Yap supported by their hard work in their Copra Trading business there.

11 TO 13 YEARS OLD  - 1967 - 1969

Around this age I noticed that there was a unified sense that we had to be perfect little respectful girls and separate from our peers who were ‘wild’.  We made sure we did not wear any makeup or short skirts or else our elderly Aunties would indiscreetly pinch us till our skin turned blue.  These same Aunties curse girls whom choose to break the unspoken rule of being virtuous. 

When a group is criticized because of being different, my mother would constructively mention all the positive aspects of them.  For instance, she’d say “the Filipinos have a great bustling society with a lot more professionals than Guam does”, and shakes her head in disgust; she tells us of how the navigational skills of the outer islanders are still practiced, then questions the locals, “why do they think they’re better than anyone?”

There was an ‘air’ of prejudice towards the Filipinos and other small population of Micronesian in contrast to the high regards given to the ‘Americanos’.  The close-knit Chamorru neighborhood in Barrigada welcomed the White contract teachers, inviting them to their fiestas.  As I now recall, there were no Filipino or Outer-Islanders in our neighbor.  I witnessed first-hand the effect of such ramification of such discrimination at Ypao Beach.  There was a big celebration happening in the park and being that it was a public park, we freely entered the pavilion, only to be attacked by a large angry crowd of young Filipinos wielding chains, sticks and one of them had a machete, we ran like death upon us as fast as we could back to the car.  I did not feel resentment against those young men.  Instead, I only felt an exhilarating episode in my lifetime.   I did not know it then, but truly, I now can say my parents’ teachings on values of human kindness from the time I could hear, allowed me that understanding of their rebellious anger.  “No group should be made to feel ashamed of themselves.  (Sue, 2007, p. 20)

14 TO 18 YEARS OLD 1971 - 1974

Ethnocentrism became ever-present during this period.  A neighborhood girl moved in from Saipan.  Reflecting back on how she must have been an object of curiosity to the community because she was “Saipanese,” this girl made it her job to be discriminatory first.   I suppose having caught wind of my parents’ birthplace in Yap; she would constantly tease me about it.  As a result of her clever and aggressive nature, she became quite popular, needless to say, accepted quickly into the community.

Later into my teens, I experienced injustice in the form of power of one’s position in the workplace.  It happened on my first day in high school in Guam.   I was late for my Counselor’s appointment; he outright called me a liar when I told him I couldn’t find his office.  I learned immediately to be leery of men of authority.  The following year in California, a racial antagonistic attack against me, chased off from a restaurant sitting area, it hurt.  It hurt most because it came from a White businessman.  This came at the worst time to experience socio-economic disparity.  We had just moved to California in 1971. In Guam, my Dad was always a self-employed carpenter and when the H2 workers were brought into the island it pushed him right out of the workforce. So being an immigrant, and the bottom of the totem pole, I felt the ugliness of racial prejudice.  Once again, I feel grateful for my religious values, because I do not harbor ill-feelings against these White men, but an awareness of that pain which I will never inflict on anyone as what was inflicted onto me.  

Education

The University of Guam, Master of Arts in Counseling

Skills

Understanding the diverse populations and being aware that for people to function better in our society, I will recognize the heart and soul of the human being, his societal group, and the universal dimensions.

Referrals

Dr. M. Artero

MOTSIYAS...COOKING WITH WHAT YOU GOT

COOKING WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT

Motsiyas is one of my favorite dishes and a traditional one here on Guam, yet I have no recollection of it being served in my childhood home. I imagine the reason I can’t remember ever eating this dish while growing up is that, with nine kids and the proliferation of canned goods in the cupboards of the early 1960s, my mother dismissed the individually wrapped morsels as just too time consuming to prepare. 

The first time I actually tasted this dish was when I returned to the island in the 80s.  It was at San Dimas Fiesta in the southern village of Malesso and after just one bite from the greasy tinfoil packet, I began my investigation—if you can call badgering old men for their recipes at parties an investigation.  

I visualized how one might prepare for this dish.  I saw myself running to catch a wild chicken, and within only seconds of scurrying, I managed to twist its neck, slice through its quivering throat, and drain its blood into a pot of boiling water steamed, a reminder of my slow pace.   This macabre fantasy was not my invention, but rather a memory.  

In 1960s Barrigada, walking home from elementary school, I passed a scene exactly as I described.  Except it was a crooked old man, tall and lanky, sweating, with a cigarette in his mouth.  He knocked the rooster against a post and twisted its neck right out of its misery.   I ran from that grotesque scene as fast as I could, glimpsing a big black pot roasting over a tangantangan fire as I took one last peek through the leaves of a pink hibiscus bush. It didn’t occur to me that the recipe I would spend years seeking and countless hours perfecting had just happened upon me!

Each time I prepare Motsiyas, some other memories come back as clear as the drops of water that roll gently on my face off of the leaves I pick early in the morning to ensure freshness.  As I begin the leaf gathering, washing, and chopping, I wonder why the traditional preparation of the dish’s ingredients are gizzards, feet, livers, and all the undesirable parts of the chicken.  And then, I ask myself why only the leaves.  Why not the fruit of the pumpkin, or tomatoes?  And stuffing them into the necks?     I began to recollect the stories my Mom, Dad, my teacher Mrs. Antonia Perez at San Vicente School, stories during the days of the Japanese Occupation in 1941 till the Liberation in July 21st 1944. 

The one story that stirs as I cook this dish is of Mrs.Antonia Perez’s.  She began with how as a 9-year-old, she walked around with one red shoe, because she found only one, and thought that it was better than none, most exiting still, that it was patented red and can easily slip her right foot in. The story of the war told through the eyes of when she was that little girl, remained so, despite that now she’s my teacher.   As I listened, all ears, feelings of pain welled inside of me.   It is the cruelty she elaborated on as the soldiers paddled away at children, women, and old men’s back to execute the perfect vegetable and fruit gardens, food for the Japanese army.  

Unfortunately, the perfect garden is for the plates and palates of the enemy.  The Chamorro’s were to eat only the leaves, the roots, the undesirable parts of any food.

Still, Motsiyas, forever remains a mystery for me and do ask any old-timer its methods of preparation.  Indeed, it is always the same.  After hearing all its ingredients stuffed into the neck then wrapped in banana or pumpkin leaves, I began to theorize that this dish was a creation from one’s survival art technique.

Truly the delight when it is served is with a heartfelt love of eating, and more so, cooking with what you’ve got. 

Here’s the recipe. Pay close attention to the ingredients:

Gizzards​donne & donne leaves​onions garlic

Liver​pumpkin tips​& leaves​sea salt

Chicken feet​tomato leaves​lemon juice *

coconut milk

​

Boil down wild chicken

Add meat mixture chopped with onions garlic, salt.    Add leaf ingredients on for a few minutes then drain mixture saving the chicken broth.   Stuff ingredients down the chicken neck, plug ends with more leaves, drop into the broth with added lemon juice *optional, coconut milk

So when my mother decided right out of the blue that she was going to serve us for dinner one evening in 1980, I paid close attention.  Here is her easy way of preparation.

Let’s start in the garden.  Here’s a shot of our donne.  I use all the above ingredients but replace feet and gizzards with only chopped chicken breasts, salt pepper seasoned with fresh coconut milk and pumpkin tips placed in a palmful you fit in fresh steamed banana leaves wrapped and tied pillows.

to drop into hot boiling chicken broth. A dish known in Chamorro as Motsiyas.

I remember clearly what I learned from my Mom that one time!  And that is the easiest way to prepare this old recipe passed down from family to family.