Simply Chamorro Analysis

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In the article Simply, Chamorro: Telling Tales of Demise and Survival in Guam by Vicente M Diaz, he narrates the history of Guam through various tales. The tales describe the culture of Guam, narrates how Guam is before and after the war. Furthermore, they also recount how the war erased Guam’s culture. Specifically, the tales indicate that this drastic change in Guam’s culture was caused by American capitalistic and military oriented perspectives, and cultural assimilation. This is significant because it made the dream of social independence in Guam difficult to achieve through the capitalistic history. Since the dreams of Guam’s social independence had dwindled, so will Guam’s folklore. Guam’s culture, according to the folklore, the Japanese had erased Guam’s culture. Moreover, the tales regarding Guam’s culture empathizes the demoralization and dehumanization and cultural erasure that Guam …show more content…
I thought all cultures were different and shared no similarities, After reading this article, I realized that cultures are both similar and different. For example, in my Vietnamese culture, we value respect for the elders and at Chinese New Year, we wish them the best. The Tongan culture also empathizes respect for elders and helping other people in an altruistic manner. I want to go by the Tongan way because the Tongan way matches my feelings inside. I wonder if the Tongan culture is really similar to the Vietnamese or not. This article about the Tongans had pushed me to learn about cultural differences and similarities and how they contribute to diversity. It was upsetting to see how the Tongan culture slowly gets erased over time because I don’t know why that happened. Why would the Tongans change their ways? The critical questions I had for this article are 1) How do we prevent the cultural erasure of the Tongans? 2) How can these Tongans regain their sense of cultural

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