No country for eight-spot butterflies A lyric essay

Review by Booklist Review

How do we stay human in a warming world?" Aguon echoes this question by ecofeminist author Naomi Klein in this intimately moving collection of poetry and prose. A human rights lawyer and advocate for the peoples and environments of Oceania, Aguon issues a call to reject predatory capitalism and instead to "build a new world rooted in reciprocity and mutual respect--for the earth and for each other." Drawing on the wisdom of his Chamorro ancestors, Aguon brings together nearly two dozen short pieces to create a constellation of quietly compelling moments. Whether admiring foraminifera, tiny stellate exoskeletons that accumulate on the beaches in Guam, or heeding his godfather's advice to "go with the moon" when casting nets for rabbitfish, Aguon's clear thinking and bright language illustrate the urgency of fighting global climate injustice. It's not all earnest appeals to appreciate nature's magic. Aguon also issues full-throated denunciations of Guam's ongoing militarization and elsewhere re-evaluates his teenage admiration for indigenous writer Sherman Alexie in light of #MeToo allegations. Aguon's clarity of focus and radical empathy are desperately necessary for imagining another world.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this incandescent debut, human rights attorney Aguon celebrates the power of thought and literature through probing reflections on finding hope in the face of an "unforgiving timeline." Assuming "we have about eight years left to get our collective shit together... and ensure the future habitability of the earth," Aguon meditates on the ways that "bearing witness" can help foster change in a declining world. In "The Properties of Perpetual Light," he considers the brilliance of Black feminist Audre Lorde's words, which attempt to "close some gap between blindness and our better selves." The book's title essay, meanwhile, addresses the inescapable grip of colonialism on Guam, Aguon's homeland, while ruminating on his vision of a global justice movement anchored "in the intellectual contributions of Indigenous peoples... who have a unique capacity to resist despair through connection to collective memory." Looking to Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, Aguon urges readers to "listen to one's own heart.... anyone who interferes with another's destiny will never discover their own." In eloquent maxims that call forth comparisons to Thoreau, Aguon pits lofty ideals against a backdrop of racism, brutality, and habitat destruction, but optimism prevails: "What is hope," he wonders, "if not a stubborn chink of light in the dark?" This is bound to inspire any activist. (Sept.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Aguon's (The Properties of Perpetual Light) engaging book is a moving and impassioned read for anyone interested in world politics and environmental issues. This collection of essays, personal stories, speeches, and prose shines a light on the struggles of Guam, nuclear warfare, and global warming. In the title essay, Aguon, an Indigenous lawyer and activist from Guam, discusses the United States' militarization and colonization of his home country. He also discusses the history of Guam's struggles and provides an overview of current events in "Birthday Cake Means Birthdays," "The Gift Anne Gave Me," and "Reflections While Driving." The author thoroughly describes the history of atrocities his country has been through and their current conflicts. While there are serious themes in this book, there is also plenty of hope. VERDICT This short read packs a great deal of heart and promise for readers. Aguon has written both an informational and philosophical book that will please readers interested in environmental and political issues.--Anna Kallemeyn

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An attorney and environmental activist from Guam turns a searching eye on the fate of his homeland in a time of undeniable climate change. "I cannot think of anything more terrifying than children who do not believe the world can be changed," writes Aguon in this mixed collection of prose and poetry. Yet, by his account, thus it is in his native Guam, long under de facto military occupation by the U.S. Some 5,000 Marines are set to move from Okinawa to Guam to train on gunnery ranges that will destroy the habitat of a cousin of the monarch butterfly as well as several other local species. Furthermore, the facility is "being built dangerously close to the island's primary source of drinking water." The Marines aren't the only threat; with climate change come rising seas that will overwhelm lower-lying sections of the islands of the western Pacific. Small wonder that the inhabitants take a fatalistic view of events. "We are always hearing about what we don't have, what is not possible, what can't change," writes Aguon. "We become fluent in the language of limitation." Against this, the author urges a battle on many fronts. As an attorney, he has argued before the Supreme Court matters of the rights of Indigenous people, drawing on precedents established by Native American tribes though, admittedly, "with few doctrinal tools left at our disposal." Against this hopeful resistance, Aguon allows that there are myriad reasons for fatalism, including an overwhelming degree of injustice and violence visited on Indigenous and oppressed peoples around the world. As the subtitle notes, the prose is lyrical, while the poetry is mostly just prose with broken lines. More incisive are the author's thoughtful sentiments, delivered as addresses, commencement speeches, and the like, in which he waxes aspirational: "What I wish for you is that, whatever work you do, be, as they say, your love made visible." Arundhati Roy provides the foreword. A slender but meaningful call for justice. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies IN GUAM, even the dead are dying. As I write this, the US Department of Defense is ramping up the militarization of my homeland--part of its $8 billion scheme to relocate roughly 5,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. In fact, ground has already been broken along the island's beautiful northern coastline for a massive firing range complex. The complex--consisting of five live-fire training ranges and support facilities--is being built dangerously close to the island's primary source of drinking water, the Northern Guam Lens Aquifer. Moreover, the complex is situated over several historically and culturally significant sites, including the remnants of ancient villages several thousands of years old, where our ancestors' remains remain. The construction of these firing ranges will entail the destruction of more than 1,000 acres of native limestone forest. These forests are unbearably beautiful, took millennia to evolve, and today function as essential habitat for several endangered endemic species, including a fruit bat, a flightless rail, and three species of tree snails--not to mention a swiftlet, a starling, and a slender-toed gecko. The largest of the five ranges, a 59-acre multipurpose machine-gun range, will be built a mere 100 feet from the last remaining reproductive håyon lågu tree in Guam. If only superpowers were concerned with the stuff of lowercase earth--like forests and fresh water. If only they were curious about the whisper and scurry of small lives . If only they were moved by beauty. If only. But the militarization of Guam is nothing if not proof that they are not so moved. In fact, the military buildup now underway is happening over the objections of thousands of the island's residents. Many of these protestors, including myself, are Indigenous Chamorros whose ancestors endured five centuries of colonization and who see this most recent wave of unilateral action by the United States simply as the latest course in a long and steady diet of dispossession. When the US Navy first released its highly technical (and 11,000-page-long) Draft Environmental Impact Statement in November 2009, the people of Guam submitted over 10,000 comments outlining our concerns, many of us strenuously opposed to the military's plans. We produced simplified educational materials on the anticipated adverse impacts of those plans, and provided community trainings on them. We took hundreds of people hiking through the jungles specifically slated for destruction. We took several others swimming in the harbor where the military proposed dredging some 40 acres of coral reef for the berthing of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. We testified so many times and in so many ways, in the streets and in the offices of elected officials. We even filed a lawsuit under the National Environmental Pol-icy Act, effectively forcing the navy to conduct further environmental impact assessments, thus pushing the buildup back a few years. But delay was all we won and the bulldozers are back witha vengeance. A $78 million contract for the live-fire training range complex has been awarded to Black Construction, which has already begun clearing 89 acres of primary limestone forest and 110 acres of secondary limestone forest. It's bitterly ironic that so many of these machines bear the name "Caterpillar" when the very thing they are destroying is that precious creature's preciously singular habitat. To be sure, such forests house the host plants for the endemic Mariana eight-spot butterfly. But then again maybe a country that routinely prefers power over strength, and living over letting live, is no country for eight-spot butterflies. While this wave of militarization should elicit our every outrage, indignation is not nearly enough to build a bridge.To anywhere. It's useful, yes. But we need to get a hell of alot more serious about articulating alternatives if we hope to withstand the forces of predatory global capitalism and ultimately replace its ethos of extraction with one of ourown. In the case of my own people, an ethos of reciprocity. And nowhere is that ethos more alive than in those very same forests--for it is there that our yo'åmte, or healers, are perpetuating our culture, in particular our traditional healing practices. It is there on the forest floor and in the crevices of the limestone rock that many of the plants needed to make our medicine grow. It is there that our medicine women gather the plants their mothers, and their mothers' mothers, gathered before them. These plants, combined with others harvested from elsewhere on the island, treat everything from anxiety to arthritis. As someone who suffers from regular bouts of bronchitis, I can attest to the fact that the medicine Auntie Frances Arriola Cabrera Meno makes to treat respiratory problems has proven more effective in my case than any medicine of the modern world. Yet Auntie Frances, like so many other yo'åmte I know, takes no credit for the cure. As she tells it, to do so would be hubris, as so many others are involved in the healing process: the plants themselves, with whom she con-verses in a secret language; her mother, who taught her how to identify which plants have which properties and also how and when to pick them; and the ancestors, who give her permission to enter the jungle and who, on occasion, favor her, allowing her to find everything she needs and more. More than this, she tells me that I too am part of that process--that people like me, who seek out her services, give her life meaning. That she wouldn't know what to do with herself if she wasn't making medicine. That the life of a healer was always hers to have because she was born breech under anew moon and thus had the hands for healing. But such things are inevitably lost in translation. And no military on earth is sensitive enough to perceive something as soft as the whisper of another worldview. Earlier this month, I received an invitation to serve on the Global Advisory Council for Progressive International--a new and exciting global initiative to mobilize people around the world behind a shared vision of social justice. So of course I said yes. Truth be told, I know little by way of details--what kind of time commitment are we talking about? how will we work as a group? who else said yes?--but I am ready anyway. Ready to build a global justice movement that is anchored, at least in part, in the intellectual contributions of Indigenous peoples. Peoples who have a unique capacity to resist despair through connection to collective memory and who just might be our best hope to build a new world rooted in reciprocity and mutual respect--for the earth and for each other. The world we need. The world of our dreams. The same world who, on a quiet day in September, bent down low and breathed in the ear of Arundhati Roy. She is still on her way. Excerpted from No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay by Julian Aguon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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