My Urohs By Kihleng

879 Words2 Pages

The understanding of the Pacific Islands literature is still a very confusing material for many scholars. Only the indigenous residents can interpret fully interpret their own cultural concept of writing. However, in the “My Urohs” which is a slim collection of poetry published by Emelihter Kihleng in May 2008 as her first collection of poem. It provided a new path for their own people to view themselves differently and add an important element in the Pacific Islander literature. Some of the basic informations about the author was that Emelihter is a Micronesian and more specifically Pohnpeian that was born in Guam and earned a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2003. The book “My Urohs” is divided …show more content…

In addition, the second part of the book, “Sapw Sarawi” is more connected to the migrated Pohnpeian change of thinking and effect at the western area. There are many evidences that indicated the correlation between the Pohnpeian and western style of thinking in term of their similarity in the way they think and the influence on the indigenous islanders. For example, in the poem “Saturday” it talk about how the author need to do so much activities and wand so much of the essential needs in order to satisfy her living. This type of thinking is very similar to the western thinking as well and not really about the indigenous …show more content…

This caused a huge damages to the islander itself as well as to the vast ocean. For example, in the poem “Pohnpei Seringiring” the first stanza mentioned that the “sign of addiction from drinking too much sakau “include a drying of the skin”, “ darkening of the skin”, “loss of appetite”, “weight loss”, “feeling lethargic”, and “sleeping throughout the day”. (Kihleng 2008, 33) This is a indication explain the negative effect of overly drinking too much Sakau. Furthermore, this poem also pointed out that the islanders lush of “over planting Sakau for market” caused to damage their beautiful ocean by “choking the reef”. (Kihleng 2008, 33) This is a very important issues to the PACS108 course and to the pacific island because it explain the Pohnpei’s cultural value in a different perspective and that we get to understand more of their tradition and culture. In addition, the second issues that I noticed when reading My Urohs is the discrimination against islander on islanders. In the poem, “To Linda Rabon Torres”, the author talk about many stereotype people had about the chuukese, “one of those stealers, pugua chewers, heavy drinkers without any indoor plumbing?”. (Kihleng 2008, 3) And also the fact that a woman from Yigo, Guam fired her “.22-caliber rifle” into her

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