Julian Aguon - No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay

PRAISE FOR
No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies

Julian Aguon connects the global struggles for justice with the local precision and anecdotes of Guam and Oceania. The result is this deeply felt book: Aguon writes so you understand the arguments for change with your mind and feel the urgency in your heart.

Jos Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal

No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a masterpiece, a literary talisman shaped by mad beauty and grief, evoking the magic of presence and poetry, warding off cynicism and injustice. I keep it close. You will too.

V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of The Apology

A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce loveof the land, the ocean, the elders, and the ancestorswarms the heart and moves the spirit.

Alice Walker, author of Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

I did not know I needed this book until it had me in its embrace like the oldest and dearest of friends, from the very first page With bottomless love for his people and place, Aguon guides us through a portal to the Pacific, sharing deep insights earned from life on the existential knifes edge.

Naomi Klein, author of How to Change Everything: The Young Humans Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other

Powerful with love, and tender about what it needs to be tender about, and direct, even fierce where it means to tell us what we need to be thinking about what weve been doing to this world, to Aguons people, and to Indigenous people everywhere, to the land and to all its beings as the dying eight-spot butterfly he writes about, strong and luminous as a needed beacon in a fog of disinformation and dismay, Julian Aguon with this small book emerges already a giant.

Tommy Orange, author of There There

A breathtaking book and I mean itthis book took my breath away alive with passion, wisdom, and heart, you can almost feel its pulse. A call not only for justice but for a brand-new covenant with our world.

Junot Daz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Inspired spiritual and practical wisdom from a Guam lawyer/poet/seer that transmits ways of knowing, feeling, and acting, which speak directly to the mind and heart of everyone on the planet. If reading this short book doesnt change your life, nothing will.

Richard Falk, author of Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim

Aguons pen is a spear. He has the unerring ability to pierce the heart of any matter he writes about, from colonialism to climate change, and he writes in a way that both exposes horrors and expresses love to the young.

Noenoe K. Silva, author of Aloha Betrayed

This book is a giftfull of beauty, truth telling, and love. This book will enlighten and inspire anyone interested in understanding and doing something about colonialism, capitalism, racism, militarism, war, and violence of all kinds. As importantly, this book will move you emotionally. It will move you to change how you live your life. It will move you to help change the world for the better.

David Vine, author of The United States of War

Aguon is one of Oceanias most important thinkers who uses his ability to see through complicated systems to fight for our islands and peoples. With razor-sharp analysis and a ton of heart, he both defends and calls forth our communities. I will regularly return to this book for inspirationto remind me why I do my own work.

Kathy Jet @ il-Kijiner, author of Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter

Aguons work transcends all boundaries and centers Indigenous relationships to people and place. Whether drawing on his legal or poetic skills, Aguon reckons with the rage and violence of colonialism while gently unfolding a new vision for justice and healing.

Holly Barker, author of Bravo for the Marshallese

Aguon gifts us, in shrunken times, the Indigenous version of the all-encompassing vision that Aristotle and his disciple Aquinas bequeathed humanity: truth equals beauty equals goodness.

Maivn Lm, author of At the Edge of the State

What an incredible gift. This book is a powerful spiritual remix, a multi-scalar tapestry of love, kinship, resistance, and creative survival from Oceania. His tribute to our late elder sister, Teresia, brought tears of grief and joy. Ko bati n rabwa Julian, we will live on our own terms.

Katerina Martina Teaiwa, author of Consuming Ocean Island

A celebration of Indigenous hope and survival amid the destructive and desecrating forces of militarism, capitalism, and climate change, and a provocation for collective action for just and sustainable futures in the Marianasa must read for anyone interested in the beauty of Indigenous worlds and struggles for liberation!

Christine Taitano DeLisle, author of Placental Politics

Reading this collection reminds me of being immersed in our ocean. The sunlight that illuminates the water cannot be held, and yet to behold the ways rays and sea dance together opens the soul Aguon is one of Oceanias most brilliant advocates and expansive voicesa voice that urgently needs to be heard.

Noelani Goodyear-Kapua, author of The Seeds We Planted

Aguon tells the Chamorro story by merging a profound love for our Indigenous people and culture with his potent intellect and creative genius.

Anne Perez Hattori, author of Colonial Dis-Ease

A devastatingly gentle song of resistance.

Jonathan K. K. Osorio, author of Dismembering Lhui

Copyright 2022 by Julian Aguon

All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.

Originally published as The Properties of Perpetual Light by University of Guam Press, 2021.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact .

Photographs provided courtesy of the author.

Astra House

A Division of Astra Publishing House

astrahouse.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Aguon, Julian, author.

Title: No country for eight-spot butterflies : a lyric essay / Julian Aguon.

Description: First edition. | New York : Astra House, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a collection of soulful ruminations about love, loss, struggle, resilience and power. Part memoir, part manifesto, the book is both a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone but, in particular, for indigenous peoples-his own and othersProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022002991 (print) | LCCN 2022002992 (ebook) | ISBN 9781662601637 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781662601644 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Aguon, Julian. | Chamorro (Micronesian people)GuamBiography. | Civil rights lawyersGuamBiography. | Chamorro (Micronesian people)GuamSocial conditions. | Indigenous peoplesSocial conditions. | Social justice. | Environmental justice.

Classification: LCC DU647 .A593 2022 (print) | LCC DU647 (ebook) | DDC 305.89/9952dc23/eng/20220225

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002991