Catching up with Community Collections Grant Recipients: Celebrating CHamoru Nobenas with Lola Quan Bautista

The following is an interview with Lola Quan Bautista, Associate Professor of Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, about her and her team’s 2023 Community Collections Grant project, Celebrating CHamoru Nobenas. This post is part of the Of the People blog series featuring the awardees of the American Folklife Center’s Community Collections Grants program. The Community Collections Grants program is part of the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative, which seeks to create new opportunities to engage with the Library of Congress and to add their perspectives to the Library’s collections, allowing the national library to share a more inclusive American story.

Carmen Rojas recording nobenas with microphone and computer set up in front of her, as part of the grant project — Carmen Camacho Rojas recording “Atan Bithen del Carmen,” as part of the Celebrating CHamoru Nobenas Community Collection Grant project. Photo by project leader Lola Quan Bautista.

Congratulations to you and your team on the Community Collections Grant, Lola! Let’s first start with learning more about the main focal point of the Celebrating CHamoru Nobenas project.

I imagine a lot of folks have some knowledge of a novena. Essentially, the novena, or nobena, is a devotional prayer ritual based in Roman Catholicism, but uniquely adapted and embraced by the Indigenous CHamoru/Chamorro people of the Mariana Islands and Guam/Guåhan, and among diasporic CHamoru/Chamorro communities throughout the United States.

Initially, I had planned on focusing on the more elaborate events associated with the various feasts or celebrations of the Catholic Church. However, upon my arrival to Guam in summer 2023, I quickly discovered the lingering impacts of COVID, which included cancelled processions, and many folks were still hesitant to gather. Hence, I decided to take a more personal view on the nobena and consider how families make a promesa (promise) to carry out the nobena tradition every year.

A portrait photo of the project leader's mother, Josefina Unpingco Quan, who also participated in the grant project. — A portrait of Josefina Unpingco Quan, who is the mother of Lola Quan Bautista. Josefina is also a participant in the project, and a main inspiration behind it. Photo by Channey Tang-Ho.

How did the project come about, and what is your overall approach?

It started with my mom, Josefina Unpingco Quan. From September 2018 to September 2019, we sort of made a promesa that we would read and record the Nuebu Testamento (New Testament)—all 486 pages—in CHamoru/Chamorro. I think it was the hardest, but the best year of my l