Organizer: Harvard University Asia Center

Type/Location: Virtual

Description:

In this ethnographic presentation, I will narrate the story of a Sama-Bajau family based on my book, An Intimate Journey: Finding Myself Amongst the Sama-Bajau, published by Kyoto University Press and Trans Pacific Press in 2020. The Sama-Bajau people constitute one of the most distinctive maritime populations in Insular Southeast Asia. They are spread across three nation-states: Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. My book deals with Sama-Bajau migrants who fled conflict-mired areas in the Southern Philippines and settled in stilt houses in an urban slum in Davao City located in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. In this talk, I will focus on a family from the lowest socioeconomic status in the research site. Specifically, I will share the story of the family of a woman named Magsahaya in the form of a letter addressed to her dead daughter, Gratiya. The research on which this story is based is social scientific and was conducted about 25 years ago. However, this talk is intended as storytelling, not empirical science. The text is prepared through collaboration with James Hallowell, a writer based in Cambridge. Through this experimental presentation, I will attempt to share with the audience memories, however partial, of the Sama-Bajau people living in Davao City in the late 1990s. In this time of crisis, with wars and disasters happening around the world, I hope to provide an opportunity for you to reflect on what it means to encounter the other, and in doing so, to comprehend the life of the other, and to feel compassion if not empathy. 

Speaker Waka Aoyama, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo

Moderator James Robson, James C. Kralik, and Yunli Lou Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Victor and William Fung Director, Asia Center, Harvard University

Registration:

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