Question: The Fall of the House of Taga brings several fragmented CHamoru legends together into one sweeping tragedy. How did you identify which fragments belonged together, and what guided your decisions about where to fill the gaps that colonial interpretation left?

Answer: I grew up hearing these legends, and they always seemed similar to me, although I never thought deeply about why until I began looking at CHamoru legends as inspiration for my own stories. Some involved a powerful chief who becomes threatened by the remarkable strength of his young child. The details differed—the chief might kill his son or attempt to—but the similarities were difficult for me to ignore.

When I revisited the legend of Taga the Giant, I saw elements that seemed to overlap with those other stories and could be brought together into a larger, more complete narrative. I was also drawn to the fact that Taga’s story spans several islands in the Marianas. Although I was born and raised on Guam, I want my stories to recognize that the CHamoru homeland extends beyond Guam.

The biggest gap I had to confront was Taga himself. The idea that a man could earn the trust of his community, become a respected chief, build a family, and then simply murder his child out of jealousy never sat comfortably with me. It felt incomplete, and I wondered what might have been lost as the story passed through generations of colonial interpretation.

So I imagined a more human tragedy—not what I claim actually happened, but a story that might explain how such a legend could eventually emerge. I gave Taga the capacity for pride, shame, love, growth, failure, and redemption. Then, as I do throughout my work, I placed his story within the larger CHamoru spiritual world that connects my fiction.

Question: Shame is at the center of Taga’s vulnerability. What makes shame a particularly powerful entry point for a supernatural antagonist, and what does CHamoru spiritual tradition understand about shame that Western psychological frameworks might miss?

Answer: I don’t necessarily think Western psychological frameworks are missing something about shame. What interested me was looking at shame through a CHamoru cultural lens, particularly through the idea of inafa’maolek and the importance of balance and relationships.

In the spiritual framework I use for my stories, seeing oneself as either above or beneath others can create imbalance. Pride can do that, but so can shame. Both can isolate a person from the relationships and community that might otherwise help keep them grounded. That makes shame particularly useful to the kind of malevolent spirit manipulating Taga. The spirit doesn’t create everything Taga feels. It finds something already wounded inside him and feeds it.

Taga’s first encounter with the spirit is important for that reason. His plea for supernatural help in challenging his father does not come from a place worthy of ancestral assistance. The Taotaomo’na do not answer him—but something else does. Because Taga does not understand the difference between the spirits he is calling upon and the presence that answers, he unknowingly invites a malevolent force into his life.

That distinction is central to the tragedy. Taga is manipulated, but he isn’t absolved of responsibility. The spirit works through vulnerabilities and choices that already belong to him.

Question: What aspects of CHamoru history or spirituality do you hope readers unfamiliar with the culture will discover through the novel?

Answer: I hope readers come away understanding that CHamoru spirituality is much more complex than the word “superstition” suggests. Centuries of colonization disrupted much of the knowledge that once surrounded CHamoru cosmology and spiritual practice, but remnants of that knowledge survived—in stories, beliefs, practices, and in the relationship many CHamorus continue to have with Taotaomo’na today.

That last part is especially important to me. CHamoru spirituality isn’t simply something belonging to the distant past. For many CHamorus, respect for the spirits and the land remains part of lived experience.

As I’ve researched these traditions for my fiction, I’ve begun imagining a framework that connects elements of ancient CHamoru cosmology with supernatural beliefs that survived into the modern world. That framework has gradually become the foundation of the interconnected world behind my stories.

I’m particularly excited about what CHamoru readers might discover as those connections emerge. I had several “aha!” moments myself when pieces that had seemed contradictory or disconnected suddenly began fitting together. I don’t intend to use the books to present a definitive spiritual taxonomy or claim that my interpretation represents historical truth. Instead, I want the characters to make discoveries and allow readers to decide whether those connections resonate with something they already know.

For readers unfamiliar with CHamoru culture, I hope the result is an appreciation for the depth of a spiritual worldview that survived despite extraordinary efforts to suppress it.

Question: Colonial reinterpretation of Indigenous stories becomes an important theme. What conversations do you hope that aspect of the novel encourages?

Answer: Growing up, I largely accepted the legends we inherited as stories from long ago without questioning how they might have changed over time. When I began examining them more closely as a writer, however, I noticed something that troubled me. Some familiar legends portray CHamoru people in remarkably harsh ways: a daughter who refuses to respect her mother, a mother who curses her daughter, a powerful chief who becomes so jealous of his young son’s strength that he kills him.

Perhaps those elements existed in earlier versions of the stories. We simply cannot know everything that was lost. But I began asking a different question: What might these stories have sounded like before centuries of colonization, translation, reinterpretation, and retelling?

I tend to imagine legends as having some human experience at their core. People make mistakes. They can be proud, jealous, angry, frightened, and cruel. But real people are also more complicated than the worst thing they have ever done. So when I began imagining the people behind these legends as fully human CHamoru people—with families, relationships, responsibilities, spiritual beliefs, and community values—the stories began changing.

That question eventually became one of the inspirations for The Darkness Has Names. I am not trying to replace CHamoru legends with what I believe is the “true” version. These are works of fiction. Instead, I use fiction to explore the spaces created by what was lost and to ask how colonial perspectives may have influenced the stories that survived.

If readers finish one of my stories and begin wondering where a legend came from, how it changed, whose perspective was preserved, or what might have disappeared along the way, then I think the story has accomplished something meaningful.