Clotilde Castro Gould or Tan Ding was a beloved educator, songwriter and storyteller, who dedicated much of her life to telling CHamoru stories and promoting the CHamoru language. Born in 1930, her love of stories was instilled in her by her grandmother, who would regale her grandchildren with stories from the Spanish era, which always featured morals about how one should behave appropriately. The young Clotilde would take the stories and embellish them, adding her own twists and turns and surprises to them, much to the delight of her audiences.
Clotilde Castro Gould or Tan Ding was a beloved educator, songwriter and storyteller, who dedicated much of her life to telling CHamoru stories and promoting the CHamoru language. Born in 1930, her love of stories was instilled in her by her grandmother, who would regale her grandchildren with stories from the Spanish era, which always featured morals about how one should behave appropriately. The young Clotilde would take the stories and embellish them, adding her own twists and turns and surprises to them, much to the delight of her audiences.
Tan Ding graduated from George Washington High School in 1951 and later graduated from Barat College in Illinois in 1954 (after receiving a full scholarship). After returning to Guam she started her career as an educator and married her husband Ed Gould. They left the island in 1958 and moved stateside, where Tan Ding continued to teach.
In 1972, Tan Ding returned to Guam to work with the Guam Department of Education. With her fluency and skill in CHamoru language and storytelling ability, she created materials aimed at teaching youth how to speak and read CHamoru. After GDOE created a Bilingual and Bicultural Program to formalize the teaching of CHamoru in schools, Tan Ding became its project director.
In response to English-Only policies at the island’s largest newspaper, the Pacific Daily News, Tan Ding worked with others to organize a protest in 1977, attended by more than 800 people. The PDN changed its policies as a result and invited Tan Ding to create CHamoru language content for its pages, initially suggesting that she translate the comic strip “Peanuts” with Charlie Brown into CHamoru. Tan Ding proposed instead the comic strip “Juan Malimanga,” which she conceived and wrote, which has appeared in the paper since.
For her dedication to the telling of CHamoru stories and her tireless efforts in teaching the CHamoru language, Tan Ding was honored by the Guam Council on the Arts and Humanities as a Master Storyteller (as well as being included as a Master of Kantan CHamorrita).
Tan Ding passed away in 2002.
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