"As we embarked on this project, we had two primary goals. One was to meaningfully contribute to the intellectual and cultural mosaic of the Marianas. The other was to do so in a comprehensive fashion. To accomplish the former, we reviewed the existing literature on the region to establish what gaps we might help to fill. While substantial literature on the Marianas exists, and seems to increase in volume every year, much of this literature does not utilize an academic or scholarly approach. Consequently, while this collection is not exclusively a scholarly endeavor, a significant number of the contributions are scholarly in form and approach. Moreover, existing literature that does examine aspects of contemporary life in the Marianas often suffers from a lack of accessibility, whether sequestered behind publisher paywalls or accessible only in physical archives. In compiling these works, we sought to make a broad collection of writings on the Marianas available—in one accessible place— to the people of the Marianas and beyond." - Ajani Burrell, A Marinas Mosaic Editor