from unincorporated territory [guma']

by Craig Santos Perez

Overview

Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), has lived for two decades away from his homeland. This new collection maps the emotional and geographic cartographies of his various migrations, departures, and arrivals. Through a variety of poetic forms, the poet highlights the importance of origins and customs amidst new American cultures and terrains. Furthermore, this book draws attention to, and protests, the violent currents of colonialism and militarism currently threatening Guåhan, a “strategic” US territory since 1898. The poet memorializes what his people have lost and insists that we must protect and defend what we have left of home. This collection will engage those interested in Pacific literature, multicultural, indigenous poetry, mixed-genre, multilingual experiments, ecopoetics, and those who want to explore intersections between poetry, politics, history, and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781890650919
Publisher:	Omnidawn Publishing, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is the coeditor of six anthologies; the author of poetry collections including Habitat Threshold and his ongoing from unincorporated territory series; and the author of the monograph, Navigating Chamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization. He is professor in the English department at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa. Perez has received the National Book Award for Poetry, American Book Award, Pen Center USA/Poetry Society of America Literary Prize, Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council Award, Nautilus Book Award, and the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Associated Writing Programs.

What People are Saying About This

Mark Nowak

"Craig Santos Perez is quite simply writing some of the most significant poetry of the early 21st century. Employing struck-through lists of dead soldiers, fractured diary entries on a return to Guam or shoplifting Vienna Sausages, public comments from Draft Environmental Impact Statements, and searing poems of brevity and heart, Perez is re-mapping a post-colonial America, one pitch-perfect syllable at a time."

Editorial Reviews

12/02/2013
By turns cultural and ecological artifact, personal narrative, body count, and colonial (and resistance) document, Perez’s third collection advances a disturbing, fractured narrative using an impressively wide swath of poetic forms and techniques: prose sections are interrupted by domestic and patriotic language, interweaving the Japanese and American captures of Guam (the author’s birthplace) with the narrator’s personal history and the current wars in the Middle East: “My grandpa o saina struggles to tell his story. The US passed the Guam Meritorious Claims act... His eyes become saltmemories thread fathoms of water. He looks at his empty hands to pledge allegiance.” Wiry, short-lined verse is collaged with Chamorro (a threatened Malayo-Polynesian language) and public comments from Draft Environmental Impact Statements in Guam. The names of Guamanian soldiers killed in action in current U.S. military operations, year by year, stand out against the circumstances of their deaths: “” Amid this, Perez returns to the story of the Micronesian Kingfisher, an endangered species on Guam whose existing members are all descended from American-captured, captive-bred zoo birds: “-of trespass—// when land is/ caged // -of theft—// are caged within/ our disappearance.” This is a haunting, forceful testament to a legacy of militarization, cultural hegemony, and resistance. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

The journeys that we are meant to take through [Perez’s] texts are just as much through time and history as they are across oceans in the Pacific.”—Michael Lujan, Transmotion

“Craig Santos Perez is quite simply writing some of the most significant poetry of the early 21st century. Employing struck-through lists of dead soldiers, fractured diary entries on a return to Guam or shoplifting Vienna Sausages, public comments from Draft Environmental Impact Statements, and searing poems of brevity and heart, Perez is re-mapping a post-colonial America, one pitch-perfect syllable at a time.” —Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary

“This fourth installment in Perez’s “from Unincorporated Territory” series marks an important shift in aesthetic strategy and lyric impulse. . . . Perez condenses his overarching sociopolitical concerns, bracketing the story of pregnancy, birth, an uncertain future, and a celebration of new life.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

04/15/2014
From the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), PEN Center USA Literary Award winner Perez incorporates reportage, environmental impact statements, struck-through lists of dead soldiers, bursts of impressionistic verse, and diarylike writing fractured by italicized commentary ("My family migrated removed from Guåhan [we] have to California in 1995") to show how his homeland has been shattered by war and colonization. The result should be tricky to read, but it's mesmerizing. [See Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]—BH

Library Journal