From Unincorporated Territory [Guma'] - by Craig Santos Perez (Paperback)

About the Book

Extending beyond lyric, narrative, documentary, dramatic monologue, this text invites and incites, violates and revitalizes our awareness of what frames our relationship to culture, community, self

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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 "Transmotion" (1/1/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"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" (4/14/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"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."--Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary "Publishers Weekly" (1/1/2013 12:00:00 AM)

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 ofCoal Mountain Elementary"

Transmotion"

About the Author

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent, is author of two previous collections, a finalist for LA Times 2010 Poetry Book Prize, and winner of 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Poetry Award. He lives in Honolulu and teaches creative writing and Pacific literature at University of Hawai?i, at Manoa.