With the Saina as his figurative vessel—a ship built in modern times as an exact replica of the swift outriggers designed and sailed by the Chamorro people until banned by their oppressors—Craig Santos Perez deftly navigates the complexities in his bracing exploration of the personal, historical, cultural, and natural elements of his native Guam and its people. As the title—from unincorporated territory [saina]—suggests, by understanding where we are from, we can best determine where we are going. Perez collages primary texts and oral histories of the colonial domination and abuse brought by the Spanish, the Japanese, the United States, and the capitalist entertainment/travel industry, with intimate stories of his childhood experiences on Guam, his family’s immigration to the US, and the evocatively fragmentary myths of his ancestors. Resonant too in Perez’s title, and throughout this work, is this poet’s evocation of the unincorporated and unfathomed elements of our natures, as he seeks the means to access an expansiveness that remains inexpressible in any language. Perez is not afraid to press language beyond the territories of ‘the known’ as he investigates both the anguish and the possibilities that horizon as one attempts to communicate the spoken and unspoken languages of one’s native people, while fully appreciating the suffering inherent in every word he will use that is pronounced in, and thus pronounces, the language of their oppressors.
Craig Santos Perez is the cofounder of Achiote Press and a leader in the activist Chamorro organization, Famoksaiyan. He is the author of several chapbooks?including All with Ocean Views, Constellations Gathered Along the Ecliptic, and Preterrain?and the book From Unincorporated Territory [Hacha]. His writings have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, and Rain Taxi. He lives in Berkeley, California.
CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ, a native Chamorro originally from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), has lived in California since 1995. He is the co-founder of Achiote Press and author of several chapbooks, including constellations gathered along the ecliptic (Shadowbox Press, 2007), all with ocean views (Overhere Press, 2007), and preterrain (Corollary Press, 2008). His first book, from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press in 2008) has been taught in universities across the United States and the Pacific. His poetry, essays, fiction, reviews, and translations have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Sentence, and Rain Taxi, among others. And, Craig is the recipient of this year’s Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange Award. He will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to give a public reading. Juan Felipe Herrera was the judge for poetry. His work was chosen from a pool of 712 poetry entries. Craig received a B.A. in Art History & Literature from the Johnston Center of Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands (2002) and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco (2006). He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley, where he studies Native American & Native Oceanic Literature and Theory. Since 2007, Craig has been involved with Famoksaiyan, a Chamorro grassroots activist organization. In 2008, he joined a delegation of Chamorro activists and testified on the negative cultural, environmental, and political impact of U.S. militarization on Guam at the United Nations' annual meeting of the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) in New York City. The delegation also met with representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Argentina, the Philippines, and Indonesia. You can find Craig online at craigsantosperez.wordpress.com.
