From Unincorporated Territory [åmot]

by Craig Santos Pérez

Experimental and visual poems diving into the history and culture of the poet’s homeland, Guam.
 
This book is the fifth collection in Craig Santos Perez’s ongoing from unincorporated territory series about the history of his homeland, the western Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam), and the culture of his indigenous Chamoru people. “Åmot” is the Chamoru word for “medicine,” commonly referring to medicinal plants. Traditional Chamoru healers were known as yo’åmte; they gathered åmot in the jungle and recited chants and invocations of taotao’mona, or ancestral spirits, in the healing process.
 
Through experimental and visual poetry, Perez explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of åmot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.
 

Genres: Poetry, History, Nonfiction, Adult, Aapi

148 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2023

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I see poetry as spiritual medicine,’ wrote Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and this is at the heart of every page in Craig Santos Perez’s 2023 National Book Award winning collection of poetry, [åmot]. The title, a CHamoru word that means “medicine” signals a sort of healing to be found within these poems that break convention and refuse to be conquered by traditional use of a blank page, a healing of memory, a healing from colonialism, a healing of history, narratives, people, land and ‘the intertexual / sacredness / of all things.’ Drawing from the history of the CHamoru people and the indigenous poet’s home of Guåhan (Guam), [åmot] is the fifth installment in his ‘from unincorporated territory’ series and is a stunning and rather visual collection of experimental poetry rejecting the ‘latitudes & longitudes / of empire’ and a sharp, intelligent voice calling out that ‘no one can take our stories away from us.’

mapmakers
named
our part of the ocean “micronesia”
because they viewed
our islands & cultures
as small & insignificant

small enough to be colonized by
spain britain germany japan australia new zealand & usa

small enough to become
plantations church missions military bases
nuclear testing grounds detention centers scientific laboratories
& tourist destinations

small enough to be extracted for
souls phosphate tuna sugar copra labor
soldiers lands & waters

small enough to be invaded occupied diseased
territorialized divided bombed annexed & militarized

small enough
to disappear
under rising
seas

This is a really unique collection that seems almost like a poetic puzzle to decode as the poems subvert traditional form every chance they get . Its as much visual arts as it is a linguistic one, with lines appearing upside down or sideways amidst other lines, often feeling like multiple voices combining or colliding or, as in the opening poem, an example of a medicine healers chant with a sort of call and response.The text is occasionally printed in a very light font as if the words are vanishing, being erased, forgotten or covered up. Additionally, the collection is very playful with language—using brackets around words, writing in multiple languages and being filled with puns—so much so that readers may feel initially feel outside the text and looking for a way in. Though I find this is part of the desired effect of the work that it refuses to adapt to a colonial gaze and refuses to give up the language and words of his people and showing how these poems are for others like him who have ‘never seen / our culture / in a book before.’ The collection represents a healing from empires that divide up the world into maps and territories, centering the language of CHamoru in order for their stories to be told in their own language.

‘remember we are all relatives’

Central to this collection are ideas about maps and the formatting of the poems often scatters words around the page as representation of a topographical map or shattered glass upon the page. Pezer quotes Jacques Derrida ‘There is no world, there are only islands’ and through the collection shows how the colonized islands of the region all may individually be small—’small enough / to hide / the crimes / of empire’—their impact on the world is great. The word “maps” never appears, however, instead always being subverted and written backwards as “spam,” which leads to a lot of rather humorous wordplay, puns on meats and great lines like ‘Spam is the absence of striving for spam.’ Though it is not only the land that Perez focuses in on but the plants and animals there too, with poems addressing deforestation and climate change, or native animals like the kingfisher.

‘Tell our stories’

Memory is a key theme in [åmot], and to heal the past is to ensure the stories are told into the future. [åmot] addresses family histories, tales of the people instead of the empires that colonized them. There are poems addressing what it is like ‘to feel foreign / in your own homeland,’ such as stories of school where US students were unaware Guam was a US territory:

‘my classmates laugh & even though i descend from
oceanic navigators i feel so lost

shipwrecked on the coast
of a strange continent’

Perez also covers the horrors of colonialism and the ways it reshaped the culture as well as the land. Colonialism ‘turn places of abundance / into bases for destruction’ he writes. ‘Give [us] back our boys / our silenced boys,’ he writes in a series of poems on the abuse from the church. It can be a harrowing collection at times, though always Perez returns to themes of family and healing, making this not an investigation into wrongdoings and harms but rather healing from them, into ideas of rewriting, returning, reuniting, refreshing and rejuvenating. It is a lovely collection, one that rewards spending a lot of time with it. I love how reading it is like reading a map itself, turning the page to read the lines moving sideways or upside down. A National Book Award winner, and certainly deservingly so.

4/5

‘Always remember
If [we] can write the ocean
[we] will never be silenced’

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this archipelago of poems about Guam and Perez's people. How the islands have been shaped and assimilated into the military requirements of the us. This book is a resistance, but also is here to say the people of Guam exist, they have language and beauty and they won't be invaded and they won't be extinct. Perez does a fantastic job of changing how the text looks or flipping it on its side or upsidedown to push the reader to really see. See. To notice how his ancestor stories and history are like mirrors, or a refraction, a causation, and a resistance. By telling the story of their stories, he builds their future in poems.

[Anne Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved, lovd, loved this poetry collection. I laughed my way through all the spam-ish poems -- The Zen of Spam -- and cried my way though all the poems about what has happened on Guam by the US Military, the invasion of the brown tree snake, and diaspora of the CHamoru people.

This book has opened my eyes to so many things, among them, how I often put on my WASP glasses and don't even think about all the other peoples of the world and their experiences, their value.

Must read!!!!

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this 6 or more stars I would.

These poems are a powerful exploration of colonization within the Micronesian island of Guam.

Through a series of maps of colonization either through military violence or invasive species we see how Guåhan has been stripped away but also how it has been maintained through the resilience of its people. There are poems about spam, poems about literacy, poems about religious exploitation, and many many more topics specific to Guåhan and its history.


Now, I hesitate to recommend this book for one reason and one reason only: white readers may not be prepared to do the work this book is asking them to do. Which is a damn shame because this is evocative, moving, educational, beautiful and one of the best collections I’ve ever read. You will be turning the book to the side, you will be turning it upside down, if you choose you may translate some of the Chamorro sections. Yes it may take more time and may slow the reading of some of the poems but that is the point! Take your time and learn. Enjoy.

[Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

"read maps
closely navigate
beyond the violent divisions
of national & maritime borders
beyond the scarred
latitudes & longitudes
of empire
arrive at this cartography
of our most expansive legends
& deepest routes"
-----------------------
Unrelentingly powerful poetry. As a diasporic CHamoru, I am often discontented by my disconnection to the language and culture of my ancestors. How can we navigate our family and people's legacy while the oppression of U.S. empire persists? Work like Pérez's is healing and his lyrical storytelling crosses the oceans of space and time to bring me closer to Guam. Each mention of spam sparks a vision of my nana and mother, words haunting me like taotao’mona.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visual poetry from Chamoru people of Guahan (Guam) by Craig Santos Perez. Amot is the Chamoru word for medicine, native or introduced plants with healing qualities.
so the next time someone tells you
our people were illiterate

teach them
about our visual literacies

our ability to read
the intertextual
sacredness
of all things

& always remember

if [we] can write the ocean
[we] will never be silenced

[Allya Yourish · Rating 4 out of 5]

an incredible examination of the colonial legacies facing Guam and its diaspora. I learned about Guam while also learning about the possibilities of language and poetry, and that's pretty special

[Kaya Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

“what follows your flag?”
“remember we are all relatives”

this book was poignant and beautiful in structure and content(though i will say at times, my hyperactive brain had trouble deciphering the words in the ‘word map’ pages). striking layers of food, traditional medicine, colonization, and environmental disaster. the section with juxtaposing the endangerment of kingfisher to the invasive brown snake particularly struck me.

[Elke de Echte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would the term 'docupoetry' help in describing the series From Unincorporated Territory? The hybrid creations by poet, essayist and former university professor Craig Santos Pérez definitively have a purpose: to give his indigenous Chamorro people from Guam (on the Mariana Islands in the Philippine Sea) a voice, a voice for social change… a voice that cannot be silenced. The resistance is palpable, through Pérez’ experimental and visual poetry, not shying away from integrating horrid facts about the history and culture of Guam. Beyond this, his storytelling incorporates a symbolic act of åmot - the Chamorro word for ‘medicinal plants’ - offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders. Granted, the poetry is explicit. Sometimes difficulty readable, even upside down. But might that be meant as essential - to finally feel seen?

[s_evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why I love book groups and library challenges: I read things I otherwise wouldn't. BPL has a "Winter Reading" (like Summer Reading - why isn't winter reading more of a thing, it's perfect weather for it!) Challenge of reading from 6 different regions, Oceana being one of them.

Beautiful poetry interwoven with horrific historical facts and commentary about Guam. I learned a lot and plan to read more by this poet (this is a part of a series, published by an Oakland press).

[jackdeboyace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thinking about colonialism, cartography, and the Chamorro diaspora, the experimental formatting and narrative didn't entirely click for me. That being said, the suite of poems dedicated to Guam-specific delicacies (e.g. SPAM) was fantastic: does a poem / have spam nature ?

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

His best book yet. How could I tell? I’ve given all his other books five stars. Okay then, five and a half stars. Great island culture poetry!

[Sandra Del Rio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing

[Gregory Duke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Poem sequences intermingle as words fade and images appear in chorus with history's presence, in all its shades, and its lacunae, its gaps becoming so large as to almost subsume what remains. Yet the personal history and the familial history operate in tandem with the natural world in Craig Santos' Perez's hands to bridge and travel beyond the bounds of generalization and summary into the realm of the precise (specific historical events, particular names, memoiristic rather than fictive narration, etc.). An ironic thing to say when so many of these poems question the fallibility of the (colonial) written record as well as the act of writing as a whole to encapsulate experience (the concluding expands the meaning of "writing" as a means of empowering reclamation). This collection seeks to heal (the title "[åmot]" means medicine in CHamoru) not through sentimentality and aphorism but through the careful accrual of pride in what has been survived, what has been surpassed, and what must be challenged so as to make Guam something the US' colonial military presence, the Catholic Church, and Japanese imperialism have prevented the island from becoming: something closer to a natural vista for the Chamorro people (and, really, everyone). I especially appreciate Perez's method of teaching the English-speaking reader a small lexicon of CHamoru terms as the collection goes on so as to immerse you in a cultural lineage beyond yourself. But he chooses to keep certain phrases or whole stanzas impenetrable without his adjacent translation, an act that shows a desire to mildly educate the non-Chamorro reader while crafting work specifically meant to not educate but revel in a particular experience of island life outside the bounds of English.

This is one that should be taken as a book-length work rather than a series of poems to be taken individually (although many would stand up to such a test). A totally worthy National Book Award winner. Felt resonant on Thanksgiving.

[Stephanie Dargusch Borders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t manage to read this one before the announcement that it won the NBA poetry category for 2023. The collection wouldn’t have been my pick—it’s very powerful but I found it difficult to read with the light italicized text and having to flip the book around. That took some of the wind from it sails and made it hard for me to engage fully.

[☆ C ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his exciting and fluid poetry collection From Unincorporated Territory [Amot], Craig Santos Perez discusses the physical invasion and colonization of Guam by military forces through abstract form, language, and poetic defamiliarization of moments of Guam culture, such as spam. This is a delightfully floaty collection that collides English with Chamorro. This welcoming poetry book begs the reader to learn culture and language as they read. It explains vocabulary once, thus truly prompting a reader to learn the language components to better empathize with the native people of Guam. The inclusion of a map of Guam and a concrete poem in the shape of Guam turn this collection into a piece of visual art and allows the reader to take Guam, and the ocean of its words, with them wherever they go, even after the book has been shut. In that way, the poetry collection, From Unincorporated Territory [Amot], and the struggles of the people of Guam, live on beyond the page.
In my analysis of From Unincorporated Territory [Amot], I will be dissecting and discussing ginen the legends of juan malo [a malologue] and ginen the micronesian kingfisher [ i shiek].

ginen the micronesian kingfisher [ i shiek] is an exciting poem about the horrors of invasion and colonization. It uses the allegory of snakes and kingfisher birds to tell the story. As more snakes arrive and consume the kingfishers, there is less birdsong and less beautiful feathers. It truly is the creation of “[our] nightmare.” However, it is not solely allegorical, as it further discusses the horrifying irony of the invaders taking away the remaining few kingfisher birds for zoos and captive breeding programs. After the complete and total invasion, theft, and humiliation, the invaders have the audacity to rub salt in the wounds by demanding praise in the lines,

"if it weren't for us
your birds [i sihek]
would be gone
forever."

Not only have the allegorical kingfishers (the people of Guam) been invaded and displaced but the actual kingfishers have been removed by the said invaders. All in all, it leaves an island with no kingfisher birdsong and no more beautiful blue feathers.

An interesting element of this poem is the opening line, in which the term [our] is in brackets. This simple punctuation choice does so much for the piece. It creates a sense of community for the people of Guamn who are in the midst of being invaded. This is their nightmare, the [our] encompasses them all. Simultaneously it alienates and “others” the invaders (the snakes). The snakes have no right to be sorrowful about the kingfisher's death when they are the cause of it. The brackets around the our, however, serve to keep it quiet. It is a whispered our, a quiet protest, an admission that the people of Guam are angry, and they are unified in their devastation.

From Unincorporated Territory [Amot] doesn’t only discuss the desecration of the natural culture of Guam, however. In ginen the legends of juan malo [a malologue] Perez creates a tragic ode to the cultural shifting of Spam in Guam. Spam is currently being gentrified by popular media and thus the prices of it are rising, making it less and less affordable for the very people who popularized it in common pop culture in the first place. There is also the historical context of Spam’s introduction to the island of Guam as a military food. This is a food that entered as an element of invasion, was then shifted into something beautiful and cultural for the people of Guam, and then commodified by the very same people who invaded in the first place. The poem ginen the legends of juan malo [a malologue] does an incredible job of getting behind the feelings of this indignity. The opening lines,

“Rub the entire block of SPAM*, along with the accompanying gelatinous goo, onto your wood furniture. The oils from the SPAM* moisturize the wood and give it a nice luster. Plus, you'll have enough left over to use as your own personal lubricant (a true Pacific dinner date)”

show the relevance of Spam, in household, culinary, and intimate cultural moments. It is an encompassing food, rooted in the very lifeblood of the Guam culture. This increases the devastation of the ending. The ending lines are,

“I have a souvenir can I bought after seeing Monty Python's SPAM*ALOT on Broadway in New York City. It cost me $10 and is the most expensive SPAM* I've ever bought. I will never eat it.”

These lines show the increasing price of spam, the Western takeover of spam, and thus the direct impacts the raising prices have on the Guam people. Spam is growing in Western desire, and thus its price is increasing, so it is not readily available for the people of Guam to eat anymore. There is an indignity in the Western bastardization of a food that, before, was used in every moment of a person's life, from furniture to food, to sex.

Ultimately Craig Santos Perrez describes the indignancies faced culturally, historically, and present day by the people of Guam due to the invading military forces and subsequent colonization. In From Unincorporated Territory [Amot] Perez discusses the way these forces take and take and take. They took the kingfishers from the island and they commodified Spam for themselves. However, in that devastation there is hope. Perez writes the people of Guam as caring, passionate individuals who learn to adapt. In the way a reader learns the language of Guam through these poems, the Guam natives adapt to all the challenges thrown their way. They, like the ocean, are fluid. At times they recede, and at times they strengthen. Perez tells these stories. He tells these tragedies, he informs his readers that as long as there is an ocean and words to write about it, the memory of Guam will live on.

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Pérez’s work continues to flay back the layers of colonization through language, form and image. I cannot get enough of this poetry as it serves as a prayer for a decolonial future we might never see.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant portrait of Guam and its people and their cultural traditions, the land and its creatures ravaged by empiricism, the “diasporic chamorus” for whom “home is an archipelago of belonging,” and the indomitable spirit of Guahanians that is as mighty as the banyan tree.

“& isn’t that too
what it means to be
a diasporic chamorus

to feel foreign
in your own homeland”
—from “ginen aerial roots,” p. 108

“77. Enroll I. Michael Lujan Bevacqua’s free, online Chamoru language classes. With your mother tongue, slowly paddle your way home.”
—from “ginen amot,” p. 115

“& always remember

if [we] can write the ocean
[we] will never be silenced”
—from “ginen ars pasifika,” p. 132

Favorite Poems:
“ginen trespass” I
“ginen trespass” II
“ginen trespass” III
“ginen trespass” IV
“ginen trespass” V
“ginen family trees” I
“ginen trespass” VI
“ginen family trees” II
“ginen achiote” [“bingo is not indigenous to Guam”]
“ginen sounding lines” I
“ginen sounding lines” II
“ginen the balutan archives”
“ginen the legends of juan malo” I
“ginen the legends of juan malo” II
“ginen the zen of spam”
“ginen aerial roots” I
“ginen amot” I
“ginen aerial roots” II
“ginen family trees” III
“ginen amot” II
“ginen sounding lines” III
“ginen ars pasifika”

[Boston64329 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this poetry difficult on several levels. First and paramount is the erosion of Guam's culture due to the U. S. occupation and creation a territorial government there. Guam's historical image to me is from U.S. history books speaking of WW II which does not take into consideration or presentation of the various societies overwhelmed by us. The people of Guam and their culture struggle for their independence and return to their cultural history. I hope they are successful.
I can't remember the last time I saw spam on a grocery store shelf let alone eat it. It isn't the healthiest food product on the market for sure. Yet another WW II innovation.
The second difficulty is the formatting of some of the poems. Some of the English translations were very difficult to read. Having to turn the book upside down to read helped with focusing on what was being said.
It is a thought provoking piece on the U.S. and Guam and the struggle to maintain their culture, history and language. How telling is the crying high school girl.

[Griffin Wold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first picked up From Unincorporated Territory: Åmot after seeing it on a library display, knowing nothing about it other than I liked the unique layout of the poems. Through beautiful poetry, it details Craig Santos Perez's experiences in Guam and mainland United States as a CHamoru person, and bits of Guam's history.

The non-traditional layout of the poems and interlacing of the CHamoru language forces the reader to slow down and intentionally take in what is being said. It is not a book to breeze through, but one to piece together like a puzzle, slowly taking in individual aspects of it and working to put it together until you can see the bigger picture.

Because of this book, I would now very much like to learn more about the history of Guam, as well as read the other From Unincorporated Territory books, then come back and re-read this one when I've done more learning.

[Heather O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a poetry book that talks about Perez' home country of Guam and the people, including his family that live there. The poetry was very accessible, in that it was easy to understand and follow. I learned a lot about Guam and the native people from there that I did not know about. The book does use a lot of native language and I read it, but I have no idea if I was saying in correctly in my head. There are sometimes translations of what is written. The problem that I had with the novel is that there are side parts to it that are printed in a very light gray. I don't know if my sight is worse than I thought it was, but many times I wouldn't even see the lighter writing and would skip over it, or I would see it and then have to really concentrate on reading it because the printing was so light. I understood the purpose, but I wish that it could've been a little darker. It really frustrated me when I was reading it.

I give it 3.5 stars

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

from ginen aerial roots
hasso’ first day
at my new high school in california
the homeroom teacher asks
“where are you from”

“the mariana islands”
i answer

“i’ve never heard of that place”
he replies “prove it exists”

yet when i step in front of the world map on the classroom wall
it transforms into a mirror:

the pacific ocean like my body
split in two
& flayed to the margins

i

find australia philippines japan

then point to the empty space between
“i’m from this invisible archipelago”

my classmates laugh & even though i descend from
oceanic navigators i feel so lost

shipwrecked on the coast
of a strange continent (103)

[Tawny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite lines:
1. "As generations passed/trees became kin/teaching [us] how to bend/without breaking/how to create without wasting/how to take/without depleting" (117).
2. "Our ancestors deciphered signs/in nature/interpreted star formations & sun positions/cloud & wind patterns/wave currents & ocean/efflorescence/that's why master navigator papa mau once said/'if you can read the ocean you will never be lost'" (130).
3. "So the next time someone tells you our people were illiterate/teach them/about our visual literacies/our ability to read/the intertextual/sacredness/of all things/& always remember/if [we] can write the ocean/[we] will never be silenced" (132).

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the fifth book in Craig Santos Pérez's "from unincorporated territory" series, but the first I've read. Experimental and economical, this is a collection to savor. The words and their layout reinforce aspects of an island culture and biome shattered by colonization, religious hypocrisy, diaspora, six centuries of omnipresent militaries. This is Guam (Guahan) and Pérez is CHamoru (the indigenous people of the island).

The National Book Foundation awarded Perez its top prize for poetry in November 2023. Certainly deserved.

[Michael Chowning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of a monumental achievement in terms of creativity and connection to his culture. Perez weaves the overcoming nature and history of the Chamorro people into poems crafted with such overwhelming originality that they begin speaking themselves. The words to express the pure emotion and cultural attachment present in this collection are unfortunately absent in English, but may well be present in the Chamorro language. The quantitative data, however, of how many times I wept for a people and culture which is not mine, can be expressed by the number 15.

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my many years of reading poetry, I've never seen an approach like Perez's. It makes valuable reading, partly to learn what he has to say about his nation, and partly to see the unique (I think) way he does it. A love of the culture, his ancestors, and the island's ecology goes along with diatribes against oppression by the Japanese, the U.S. military, and the Catholic Church.

My one regret is about formatting: Much of the text (including important translations from the Chamoru language into English) are printed in an impossibly small, light font that is very hard to read.

[Ray Ogar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent docupoetry entry (from Perez’s Unincorporated Territory series)
..
Side note, from a printing quality standpoint, The book has major problems. I’m reading from a first edition Omnidawn publishing edition. I realize it might be literally just this one book, I got it from the library, all the light gray text is almost impossible to read. It doesn’t look or “feel” like a design decision because it’s so inconsistent throughout the book.

[Vinny Prell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book both wrenched my heart and pushed my ideas of what makes poetry. It is so powerful to see Pérez's pain, humor, healing, and love in this text. The book was such a beautiful wrestling with what it means to be Chamoru, how to deal with (de)colonization and how to celebrate our history. I know there are many parts of the text I didn't understand as well. Thank you for a powerful book of poetry.

[Lilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I read poetry like this, I wonder how/why I don't read poetry all the time.
In the pockets between reading it, I was thinking about it.
I came away understanding so much about a place I barely know and, more importantly, feeling so much about it. No wonder it's winning all the things.

A poignant read during global conversations about the detrimental effects of colonization.

[Almita · Rating 5 out of 5]

mapmakers
named
our part of the ocean
because they viewed
our islands & cultures
as small & insignificant
"micronesia"
small enough to be colonized by
spain britain germany japan australia new zealand & usa
small enough to become
plantations church missions military bases
nuclear testing grounds detention centers scientific laboratories & tourist destinations
small enough to be extracted for
souls phosphate tuna sugar copra labor soldiers lands & waters
small enough to be invaded occupied diseased
territorialized divided bombed annexed & militarized
small enough
to disappear under rising
seas