Diaspora, Memory and Chamorro Migration from Guam, in Craig Santos Perez’s Poetry

In a famous essay, socio-anthropologist Epeli Hau’ofa described traditional Oceania as “a sea of islands”, a definition meant to underline inclusion, connectedness and a view of the ocean as a privileged means of communication, interaction between people and circulation of goods and knowledge: a sea that does not divide but includes. Eighteenth century Western imperialism, however, split the Pacific into territories defined not by cultural, ethnic or even geographic bonds, but by external economic, political and strategic convenience. Guam is one of them. Set in the North Pacific, it is the largest island in Micronesia and the southernmost one in the archipelago of the Marianas. Guam or Guåhan (the Chamorro indigenous name, which translates “we have”) belonged to Spain from the 17th century until 1898, when it was ceded to the US. Since then it has become a site of US naval and air force bases and a very important American outpost in the Pacific: one of the most militarized places in the world. A substantial part of the territory is occupied by the military, which has displaced many people from ancestral lands and polluted the soil and water. This in turn has caused a large diasporic phenomenon. In my paper I will explore the works of a diaspora Chamorro poet, Craig Santos Perez, the first Pacific Islander to win the American Book Award (2015) and the first Chamorro author to be awarded the most prestigious literary prize in Hawai’i (2017), where he now resides: the Elliot Cades, from the Hawai’i Literary Arts Council. According to Perez, poetry is the best way “to express the complexities and emotions of being a diaspora Chamorro” (Pacific Daily News, 2017). His poems, however, record not only his personal experience – the loss and trauma as a migrant in the USA – but also Guam’s politics and history, advocating environmental justice in the Pacific and protesting against colonialism and militarism. He is one of the many young poetic voices from the Pacific at present who are using poetry not just for self-expression but as a medium for activism.