Craig Santos Perez


Craig Santos Perez is a poet, essayist, university professor, American publisher from the Chamorro people, born in Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Guam Island. His poetry has received multiple awards, including a 2015 American Book Award and the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry.

Biography

Having grown up in a bilingual environment in Guam, Santos Perez moved with his family from Guam to California in 1995. He has stated in interview that "When my family migrated to California, and when I left my family to attend college, Chamorro became nearly non-existent in my life. Because poetry became a way for me to stay connected to memories of home, and a space where I could learn and write about my cultural history, the Chamorro language started to reappear in small ways. I do not have a formula for how this happens; it just happens intuitively. Though I have noticed that most of the Chamorro words that enter into my poetry are words from the natural word, or prayers. Still today, my poetry is written predominantly in English, but I hope that someday Chamorro will become a fuller part of my life and my poetry."
In 2011, together with Brandy Nālani McDougall, he co-founded the publishing house of Ala Press, specializing in the dissemination of literature and culture of the Pacific Islands. Craig Santos Perez is an associate professor of Pacific literature and creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Poetry

In 2008, he began the publication of his series of interconnected books, from unincorporated territory with the first book hacha. He has stated that part of the purpose of this series is to "create counter-mapping to subvert maps." Perez's poetry focuses on the themes of Pacific life, immigration to the US, the colonial history of the Pacific Islands and the various diasporas of Pacific Islanders.
As Michael Lujan Bevacqua says in a review essay for the academic journal Transmotion: "Perez seeks to turn the reader away from those mythical maps of modernity, whereby inclusion and assimilation lead to viability and universality. He seeks to push them in new directions not beset by those limiting politics of recognition. While his colonial citations challenge, he includes a number of native Chamorro citations as well, which change from conversations with his grandparents to discussions of Chamorro culture during different epochs. The Chamorro language often provides the basis for these alternative paths, like echoing sonar, leading us through layers of language and time." By contrast, Brandy Nālani McDougall in the Routledge Companion to Native American Literature emphasizes Perez's "diasporic experience as a Chamoru."

Publications

Poetry