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Book Cover for: New Chamoru Literature, Craig Santos Perez

New Chamoru Literature

Craig Santos Perez

New CHamoru Literature highlights an intergenerational selection of eighteen emerging, mid-career, and established CHamoru authors, including an extended feature on master storyteller Peter R. Onedera. As Onedera explains in his essay, "The Dilemma of an Official Word," Chamorro, Chamoru, CHamoru are different spellings of the same "description used in reference to Guam's indigenous people and those in the Marianas archipelago for thousands of years."

Within the pages of this rich collection, you will find diverse genres, including poetry, chant, fiction, creative nonfiction, and playwriting. The pieces are composed predominantly in English; however, the opening chant is in the CHamoru language (with translation by the author), other pieces are multilingual, and one poem is composed in CHamoru creole English. The themes range from genealogy to identity, colonialism to cultural revitalization, ecological connection to environmental injustice, love to sexual abuse, and belonging to diaspora.

This anthology will introduce readers to the Mariana archipelago and the vibrancy of CHamoru literature, culture, histories, migrations, politics, memories, traumas, and dreams.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
  • Publish Date: Aug 31st, 2023
  • Pages: 120
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.92in - 6.85in - 0.39in - 0.40lb
  • EAN: 9780824897253
  • Categories: Australian & OceanianAustralian & Oceanian

About the Author

Perez, Craig Santos: - Craig Santos Perez, 2023 winner of the National Book Award for poetry, is a Chamoru author and editor from Guam. He was most recently professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Perez, Teresita Lourdes: - Teresita Lourdes Perez teaches writing at the University of Guam.
Flores, Evelyn: - Evelyn Flores is associate professor of literature at the University of Guam focusing on post/counter-colonial studies, Native and women's studies, and Pacific Island literatures.
Howard, Chris Perez: - "Chris Perez Howard believes that his adventurous spirit and endless curiosity are responsible for his unconventional life. Among his experiences, he served in the U.S. military; worked for the American Express Co. in New York; struggled as an artist in Rome, Italy; lived in Yap, the Seychelles, and the Philippines; and went to Africa to see wild animals in their natural habitat. In Guam, he has worked as a teacher, a news editor for the Guam Tribune, an assistant to the president of the Guam Community College, and a press secretary for the Governor of Guam. Academically, he attended the University of Alabama and Indiana University, and he graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor of fine arts degree. Chris is also a CHamoru rights activist, and is a former chairman of the Organization of People for Indigenous Rights (OPI-R) and has presented testimony before the United Nations and the US Congress. Presently, he is working on his novel - I Mestisan Engles."