From Unincorporated Territory [amot] - Craig Santos Perez

Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, this collection of experimental and visual poems dives 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 GuÃ¥han (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 Ã¥mot 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 Ã¥mot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders. Â