From Unincorporated Territory [mot]

Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, this collection of experimental and visual poems dives into the history and culture of the poets homeland, Guam. This book is the fifth collection in Craig Santos Perezs ongoing from unincorporated territory series about the history of his homeland, the western Pacific island of Guhan (Guam), and the culture of his indigenous Chamoru people. mot is the Chamoru word for medicine, commonly referring to medicinal plants. Traditional Chamoru healers were known as yomte; they gathered mot in the jungle and recited chants and invocations of taotaomona, or ancestral spirits, in the healing process. Through experimental and visual poetry, Perez explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of mot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.