%0 Journal Article
%T Discontiguous States of America: The Paradox of Unincorporation in Craig Santos Perez¡¯s Poetics of Chamorro Guam
%A Paul Lai
%J Journal of Transnational American Studies
%D 2011
%I 
%X Eclipsed by other islands incorporated into the United States after the Spanish-American War of 1898, Guam has nevertheless played a crucial role in the development of the American Pacific as a strategic military site. Like other territories of the United States, Guam¡¯s ambiguous legal status and the presence of native peoples, cultures, and histories signal the paradox of unincorporated territories that troubles the issues of belonging and identification as ¡°American.¡± This essay takes up poet-scholar Craig Santos Perez¡¯s work to assert the primacy of Indigenous Chamorro histories, languages, and cultures in understanding the island¡¯s place in and out of the American Empire. Perez¡¯s experimental, decolonial poetics fracture narratives of America as a benevolent force in the Pacific; of English as the only relevant language of the Mariana Islands and America; of Spanish and Catholic domination as a relic of the past; of environmental transformations wrought by the intimacies of empire; and of simplistic accounts of assimilation or resistance to militarization and colonialism. Furthermore, by foregrounding ¡°Discontiguous States of America¡± as an organizing trope for comparative understanding of unincorporated territories in the Caribbean and Pacific, American Indian reservation spaces on the continent, and the outlying states of Alaska and Hawai¡®i, this essay argues that transnational American Studies must look within its territorial possessions to Indigenous sovereignty claims as well as outside to global flows in order to offer a truly critical, transnational American Studies.
%K Craig Santos Perez
%K Guam
%K Indigenous
%K Chamorro
%K Empire
%K Imperialism
%K Transnational
%K American Studies
%U https://submit.escholarship.org/ojs/index.php/acgcc_jtas/article/view/11622