Author C.T. Perez weaves poetry, prose, and commentary about life, identity, and the CHamoru experience in her first published book, Signs of Being.
Perez sat down with KPRG's Naina Rao to share how her home of Guam has much to do with the story behind her poetic journey.
TRANSCRIPT
JEFFERSON CRONIN: Author C.T. Perez weaves together poetry, prose and commentary about life, identity and the Chamorro experience in her first published book titled Signs of Being. Perez sat down with KPRG's Naina Rao to share how her home of Guam has a lot to do with the story behind her poetic journey.
C.T. PEREZ: I love that Guam, Guåhan, is home. That's where my whole spirit and being feels at home. And not just Guam, Guåhan, but Islas Marianas, some people might be able to identify, going to the Honolulu airport, and you step off the plane, and you smell plumerias, and it's like, I'm one step closer. And then after being away, and you come through those doors at the Guam airport, and it for me, it's the smell of ocean and sun the jungle. That's just, I'm home, that's, that's what I love the most.
NAINA RAO: That makes me think about the title of your latest book, Signs of Being. Does that memory and that belief in home, have something to do with the title of your book?
PEREZ: Yeah, in essence, it's what inspired it. It's that feeling you get before the first day of classes. I don't know if people still feel that or like, your bones tinkle. And I don't have to be home to be home, if that sounds kind of odd, but it's everything that I see or feel around me when I'm in different places that brings me home.
RAO: Listening to you makes me think like Signs of Being means that you feel those signs of being alive and being present, and I think home plays a huge and important role in your being.
PEREZ: Oh yes, you know, I'll speak to Guam, because this is where most of my life experiences are. There's a part of Guam some people never see so their spatial understanding of the island is Marine Drive, maybe Micro Mall, GPO. Those are the new landmarks peel that away, and then you have the villages. You have the old Carabao cart trails. You have the valleys and the hills and the cliff lines and the beaches and the reefs and the different fishing areas. And that's what I was trying to express, that part of Guam that is not often seen or felt or even ever exists in the textbooks of our history. That's what I was trying to capture, all the signs and senses that are everywhere around us, but maybe we're just estranged from them for the moment,
RAO: The poem, A Night at the Westin, I'm gonna read an excerpt from your poem. I'm gonna start with, and so I sit there at the Westin poolside listening to steel string guitars playing. People laughing. I'm playing. I'm laughing too. The poolside is seaside, and I somehow know not far away lay my ancestors' remains forgotten by the builders of this Westin, who promised integrity, dignity and honored remembrance in their replacement into new graves. Scattered bones invade my brain, seize my senses, cracked bones, my bones, burial desecrated. Okay, I am curious what's the overall story behind A Night at the Westin?
PEREZ: It was actually just really my girlfriend and I, my måli now. We were just out to relax and have a drink in a nice environment, and so we're sitting, there enjoying ourselves. And by chance, my hand fell upon a cold metal plaque, and I couldn't read the plaque, so my girlfriend Lena read it to me. It says that the remains of the CHamorus that were buried here are in a burial site nearby further down on the beach. And I thought, What am I doing here? What am I doing here in this place that desecrated a burial site? How do I, how do I live here? How can I have my drink and just relax knowing we disturbed their resting place? How do you actually live with that, right? How do you visit these places and, not be tortured by that? So that's kind of what gave birth to it. But then we live our lives, right? We, we have to, right? We, we, the building is there. We have to attend a conference. We, you know, people have done, you know, we go about our days. And then it's like, well, what do I do? What do I do about this? And so there's a section there. It's like, I'll think about this tomorrow. I don't want to think about it right now, just not right now. I will think about it tomorrow. I'll write a letter to the editor tomorrow. You know, I'll do this tomorrow to try and make this right. And so then what happens later is, we actually go down the next, I don't, can't remember if it was the next morning, definitely in the daytime. And we're looking around for this memorial. And we had to go into the jungle a bit, and we found it. We literally had to pick up the plaque, fallen, and there are vines growing all around it, and I thought so much for promises. And yeah, just, you know, to carry the pain of our ancestors in us, as we go about our days thinking, how do we do this? How do we carry this, but still carry on?
RAO: What advice do you have for people who are grappling with that?
PEREZ: I think number one, take care of your family. Be good to your family, nurture your family, and tell stories. We're still with people who remember, if not themselves, being told stories from their parents or great-grandparents about where families came from, what life was like. Like someone in my mother's generation, she's long since passed, and I write about that. But in her generation, they went from no electricity, reading their school books by the light of the sun and candles and lanterns, to... before she passed she was using like a computer. I think it was like a Macintosh back then. But she had stories that were told to her, that she heard, and we need to create environments and a home where those stories are shared. That's a good first step. And I always celebrate the homemaker, the person who keeps the home. It's a great sacrifice. It's honorable. The person who is home when the kids come from school and share stories of the day that keep the family together and keep the traditions alive. It doesn't just magically happen. It's dedication, discipline, celebration and love for our people and our way of life.
RAO: C.T. Perez is the author of Signs of Being. CT, thank you so much for speaking with me.
PEREZ: Hågu mås, thank you, Si Yu’os Ma’åse.
