Where do we go from here? We are in uncharted waters, or maybe in familiar waters, unable to recognize the signs that show the way. Am I a navigator? Am I the navigator? Are we moving? Are the islands moving? Have we been following the navigator, so well-guided we don’t even know the navigator is here?
— Cecilia C. T. Perez, Signs of Being
Located in the northwest Pacific Ocean, the Mariana archipelago consists of fifteen islands, including Rota, Tinian, Saipan, and Guam, and is the homeland of the Chamoru people. For an introduction to the literature of the archipelago, the scholarship of Robert Tenorio Torres is a good place to start. His three essays, “Pre-Contact Mariana Folklore, Legends, and Literature” (2003), “Colonial and Conquest Lore of the Marianas” (2003), and “Post-Colonial and Modern Literature of the Marianas” (2004), stand as the most sustained critical commentaries in the field and the first serious attempts to articulate a Marianas literature.