Lehua Taitano


Lehua M. Taitano is a Chamoru poet, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. She is an indigenous person of the Mariana Islands, which are referred to as Laguås yan Gani in the Chamorro language.

Early life and education

Taitano was born in Hagåtña, Guåhan Guam. She is an indigenous Chamoru from the village of Yigu, and her family migrated to a small, rural town in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina when she was very young. She attended Appalachian State University as a North Carolina teaching fellow. She played on the women's varsity volleyball team and earned a bachelor's degree in English, with a focus on education. Taitano studied and taught martial arts classes before earning an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana.

Career

Her work has appeared in World Literature Today, the Academy of American Poets series Poem a Day, Arc Poetry Magazine, Poetry (magazine), Fence, ''Tayo, Red Ink, Kartika Review, Hawai'i Review, Narrative Witness, Lit Hub, Witness, The Offending Adam, Platte Valley Review, Versal, dislocate, TinFish Journal, Nano Fiction, Storyboard, and A Transpacific Poetics.
Several of her poems have been translated into Swedish by the journal Kritiker.
Taitano has published two books of poetry: A Bell Made of Stones and Inside Me an Island and three chapbooks: appalachiapacific, Sonoma, and Capacity, which is a digital chapbook of poetry and visual art.
Of A Bell Made of Stones, critics note that Taitano's poetry is among "a new wave of Chamorro and Pacific literature" that forces readers "to engage with the unsettling disconnection and stress of locating a coherent voice and a culturally legible identity/identities in the fragments of loss and daily misrecognitions created by distance, diaspora and resistance to performing so-called hetero-normativity,"
In a review of Inside Me an Island, Taitano's second full-length book, reviewer Julie Szews of Transmotion Literary Journal notes:
"Translating the ever-flowing movement of the sea, Taitano expresses herself through the versatility of her poetry. In 17 poems Ma'te explores memories of the sea and her siblings, visitations of ancestral spirits, erasure and reconnection, patriotism and militarism, encounters with racism and the feeling of displacement. Likewise, Hafnot explores nature and landscape of the mainland United States as well as the indigenous stories that are connected to the land. Taitano's poems also explore emotional memories of grief and love. With its queer female diasporic Chamoru voice, Lehua Taitano's latest poetry collection enriches the multiplicity of unique styles and voices of Chamorro poetry."
In 2019, Taitano co-founded the art collective Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century with artist Lisa Jarrett. She was interviewed about her poetry and Art 25 by the radio shows It's Lit!. and OutSources. Art 25's debut exhibit, Future Ancestors, features photography and installation in collaboration with special effects artist and poet Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng.
Since 2017, she served as the Community Outreach Director for the Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing Conference.'' Her interdisciplinary art installations and somatic poetry performances have been exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution and several galleries and universities.

Personal life

Taitano currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Selection works

Poetry

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Fiction

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In Anthology

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Installation art and performance

An Aberrational Poetics: Inside Me an Island Shaped W/hole, 'Ae Kai Culture Lab on Convergence, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American CenterThe Unburden Project, Urban x Indigenous, SOMArtsCurrent, I, A Day in the Queer Life of Asian Pacific America, Smithsonian APACFuture Ancestors, Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century, Orí Gallery

Awards and honors