@terisasiagatonu
Sāmoan⎮Poet⎮Speaker⎮Educator⎮Organizer Give anti-imperialism a chance • Free Oceania • Free Palestine #Landback⎮She/They We The Gathered Heat (Haymarket, Fall 2024) The Vastness of Us 👧🏽📖🌊 (Penguin, Fall 2025) www.terisasiagatonu.com IG: @terisasiagatonu
My giant #poetry column is now live @msmagazine.com!
Featuring @oliverbaezbendorf.bsky.social @theoceanisgay.bsky.social @jxzzhndz.bsky.social @taylorbyas.bsky.social @aditimachado.bsky.social @terisasiagatonu.bsky.social @catherineweiss.bsky.social & more!
msmagazine.com/2025/04/21/r...
Every time I speak as an organizer/lecturer/educator, someone asks me, "How do you not lose hope?" My answer is always that although I despair, every day I come to know more and more people in the struggle for justice. There are more of us every day.
On Valentine’s Day in 1779, Hawaiians killed colonizer Captain Cook upon his 3rd intrusive visit to Hawai’i. His invasive exploration of Australia & our islands in Oceania (Tahiti, Aotearoa, Kanaky, etc) is what triggered British colonization in the Pacific. Thank you Hawaiians 🙏🏽💘🌊
Devastated to see the news about Nikki Giovanni. Seeing so many poets’ tributes to her and their personal stories about how she impacted their lives and careers just shows what kind of poet and person she was. May she rest in peace, and may her family find the love and support they need ❤️
from the suicide card in the asian american lit review's open in an emergency tarot deck:
"...This card chose you as a sign to pause and feel everything, rather than end. You're left to interpret what the rest of the body is doing while you're still here. Alive." @terisasiagatonu.bsky.social
BREAKING: Autonomous anti-genocide activists bring the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to a grinding halt after blockading the McDonald’s float for a second year in a row.
“Those grinches who thinks they can disrupt the parade: it’s not going to happen,” Mayor Eric Adams said yesterday.
Moana 2 is out in theaters today but not yet here in Tahiti. Until then: a contrapuntal poem I wrote that was published in Poetry Magazine after the 1st movie when Disney pulled a racist brown skin tatted costume off the shelves. Each column is its own poem, then read across: 4 poems total 🌊
Help us send 2,000 books to readers who are incarcerated this winter through our Books Not Bars program
Hi 👋 I put together a starter pack to spotlight Pacific Islander authors for anyone wanting to discover and uplift PI literature.
Say hi & follow along to celebrate PI! And if you're a Pacific Islander book creator, reach out to be included :)
go.bsky.app/HFSy2tG
#books #authors #pasifika
I hope that the people who are usually not politically engaged but worked really hard to get Harris elected wake up soon and realize that they are not the only ones who are tired of a struggle that is full of defeat & in fact they could learn about surviving from the leftists they mark as enemies
The moment I started feeling viscerally angry at my peers amidst the elections, I immediately pulled out this book to re-read and re-ground. Even the first chapter alone helped me to snap out of it and stay focused at the work ahead. Right now, the e-book is free at @haymarketbooks.bsky.social
100% 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
A liberation you can’t sweat out.
Delighted to share a new project that @KTeaiwa and I have been working on for the past year - a new six-volume history of Oceania (Australia and the Pacific) - 60,000 years: culturalhistoryofoceania.blog
Alofa tele atu to our Māori aiga and all who are gathered with them today on the hīkoi to Parliament. All of our ancestors across each of our islands in Oceania hold you up as the indigenous people of Aotearoa and know that what’s best for Māori is best for all of us. 🖤🤍❤️ #ToitūTeTiriti
My time on Huahine ends soon. I’m sad to go but ready to continue writing/finishing these manuscripts so I can start the others. France banned the teaching of the Tahitian language across 2 generations. The least I can do is write these books as resistance to all our colonizers couldn’t take. 🇵🇫🫀🌊
Working on children’s book #2 and my YA novel here has been a gift, especially amidst being here for the island’s annual book fair and the opening of their 1st library, created by Chantal. A woman who survived & fought against French nuclear testing & settler colonialism. This library is monumental.
One month into my 2 month writing residency in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia). 1 month spent in Mo’orea (where I’m headed next) & 1 in Huahine: home to the most famous Tahitian author, my literary hero Chantal Spitz. I’ll cherish the immense time I’ve shared w/ her & let it fuel my writing even more.
I’ve been anxiously waiting to see it for so looong. Wish we could see it together! We’ll have to compare notes after
K I'm here now what?
(Im)patiently waiting for Roquin to make their bluesky account
generational reciprocity is one of my favorite things about my pacific islander community. people still do nice things for my family because of my parents or my grandparents and sometimes even my great-grandparents
Pākehā/white people in Aotearoa who are in opposition of Māori sovereignty and who keep clogging every #ToitūTeTiriti post with claims that Māori aren’t indigenous to Aotearoa feel unsettled because they’re settlers and their blood knows it, even if they refuse to accept it.
