What's Good, Fam? I'm Terisa.

Most people find themselves here because of my poetry. You've seen one of my poems online or read my work in your class. You saw me give a keynote speech at your conference or you participated in a workshop I led at your organization. Or maybe you're just wanting to know who my favorite writer is (my grandpa) or what I’ve been up to during quarantine (working out, FTing my nephews, and of course, writing). Whatever the reason: I'm glad you're here. 

Before you scroll any further to my "official bio" and start exploring my site, let me welcome you to this space myself. The important stuff that you must know, off top, is that I was born, raised, and rep the Bay Area (all day), I come from a big, beautiful Samoan family (although I'm an only child) and I’m deeply devoted to my Pacific Islander community across the diaspora, and when I'm not on a stage, in a classroom, or behind a microphone, you can catch me Face timing with my nephews. Or ambitiously trying to read more than one book at a time (right now I'm reading Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories From the Transformative Justice Movement as well as Clap When You Land by my homegirl Liz Acevedo). Or you can find me in the kitchen cooking, as Whitney Houston's "Lover for Life" plays on repeat in the background. I'm big on education (most first-generation college students are), and was introduced to spoken word poetry when I was 18 years old in my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz back in 2006. Years spent falling in love with poetry taught me that as therapeutic as writing/performing is: it's not therapy. So instead of getting an MFA in Poetry or Creative Writing, I received my Masters in Marriage/Family Therapy from USC (Fight On). I travel the country and world committed to the notion that our well-being and health are dependent upon us writing and telling our stories. The only thing more transformative than this is creating opportunities so that others can do the same. As you're here, I invite you to explore my site, engage with my work, check out where I'll be speaking next, contact me about collaborating together, or even share something you've learned here with someone who may need to experience it too. I'll leave you with this writing prompt if you feel inspired to take it on: 

Light,
Risa

Official Bio:

Terisa Siagatonu is an award-winning poet, teaching artist, mental health educator, and community leader born and rooted in the Bay Area. Her presence in the poetry world as a queer Samoan woman and activist has granted her opportunities to perform and speak in places ranging from the White House (during the Obama administration) to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris, France. The most memorable moment in her career was receiving President Obama’s Champion of Change Award in 2012 for her activism as a spoken word poet/organizer in her Pacific Islander community.

With numerous viral poetry videos garnering over millions of views collectively, Terisa's writing blends the personal, cultural, and political in a way that calls for healing, courage, justice, and truth. A Kundiman Fellow and 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 List Honoree, her work has been published in Poetry Magazine and has been featured on Button Poetry, CNN, NBCNews, NPR, Huffington Post, KQED, Everyday Feminism, The Guardian, BuzzFeed and Upworthy. 

Since the beginning of Terisa's poetry slam involvement in 2010, she has been a member of several award winning slam teams, including the 2017 inaugural Root Slam Team, helping her team to place 5th in the nation at the National Poetry Slam competition in Denver, CO. When she's not competing, she is coaching college poetry slam teams and mentoring young writers in writing workshops throughout the country. Terisa is one of the co-founders and organizers of The Root Slam, a free bi-weekly poetry venue based in Oakland, CA, voted the 2017 and 2018's Best Open Mic venue in the Bay Area. 

Offstage, Terisa creates and facilitates workshops, leads artistic and professional development trainings, provides mental health clinical support, and delivers keynote speeches across the country on issues that inform her 10+ years of community work involving: youth advocacy, educational attainment, Pacific Islander/Indigenous rights, climate change, LGBTQQIA rights, gender-based violence, and others. She holds a Bachelors degree in Community Studies and minor in Education from the University of California- Santa Cruz and a Masters Degree in Marriage/Family Therapy from the University of Southern California (USC), aiming to use her background as a mental health clinician and poet to bridge the gaps in our quest for collective healing and liberation. 

For us.

For Aunty Hauani 
her words, my final resting place one day:
“upon the survival of the Pacific
depends the survival of the world.”

We, the biggest region on the planet.
The oldest ocean.
The heart, if this world ever had one. 
How dare anyone look at a map
with Oceania sliced in half
hanging on the edges of it and say:
I know what the world looks like.

For everything that fractured us.

For my severed island,
once belonging to itself 
for my chest, where Samoa is whole always
where Guahan is demilitarized finally
Hawai’i too. Northern Mariana Islands too
where the Marshall Islands is nuclear waste free
and the sins that bombed them 67 times
1000 times bigger than the one dropped on Hiroshima
remain America’s judgement day explanation, 
and never theirs.

For every misspelled / mispronounced attempt
at our family heirlooms.
How people will suggest that I
introduce myself
before giving my keynote address,
rather than trouble their lazy tongue
with learning how to say it
out of respect for my ancestors.

No.
You say it
so there’s no mistake
that you can see me
and the village
I’m standing in.

The audacity
has always been violent.

The honeymoons
timeshares
family vacations
spring breaksviolence done to us 
masked as gaslight

but this is for the lighting 
of the match.

For the spark of my generation
settling for nothing less
than our due.
For the aloha spirit being sharper
than you last remembered. 
For the locals no longer willing
to tourist trap for you.

For the love of my ancestors
how once, I read that when our colonizers 
came back to Samoa the second time, 
their boats were capsized 
by our sea. 

Oh well. 
For that too.

And as always & forever more:
for the culture.
The one I come from 
and the one that had no choice
but to come from me.
Indigenous diaspora finds home everywhere
my people survive.
From Cali’s coast to Oceania’s edge
from my swollen heart to the valley in my voice
the one that my love echos between forever
for the ones I intend to die for
and the ones who now understand
why they’re alive.

For the lengths I will go
to tell the truth
in this lifetime
in my writing
for us.

#APAHM #PIHeritageMonth

"I'm still alive because whatever wants me dead does not know: that you cannot kill somebody who isn't afraid anymore."

published in Poetry Magazine