Saltwater Dreaming: The Making of an Island Daughter

An intimate memoir of loss and reclamation, and a love letter to Guam, from former The Atlantic editor and journalist Lenika Cruz.

Every child growing up on the island of Guam learns the legend of Sirena. As the story goes, there was once a girl who loved the ocean so much, she would ignore her mother and her chores to play in the water. One day, as punishment for her disobedience, she was cursed to become a mermaid. No longer human but a creature of the sea, Sirena roamed the depths of the western Pacific alone, never to see her home or family again.

Lenika Cruz is another island daughter who knows loss. The story of her ancestors—indigenous Chamorro, Filipino, Okinawan—spans millennia, from ancient history to the Spanish galleon trade and colonization through Japanese occupation and American militarization from World War II to the present. After Lenika loses her mother as a child, her father moves the family back to Guam, knowing that he would have a village—abundant with love—to help raise his two young girls. But when he remarries shortly afterwards, love begins to take on new meanings: in Lenika’s mind, cruelty masquerades as care; affection requires pain, submission, and self-erasure. Under the influence of her new stepmother, Lenika eventually severs ties with Guam and her father to live as a “normal” American teenager in Southern California. Yet will life on the mainland be all that it promises to be? Or will the glittering illusion of freedom ultimately spell her doom?

Unfurling the layers of oppression and the insidious myths that have shaped her life, her identity, and her understandings of power and family, Lenika must revisit the land and waters, the indigenous history, practices, and language, including the story of Sirena, in order to confront painful truths. This is a powerful memoir of love, liberation, and transformation—of losing yourself and then trying to find your way back.