pickI love the way Nye‘s work highlights moments of humanity & connection. This volume does that, but feels different from her poems I‘m familiar with. There‘s a thread of grief & anger, at times a voice of outrage. The “Tiny Journalist” refers to a Palestinian girl who began documenting anti-occupation protests at the age of 7. Nye‘s identity as a Palestinian-American, as a daughter of a refugee, provides a powerful voice for these much-needed poems.
Advice
My friend, dying, said do the hard thing first.
Always do the hard thing and you will have a better day.
The second thing will seem less hard.
She didn‘t tell me what to do when everything seems hard.
No Explosions
To enjoy
fireworks
you would have
to have lived
a different kind
of life
...secret diplomats are what we must be,
as a girl in Qatar once assured me,
each day slipping its blank visa into our hands.
—from “You Are Your Own State Department” by Naomi Shihab Nye
...They are the bravest people on earth right now,
don‘t dare look down on them. Each mind a universe
swirling as many details as yours, as much love
for a humble place. Now the shirt is torn,
the sea too wide for comfort, and nowhere
to receive a letter for a very long time.
And if we can reach out a hand, we better.
“Since Palestinians are also Semites, being pro-justice for Palestinians is never an anti-Semitic position, no matter what anybody says.”
Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets, and I‘m so glad to have this book in my hands. These poems are difficult to read (content-wise), but so, so needed.
pick#SelfImprovementSept Day 14: As Fats noted in her post: “The Tiny Journalist features poems inspired by Janna, a young girl who posts on Facebook her experiences in her war-torn Palestinian country. Janna has been documenting what‘s happening in her country at the early age of 7, using her mother‘s phone” almost like a #journal of sorts. Here is Fats‘ full feature with a few poem excerpts too: https://wp.me/pDlzr-kSs
The Tiny Journalist: Poems | 
