Natalia Trevin\u1dc3o reviews San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s newest poetry collection, The Tiny Journalist<\/em>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With a wide-angle lens taking in the tumultuous landscape that braids the personal and the political, the land and the language, and the kind child she insists is in every one of us, National Book Award Finalist, poet, and Texas treasure, Naomi Shihab Nye writes  \u201conly children \/ would ever find the key.\u201d Dedicated to Janna Jihad Ayyad (born 2006), who at seven years old began reporting injustices in her village on the West Bank of Palestine, The Tiny Journalist<\/em> sings to chronicle Janna\u2019s journey in clear, concise, and cutting free verse. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nye admits joining Facebook just so she could follow Janna, writing that these poems \u201care \u2018my\u2019 words,  imagining Janna\u2019s circumstances.\u201d In the first section of the book, we meet the journalist through several persona poems: \u201cWe would like the babies not to find out about\/ the failures waiting for them,\u201d the checkpoints, the \u201cbulldozers\/ crushing houses\/schoolrooms,\u201d never knowing \u201cwhat it would feel like, not having guns pointed at us.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because of her own experience in<\/span><\/span> Palestine <\/span><\/span>during the late sixties, Nye mines her own childhood memories of the beauty she misses with interspersed offerings of mint, fig pencils, and lemons to help place the reader both in the scene and in the honest clarity of a child\u2019s obvious questions, rendering intense emotional weight: \u201cWhen Facebook says I have \u201cfollowers\u201d\u2014\/ I hope they know I need their help,\u201d by telling Netanyahu, \u201cYou don\u2019t need a stethoscope\/ to imagine a heartbeat.\u201d She worries about little-known human rights cases, making us question if we are complicit: \u201cWe should all be concerned about Mohammed Zayed,\/\/No details on his new arrest.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the second section of the book, the adult voice appears, interlacing pastoral scenes from Syria, Yemen, Guangzhou, Wales, Australia, Qatar, and many others places while including global reactions to the U.S. 2016 election: \u201can Australian librarian \/ would pass me a note, WTF?\u201d Attentive to language, wholeness, and hope, these poems also redefine the scope of empty and politicized words. One poem alerts the reader: \u201cYou Are Your Own State Department.\u201d  \u201cEach day,\u201d a girl assures the speaker,\u201d slip[s] its blank visa into our hands.\u201d We learn that \u201csuperpower\u201d is the gift of \u201cretaining imagination\/ in worse days.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this chorus of speakers blended with her own voice, Nye includes much needed encouragement for a person like Janna, who is willing to take a stand in the voice of an old journalist: \u201cI see you stand, hands up, saying\/ Move back<\/em>! to the ones with guns.\/ This was never easy for me to do.\u201d Reminding the reader that all Palestinians are \u201calso Semites\u201d and that being \u201cpro-justice for Palestinians is never an anti-Semitic position,\u201d this poet delivers news-worthy journalistic headlines of her own about those who have lived through the occupation, recounting that  \u201cwe had to become heroes to survive at all.\u201d If only we knew all of those stories. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This book is more than a book of poems. It is a call for awakening.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Natalia Trevin\u1dc3o reviews San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s newest poetry collection, The Tiny Journalist. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[813,817,830,886,812],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lone-star-literary-life","tag-lone-star-review","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-poetry","tag-texas-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}