Review: The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye

Reviewed by Nancy Posey

The Tiny Journalist
Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
BOA Editions, April 2019
$17.00; 128 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1-942-68373-5

Point of view, for any writer of prose or poetry, is a crucial choice. The speaker’s voice and the eyes through which the reader is allowed to view the world are both tools the writer uses to craft the message. Naomi Shihab Nye often, though not always, uses first person in her poetry. Astute readers realize that the “I” in a poem does not always represent the poet, but a familiarity with Nye’s background and heritage often inform the reader as well. The daughter of a displaced Palestinian father and an American mother with Swiss and German heritage, she studied English and world religions at Trinity University. After living in St. Louis and in Jerusalem and now making her home in San Antonio, she has spent her writing life connecting cultures.

In her most recent collection, The Tiny Journalist, Nye channels the voice of Janna Jihad Ayyad, a teenager from a village near the one where the poet’s father grew up, who has used social media to communicate with the outside world about her poignant experiences in the often violent conflict between Israel and Palestine. Recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate 2019-2021 by the Poetry Foundation, Nye does not draw from Janna’s words as much as her experiences and perspective, combining them with her own experiences and research. Sometimes she speaks as the “tiny journalist” and other times, she comes across as an omniscient narrator, watching over Janna’s shoulder, reading her thoughts. Nye’s own experiences and those of her father and his family also have a strong presence throughout the collection.

In the opening poem, “Morning Song,” dedicated to Janna, Nye describes “the tiny journalist” who “knows how to take a picture / with her phone” but who “would  / prefer to dance and play” (lines 5-8). She watches from her side of the fence and, imagining the possibilities, “She has a better idea.”

The poems raise poignant questions: “What is our crime?” (line 33) and “Why can’t they see / how beautiful we are?” (“Janna lines 34-5). Channeling Janna’s voice, the speaker reminds readers:

We are made of flesh and bone and story. . . .
The saddest part?
We all could have had
twice as many friends. (“Janna” lines 28, 36-8)

Nye draws parallels to other long-running conflicts throughout the world, such as in “In Northern Ireland They Call It ‘The Troubles.’” Trying to put a name to her situation, she considers “the very endless nightmare [or] the toothache of tragedy” all the while “longing for a better life” (lines 2-3, 26-7).

In the poem “Women in Black,” as she considers a solution that seems to echo Keb Mo’s lyrics to “Put a Woman in Charge,” the speaker suggests, “Put everything in the hands of women! . . . The men had their chance and failed. . . .It is our turn now” (lines 51, 53. 59).

Calling foul on Doublespeak in a poem taking its title from an internet news item “Israelis Let Bulldozers Grind to a Halt,” she declares, in response to anthropomorphism of the destruction, “I am mad about language/ covering pain” (lines 13-4).

These poems also shine a light on those she calls “forgotten people,” such as the old man with a “tattoo of a skinny blue moon” (“Tattoo” line 18) or others she calls by name—mothers, artists, lawyers, dancers—jailed for wanting “to lead normal lives” (“America Gives Israel Ten Million Dollars a Day” line 32).

Most powerfully, Nye calls readers’ attention to our tendency to look away in the face of tragedy, noting that “even when 500 people die from bombs they supplied. / They won’t cry because the dead ones weren’t someone / they knew and loved” (“Gaza Is Not Far Away” lines 25-7).

Nye’s poems pose questions to a rabbi demonstrating against Palestinian presences, rendering him silent, as well as to people of Dubai, asking them if they could use their building resources to help Yemen, which before bombings had “the most / amazing architecture/ in the world” (“Stun” lines 2-4).

Many of the poems, such as “The Old Journalist Talks to Janna” and “The Old Journalist Writes” allude to the poet’s late father, creating a found poem from Aziz Shihab’s notebooks.

While Nye addresses one of the most divisive conflicts in the history in this collection, she does so with gentleness, grace, and humanity. In the simple but never naïve voice, she seems to be asking individuals, decision-makers as well as ordinary citizens of the world, to consider another point of view, the human faces on the other side of our walls.

Nancy Posey lives in Brentwood, TN, where she is an adjunct English professor after retiring from full-time teaching in North Carolina. An avid reader, she participates in two book clubs and blogs about books at discriminatingreader.com. She also writes poetry, plays the mandolin, and always enjoys learning something new.