SOMETHING ABOUT AMERICA

Testa writes stories told in poems of surpassing beauty, fragility and depth. The narrator of these poems is 13, living in Maine with her parents, refugees from Kosova. She loves America, loves her place and her family but suffers because she knows her parents miss their homeland. They cannot return, however, as their daughter needs the medical care provided in the US. When she was four, she was burned badly, although as she says in “Fire can be kind,” her face was untouched. When her father hears of a protest against Somali immigrants in Lewiston, Maine (a true incident), he helps organize a rally in support of the Somalis that draws thousands of people. His daughter’s voice seems artless, and yet is full of youthful wisdom and candor: “ . . . we could be / a slice of pizza / with everything on it,” she says of her school’s diversity, and she thinks it’s pretty funny that her father learned English from watching TV so much. Riveting—and tender. (Fiction. 10-14)