Beautifully written poetry about the butterfly effect of human experience.
A powerful account of a mother’s life, narrated in verse by award-winner Nye, the former Young People’s Poet Laureate.
Nye describes small meaningful moments from major events in the life of her late mother, Miriam Naomi Allwardt Shihab. The opening poem introduces Miriam, explaining how she met Nye’s Palestinian immigrant father in Kansas, marrying him only three months later. Subsequent entries delve into Miriam’s mental health, which was affected by her rigid upbringing (“Her parents were tightly closed German boxes”); Miriam struggled with depression later in life (“You could never tell your friends. / Before I was born, my mama tried to die”). On the subject of her parents’ marital conflict, Nye notes that “children who live in sad houses / hope to fix things.” However, the poems also uphold Miriam’s profoundly positive impact as a mother who passed on her global awareness and empathy, passion for the arts, and respect for diversity: “She never thought she was / the center of the world.” Understanding her mother’s mysteries becomes a quest for Nye to both understand herself and appreciate Miriam more deeply: “Maybe we are all born from our mother’s kilns,” she states in her introduction. Her writing dwells upon the secret mysteries of our lives and the grace it takes to forgive and love others. Through this intimate and compassionate exploration of one woman’s life, readers receive an invitation to contemplate human interconnectedness.
Beautifully written poetry about the butterfly effect of human experience. (index) (Poetry. 13-18)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780062691873
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love.
As palliative for his beloved Abuela's worsening dementia, memoirist Ogle offers her a book of childhood recollections.
Cast in episodic rushes of free verse and paralleling events chronicled in Free Lunch (2019) and Punching Bag (2021), the poems take the author from age 4 until college in a mix of love notes to his devoted, hardworking, Mexican grandmother; gnawing memories of fights and racial and homophobic taunts at school as he gradually becomes aware of his sexuality; and bitter clashes with both his mother, described as a harsh, self-centered deadbeat with seemingly not one ounce of love to give or any other redeeming feature, and the distant White father who threw him out the instant he came out. Though overall the poems are less about the author’s grandmother than about his own angst and issues (with searing blasts of enmity reserved for his birthparents), a picture of a loving intergenerational relationship emerges, offering moments of shared times and supportive exchanges amid the raw tallies of beat downs at home, sudden moves to escape creditors, and screaming quarrels. “My memories of a wonderful woman are written in words and verses and fragments in this book,” he writes in a foreword, “unable to be unwritten. And if it is forgotten, it can always be read again.”
A visceral window into a survivor’s childhood and a testament to the enduring influence of unconditional love. (Verse memoir. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-01995-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
A truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story about a lost soul finding her way.
Navigating high school is hard enough, let alone when your parents are CIA spies.
In this graphic memoir, U.S. citizen Glock shares the remarkable story of a childhood spent moving from country to country; abiding by strange, secretive rules; and the mystery of her parents’ occupations. By the time she reaches high school in an unspecified Central American nation—the sixth country she’s lived in—she’s begun to feel the weight of isolation and secrecy. After stealing a peek at a letter home to her parents from her older sister, who is attending college in the States, the pieces begin to fall into place. Normal teenage exploration and risk-taking, such as sneaking out to parties and flirtations with boys, feel different when you live and go to school behind locked gates and kidnapping is a real risk. This story, which was vetted by the CIA, follows the author from childhood to her eventual return to a home country that in many ways feels foreign. It considers the emotional impact of familial secrets and growing up between cultures. The soft illustrations in a palette of grays and peaches lend a nostalgic air, and Glock’s expressive faces speak volumes. This is a quiet, contemplative story that will leave readers yearning to know more and wondering what intriguing details were, of necessity, edited out. Glock and many classmates at her American school read as White; other characters are Central American locals.
A truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story about a lost soul finding her way. (Graphic memoir. 13-18)Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-45898-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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