Scan barcode
paulap's review against another edition
fast-paced
4.0
This was an excellent collection of poems tackling racism, the use of Micronesian islands as test grounds for nuclear bombs and the cancer that resulted in those regions, and climate change and how the sea rising is changing these countries. The second to last poem in particular hit me hard. Really good collection overall:
yuukat's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
kingofspain93's review against another edition
5.0
I’m never going to have anything intelligent to say about this book. It’s a comprehensive personal history of the Marshall Islands and being Marshallese. Americans don’t know shit about the Pacific Islands that they bombed, exploited, colonized. Americans don’t know that imperialism and genocide are ongoing. American's don't know that climate change is the new atomic bomb, and that they are responsible for its creation and deployment. The Marshall Islands, and all the Pacific Islands, are ground zero for a new series of tests. Jetn̄il-Kijiner is furious and also spends time lovingly recreating her experience of being a Marshallese woman. She invokes a part of the world that is strong and alive and complicated. This is her story, and also the story of the world. Iep Jāltok is not just a great (personal and political) history lesson, it’s also good poetry. It reminded me that one of the things I like about poetry is the ability of a good poet to use language evocatively in unexpected, non-linear ways. It’s like Trinh T. Minh-Ha says in Reassemblage: “I do not intend to speak about, just speak nearby.” Speaking nearby something in order to conjure the feeling and the dimensions of it is something that Jetn̄il-Kijiner does well.
ameliasbooks's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
Impressive. Informative. Moving. Painful.
octavia_cade's review against another edition
dark
emotional
5.0
This was outstanding. A collection of poems drawn from the life of the author, and the history of the Marshall Islands, it contrasts the forced emigration of the Islanders so that their home could be made into an atomic testing ground, with the possibility of another forced emigration in the future, as climate change raises sea levels and destroys what's left of their home. There's a consistent sense here of dislocation, of a people and a culture being simply discarded for the greater good of everyone else, and it's enormously affecting and thoroughly enraging. This is going on the "must get a hard copy of my own" list, because in a few months I won't have access to the university library where I found the copy I've just read, and I know I'm going to want to read this again.
allyexa's review against another edition
5.0
Read this slim collection of poignant poems for a bit of Marshallese history, a bit of culture, a bit of family, and food, and sickness from nuclear fallout, a bit of environmental activism.
I don’t know how to rate or sum up good poetry. But I will say that I sprinkled these poems over about a week, and they filled my head in quiet moments, sprang up at the darndest times. Once, I was telling a friend about one of the poems, and I had not memorized it, but even the general gist of it gave him a shiver.
And often the ends of poems would pack a surprise punch that had me choking back tears.
Read this now. It’s short but powerful.
1/20/23
I don’t know how to rate or sum up good poetry. But I will say that I sprinkled these poems over about a week, and they filled my head in quiet moments, sprang up at the darndest times. Once, I was telling a friend about one of the poems, and I had not memorized it, but even the general gist of it gave him a shiver.
And often the ends of poems would pack a surprise punch that had me choking back tears.
Read this now. It’s short but powerful.
1/20/23