 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book by a Pacific Islander author
Book: Iep Jāltok: Poems From a Marshallese Daughter, by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner The author grew up in Hawaii, then returned to her ancestral home in the Marshall Islands. The poems include traditional mythology (including a wonderful prose-poem on the introduction of the first sail), glimpses of local culture, and some hard-hitting political poems on the islands' history as a nuclear testing ground and the current climate change crisis. My favorite was "Two Degrees," in which she draws parallels between climate change and her child having a fever. Two degrees doesn't sound like much - unless it's your child who's sick, or your island at risk for literally disappearing: So that people remember that beyond the discussions number and statistics there are faces all the way out here there is a toddler stomping squeaky yellow light up shoes across the edge of a reef not yet under water
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