LAURA RUTH LOOMIS
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17. #PopsugarReadingChallenge: Iep Jāltok: Poems From a Marshallese Daughter

5/14/2022

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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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