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alic59books's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
5.0
siria's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
4.25
A slim but powerful collection of poems from the Marshallese author and activist Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner. She is an accomplished poet, one who uses her voice to insist on the humanity of the Marshallese ("We are sweaty hands shaking / another sweaty hand in heat / Tell them we are days and nights hotter / than anything you can imagine / We are little girls with braids / cartwheeling beneath the rain") in the face of, in spite of, the appalling ways that her people have been treated in recent centuries.
Jetn̄il-Kijiner is frank about the very real dangers that her nation faces from climate change (the Marshall Islands are, on average, no more than 2 metres above sea level), and the ongoing health impacts from the U.S. military's mid-twentieth-century use of their country and its people as guinea pigs for nuclear testing (miscarriages bring forth "jelly babies/tiny beings with no bones/skin—red as tomatoes"; the young and the old die painful deaths from cancer). Yet at the same time she also celebrates Marshallese culture, and shows us the rich texture of life that the whole world would lose if the Marshallese lose their islands.
Not all of the poems work as well for me as did others—a defter touch would sometimes have served Jetn̄il-Kijiner better—but there's no doubting the passion which imbues all of them. Recommended.
Jetn̄il-Kijiner is frank about the very real dangers that her nation faces from climate change (the Marshall Islands are, on average, no more than 2 metres above sea level), and the ongoing health impacts from the U.S. military's mid-twentieth-century use of their country and its people as guinea pigs for nuclear testing (miscarriages bring forth "jelly babies/tiny beings with no bones/skin—red as tomatoes"; the young and the old die painful deaths from cancer). Yet at the same time she also celebrates Marshallese culture, and shows us the rich texture of life that the whole world would lose if the Marshallese lose their islands.
Not all of the poems work as well for me as did others—a defter touch would sometimes have served Jetn̄il-Kijiner better—but there's no doubting the passion which imbues all of them. Recommended.
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.