A review by kingofspain93
Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner

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.