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

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.