Goodreads Bookshelf
Friday Find
For class today, my 10th graders were reading poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye. There were several of her poems that I liked and that my students either liked or came to like before class was over, but one called "Ducks" struck me as much for the quotation which precedes it as for the poem itself. She quotes an anonymous Iraqi friend as saying "We thought of ourselves as people of culture. How long will it be till others see us that way again?"
It's easy enough to count the dead in Iraq (though we often lose count after we get done with our soldiers), but it's easy to forget just how thoroughly Iraq has been mutilated: not just the lives that have been ended, but the way that lives have been transformed as Iraq has become this battleground between the West and radical Islam. They've become victims, they've become displaced, orphaned and bereaved, refugees in their own country. Too many live in fear, too many must live just trying to get by. It's not just the lives ended, it's the lives lost. When will they be able to see themselves again as people of culture?
You can find "Ducks" here (a little down the page) and also another poem we did in class, "Darling." It was difficult to get through, but it had some really striking images that made us want to try. Mostly, the class ended up liking it; we may or may not have really understood it, but there was value in the effort.
I am at a lost for words. Many of our patients are Muslim from various
countries. We suffer and bare the results of 9/11, so do all the inocent
Muslims who must carry the stigma, death and fear of the unknown caused by
a minority of ignorant fools.
Holy shit, John. Read "Darling" out loud. It's magnificent. Knocked the
wind out of me and made me cry. Great post. Thank you.
Gosh. Powerful stuff. Great for your students to read.