Nye, Naomi Shihab. HABIBI. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0689801491.
2. PLOT SUMMARY
Liyana and her family have lived in St. Louis her entire life when the summer before she is to begin high school and her brother Rafik is to begin middle school, her parents tell them the family is going to move to Jerusalem where her father was born. This seems like a good time, her mother explains, for the family to make a move. Liyana’s parents have always talked about moving so that the children could experience both sides of their history, but it has always been a faraway rumor until now. So Liyana leaves the only life she has known to encounter a new one that includes cobblestone roads, refugee camps, and violent political uncertainty while also introducing her to a grandmother she’s never met, friends who hope for the same peace that she wishes for, and a handsome young man named Omer who may just replace the boyfriend she had to leave behind.
3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Naomi Shihab Nye creates two sympathetic characters in Liyana and Rafik. The difference in their ages is shown through a happy-go-lucky Rafik who is excited about the adventure of moving across the ocean, and less-than-excited Liyana who is not only about to enter high school, but has just gotten her first kiss. However, Liyana sets her mind to making the best of a bad situation and embarks on a journey that will at times be difficult, but will be full of hope and excitement, and happiness. The story is told in chapters almost resembling vignettes. Each chapter reveals new experiences for the family: the estate sale in anticipation of the move, the first meeting of the extended family in Jerusalem upon their arrival, the butcher shop with live chickens slaughtered on the spot, and the clashing of modern western culture with the older culture of the Middle East. The stories are interesting and draw the reader into the vicarious experience of moving far away to a new place.
Young adult readers who have experienced this type of cross-global move themselves should relate to the experience of Liyana or Rafik, while those who have not can gain an understanding of the feelings associated with leaving the home one has always known for one that is literally foreign. Even Liyana’s parents experience unexpected events that emphasize the dichotomous life they are living – neither fully American nor fully Arab. “Sometimes she [even] heard her father say, ‘We are Americans,’ to his relatives” – her father who had always been Arab before. The push and pull of living in a culture that is completely different is felt throughout the story. The danger that lurks just around the corner if you forgetfully do something unacceptable in this new place, the stressful relationships between Arabs and Jews balancing precariously in this torn city, and the difficulty of making friends when you do not speak their language are deftly portrayed. However, the difficulties are nicely paired with the joys of new adventures, the love of family, and the hospitality of strangers.
This semi-autobiographical novel “feels” realistic without having cultural markers packed in so tightly as to feel didactic. With nice, short chapters, children from fifth through ninth grade should enjoy this novel, told by an Arab-American who was born in St. Louis of an American mother and Palestinian father like Liyana, and has lived in Ramallah (Jordan), Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Journal entries and essays written by Liyana and Rafik are interwoven into the story, and while these sometimes feel disconnected from what is happening, they are short and easy to read through.
Habibi is the winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, given by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
4. REVIEW EXCERPTS
*Publishers Weekly: “This soul-stirring novel about the Abbouds, an Arab American family, puts faces and names to the victims of violence and persecution in Jerusalem today. . . .Nye's climactic ending will leave readers pondering, long after the last page is turned, why Arabs, Jews, Greeks and Armenians can no longer live in harmony the way they once did.”
*Booklist: “The story is steeped in detail about the place and cultures: food, geography, history, shopping, schools, languages, religions, etc. Just when you think it is obtrusive to have essays and journal entries thrust into the story, you get caught up in the ideas and the direct simplicity with which Nye speaks. She does try to cover too much--no book can tell the whole story of the Middle East--but this is a story that makes us ‘look both ways.’”
*School Library Journal: “Though the story begins at a leisurely pace, readers will be engaged by the characters, the romance, and the foreshadowed danger. Poetically imaged and leavened with humor, the story renders layered and complex history understandable through character and incident. Habibi succeeds in making the hope for peace compellingly personal and concrete...as long as individual citizens like Liyana's grandmother Sitti can say, ‘I never lost my peace inside.’”
5. CONNECTIONS
• Read some of Shihab Nye’s poetry and compare the language in the poetry to the language in the novel. Notice poetic language in the novel. Lines such as “For years the word floated in the air around their heads, yellow pollen, wispy secret dust of the ages passed on and on. Habibi,” (p. 204). While reading, keep a notebook of lines and phrases that catch your attention.
• Listen to Shihab Nye reading her poetry on youtube.com. One of my favorites is “One Boy Told Me,” a ‘found’ poem that is a collection of lines said by her son when he was young. She emphasizes the fact that we all are poets, some of us just stop trying to find that poetry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJ3FP8aDjY&feature=related
Her deep voice is a pleasure to listen to as she reads her own poetry.
• Youtube.com also includes interviews with Shihab Nye, her father Aziz Shihab, and speeches Shihab Nye has made at colleges and in other settings about her writing and her wish for a world where we share with each other. Go to youtube.com and type in “Naomi Shihab Nye.”
• Have students write stories that give vignettes of their experiences in going someplace they’ve never been before, whether it’s a new country, a new city, or even a new school (moving from elementary to middle, or middle to high school).
No comments:
Post a Comment