Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places (Texts; 18) - Softcover

Nye, Naomi Shihab

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570030820 ISBN 13: 9781570030826

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 1996

Synopsis

In "Never in a Hurry the poet Naomi Shihab Nye" resists the American tendency to "leave toward places whenn we barely have time enough to get there." Instaed she travels the world at an observant pace, talking to strangers and introducing readers to an endearing assemblage of great-great-aunts, eccentric neighbors, Filipina faith healers, dry-cleaning proprietors, hitchhikers, and other quirky characters, some of whom she met just once. As inviting and inventive as her poems, Nye's insightful essays spill forth from the collexction with the spontaneity of stories spoken across a kitchen table.

About this title

From School Library Journal

YA-This collection of essays is an excellent addition to any library. Nye is a Palestinian American, married to a Swedish American, and has lived much of her life in San Antonio, TX. The essays are autobiographical reflections of people and places she has encountered throughout her life. She and her parents lived in Jerusalem for a year until the Six-Day War caused them to flee back to the United States; Nye and her husband have returned to her ancestral country on several occasions. The essays are short, quiet reflections on a variety of subjects. The author has the ability to perceive and describe her surroundings so skillfully that readers are drawn into these experiences and are enriched in the process. Such essays as "Favorite Cleaners, San Antonio" help readers step back, slow down, and contemplate the everyday role of the all too familiar in one's life. This collection is guaranteed to make YAs laugh, cry, reflect, or think about life from another point of view. Literature by and about the Arab experience in America is rare; to discover a well-written collection suitable for young adults is a joy.
Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Nye is a Palestinian American poet whose world anthologies, such as This Same Sky (1992), have brought a host of new voices to American readers. Her picture book Sitti's Secrets (1994), about an American child's visit to her grandmother on the West Bank, is clearly autobiographical, and several of the lyrical essays and memoirs in this stirring collection draw on her experience across borders. The power of her writing is in the personal particulars, loving and rueful, whether she's talking about cleaning house in San Antonio, where she lives with her husband and son, or about the fun of gossip, or about the anguish in her six long years of infertility. It's the absence of rhetoric that makes unforgettable the scene where she returns with her father (the refugee) to his childhood home in Jerusalem and finds a friendly, innocent New Yorker (the settler) moving in. They like each other. Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1570030820
• ISBN 13: 9781570030826
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 280