{"id":16688,"date":"2017-03-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/book-review-iep-jaltok"},"modified":"2017-11-07T22:17:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T22:17:43","slug":"book-review-iep-jaltok","status":"publish","type":"custom_quick","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/article-short\/book-review-iep-jaltok\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Iep J\u0101ltok"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is rare for a poet to blatantly state an objective in penning a collection, but in Iep J\u0101ltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter, <\/em>writer and environmental activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner clearly articulates a hope that her work will put human faces on the statistics, and bring to light the health and climate change conversations from her beloved homeland, the Pacific Ocean\u02bcs Marshall Islands. She recounts legends and family history, draws attention to the US military\u02bcs nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (and the fallout-related cancers that resulted), and writes frankly about climate change, colonization, and racism. Through poems that range in style\u2014the predominantly free verse text begins and ends with picture poems and also includes prose poems\u2014the writer reveals stark contrasts between an idyllic past, a diseased present, and a threatened future for the environment.<\/p>\n

The collection opens with \u02bb\u02bbBasket,\u02bc\u02bc a picture poem in the shape of a basket. The poem sets a feminist and melancholic tone for the four-section collection. \u02bb\u02bbMy smile\/was merely\/a rim\/woven\/into my\/face,\u02bc\u02bc Jetnil<\/span>-Kijiner writes. Interesting legends immediately follow, but the book\u02bcs gold appears in the two middle sections: \u02bb\u02bbHistory Project\u02bc\u02bc and \u02bb\u02bbLessons from Hawai\u2018i.\u02bc\u02bc In the former\u2014based on the poet\u02bcs years-ago high school project\u2014we learn that during the nuclear testing, a fisherman witnessed atrocities including soldiers shooting off a woman\u2019s ears. The fisherman never forgot his own hunger after nuclear contamination resulted in a fishing ban, thus was forever grateful for the American gifts of food, such as canned Spam, flaky biscuits, and chocolate bars, even though eating these foods eventually destroyed his health.<\/p>\n

Strong imagery reinforces the gravity of the situation. A boy with \u02bb\u02bbpeeled skin\/arms legs suspended\/a puppet\u02bc\u02bc and \u02bb\u02bbjelly babies\/tiny beings with no bones\/skin\u2014red as tomatoes\u02bc\u02bc\u2014are juxtaposed against images of American marines and nurses \u02bb\u02bbwith bloated grins sucking\/beers and tossing beach balls along\/our shores.\u02bc\u02bc<\/p>\n

It is easy to empathize with the injustice-fueled fury that simmers beneath many of these poems. Jetnil-Kijiner speaks of the irony of an American uproar over nuclear testing on goats and pigs, for instance, when little was made of the rampant, post-nuclear-testing cancer rates among the Marshallese. The poet\u02bcs family was not spared. Niece Bianca had a \u02bb\u02bbwar\/raging inside [her] six year old bones,\u02bc\u02bc and a grandmother developed tongue cancer.<\/p>\n

Occasional prosaic and melodramatic lapses are evident in this, the author\u02bcs first book, but Jetnil-Kijiner succeeds at making the personal political, and she does so with passion, originality, and grace. Her poetry is underscored with pride in a people \u02bb\u02bbtoasted dark brown as the carved ribs\/of a tree stump\u02bc\u02bc and a place \u02bb\u02bbdropped\/from a basket\/carried by a giant.\u02bc\u02bc Beyond the numbers and statistics, there is \u02bb\u02bba toddler\/stomping squeaky\/yellow light up shoes\/across the edge of a reef\u02bc\u02bc that is \u02bb\u02bbnot yet\/under water.\u02bc\u02bc And there is a young Marshallese poet doing what she can to \u201c[will] the world\/to find its balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iep J\u0101ltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter
\nby Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
\n96 pp. The University of Arizona Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poetry collection explores the stories of the Marshallese people and the fallout of the US military\u2019s nuclear testing on the islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12996,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"A poetry collection explores the stories of the Marshallese people and the fallout of the US military\u2019s nuclear testing on the islands.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15708]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":null,"related":[16155,16958],"twitterimage":19697,"facebookimage":19290,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_quick"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20598,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16688\/revisions\/20598"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16958"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}