Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye

interviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on August 1, 1999

The author of FUEL talks about the nuts and bolts of publishing, the art of storytelling, and the importance of reading.

White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on June 1, 1999

I wanted to like this book. A combination of memoir and extended musing on race and race theory, White Lies is the work of Maurice Berger, a white boy who grew up Jewish in a largely black Lower East Side housing project. His father was a liberal who worshipped Martin Luther King Jr., his mother, [...]

Planet Doonesbury

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on May 1, 1999

The best thing about Trudeau’s political wit is that no one is immune from it … Trudeau takes shots at liberal parents and conspiracy buffs alike.

The Last Avant-Garde

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on April 1, 1999

Centered around the New York School of poets, this is a story about New York, Abstract Expressionism, and the fifties.

Truck

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on March 1, 1999

As the book jacket proclaims, “it’s more than a mechanic’s memoir: it is a meditation on machines, metaphysics, and the moral universe.” Jerome is curmudgeonly in the best New England intellectual tradition, but he’s also astonishingly down to earth…

Religious Pluralism in Israel

by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on February 1, 1999

Rachel Barenblat finds the question “What makes one a Jew?” increasingly more complex, as she encounters “Religious Pluralism in Israel”.

Fuel

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on January 1, 1999

In the interest of fairness, I should begin by admitting that I’ve been a Naomi Shihab Nye fan since I was old enough to read. I grew up in San Antonio, where Nye lives, and I took a poetry class with her when I was about seven. (I remember being the youngest person in the [...]

About Love

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on December 1, 1998

Although I am a self-confessed romantic, I’m no expert on love poetry. I haven’t read a book of so-called “love poems” in years. The last love poems I remember reading are Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (which I devoured), and a handful of e.e. cummings poems, around the time I was [...]

Stacking Wood

by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on May 1, 1998

The toils of winter.