Blood Naomi Shihab Nye Summary

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The first poem is “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye. This poem is narrated by an adult Arab woman. As the reader we learn in the first line that our narrator is, “A true Arab." This poem is a direct narration of Naomi’s life. Naomi’s father and family became refugees in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. She said that her father lost everything during these troubling times. While the war was taking place, Arabs were scattered all over the world in refugee camps or lucky enough to find a home. We learn that Naomi and her family grew up in a home in Missouri. The line, “Cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter just stared”, indicates they are living in a place where Arab customs are seen as abnormal. We can also infer that she is …show more content…

Naomi uses proper language, however, her poem has a simplistic tone to it. An enjambment is a line that has no end punctuation and runs into another line. There is only one example of an enjambment in the poem, and it is in line 3: “Cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared.” She continued the sentence with a break in the text to separate the two lines showing the difference between an Arabic culture and an American culture. Naomi uses a lot of end stopped lines throughout her poem. End stopped lines give the poem a pause. The punctuation of the poem consists of mostly periods, until the end when more question marks begin to appear. In the beginning of the poem Naomi knew exactly who she was, a true Arab, and she was proud to be one. Then, in the third stanza when she is first being told who she is we see her first questions appear. Naomi is a confused about her culture and wants to know more. Then, in the fourth stanza Naomi really does not know who she is and she asks, “What flag can we wave?” Lastly, the fifth stanza has the most questions because Naomi not only does not know who she is but is begging for

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