HABIBI

A. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1997. HABIBI. New York: Simon Pulse. ISBN 068980149

B. PLOT SUMMARY
Liyana and her family, brother Rafik and parents, move from St. Louis, Missouri to Jerusalem right before she starts high school. Along with dealing with all the usual difficulties of teen years Liyana and her family must deal with the strain between Jews and Palestinians.

C. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Naomi Shihab Nye tells Liyana’s story with a backdrop of the unrest in Palestine. Liyana and her father, Poppy are the main characters. Her mother and brother Rafik provide different view points occasionally but are not strong characters. Liyana’s story is one of growth, acceptance, and hope. Through Liyana’s acceptance and gradual embrace of this move to Poppy’s home, her strength, intelligence, and determination become apparent. Liyana thinks and acts. She actively works for a better life.

Although the book has a meandering pace, constant potential for violence provides tension. Another tension Nye provides in this story is Poppy’s actions. He wanted to move home but has trouble with how Liyana should act. He wants her to act “appropriate”. What is appropriate in St. Louis is not always appropriate in Jerusalem. He doesn’t want her to wear short shorts but gets angry when he is asked for her hand in marriage. Short chapters are used to highlight daily life for Liyana, both the differences and similarities to her old life.

Cultural markers abound in this book. Language, culture identification, character names, foods, celebrations, religious practices, and clothing are all used to show life in Jerusalem. Liyana is learning Arabic, but that is not the only language she is exposed to on a daily basis. When Liyana meets Sitti, her grandmother, Sitti trills. Poppy explains it is her traditional cry. Poppy’s family is large and they get together often. Liyana and her brother are Arab American, her father and his family are Arab, and Omer is Jewish. The women wear long dresses in bold colors and stitched with fancy embroidery. They all wear gold bangle bracelets. The older women cover their heads with a long white scarf and they wear plastic shoes. Some of the foods mentioned in the book are olives, grape leaves, rice, grilled onions, hummus, flat breads, lebne, and baba ghanouj. Food is present at all the family gatherings. Another cultural marker in this story is the hope that they all have for peace.

D. REVIEW EXCERPTS
Kirkus Reviews, 09/15/1997
Liyana Abboud, 14, and her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis. All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on television. In Jerusalem, she is the only ""outsider"" at an Armenian school; her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against his own common sense--of rules for ""appropriate"" behavior; and snug shops replace supermarket shopping--the malls of her upbringing are unheard of. Worst of all, Poppy is jailed for getting in the middle of a dispute between Israeli soldiers and a teenage refugee. In her first novel, Nye (with Paul Janeczko, I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, 1996, etc.) shows all of the charms and flaws of the old city through unique, short-story-like chapters and poetic language. The sights, sounds, and smells of Jerusalem drift through the pages and readers glean a sense of current Palestinian-Israeli relations and the region's troubled history. In the process, some of the passages become quite ponderous while the human story--Liyana's emotional adjustments in the later chapters and her American mother's reactions overall--fall away from the plot. However, Liyana's romance with an Israeli boy develops warmly, and readers are left with hope for change and peace as Liyana makes the city her very own. Copyright 2003, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Publishers Weekly, 09/08/1997
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. Believing the unstable situation in that conflict-ridden city has improved, 14-year-old Liyana's family moves from St. Louis, Mo., to her father's homeland. However, from the moment the Abbouds are stopped by Jewish customs agents at the airport, they face racial prejudice and discord. Initially, Nye (Never in a Hurry) focuses on the Abbouds' handling of conflicting cultural norms between American and Arab values as they settle into their new home (e.g., Liyana's father, Poppy, while forbidding her to wear "short" shorts, reacts in anger toward a relative who asks for Liyana's hand in marriage). Then Liyana tests her family's alleged unprejudiced beliefs when she befriends Omer, a Jewish boy. She wants to introduce him to her father (who taught her, "Does it make sense that any God would choose some people and leave the others out?... God's bigger than that!"), but finds she must first remind him of his own words. Nye expertly combines the Abbouds' gradual acceptance of Omer with a number of heart-wrenching episodes of persecution (by the different warring factions) against her friends and family to convey the extent to which the Arab-Israeli conflict infiltrates every aspect of their lives. 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. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)
School Library Journal, 09/01/1997
Gr 5-9?An important first novel from a distinguished anthologist and poet. When Liyana's doctor father, a native Palestinian, decides to move his contemporary Arab-American family back to Jerusalem from St. Louis, 14-year-old Liyana is unenthusiastic. Arriving in Jerusalem, the girl and her family are gathered in by their colorful, warmhearted Palestinian relatives and immersed in a culture where only tourists wear shorts and there is a prohibition against boy/girl relationships. When Liyana falls in love with Omer, a Jewish boy, she challenges family, culture, and tradition, but her homesickness fades. Constantly lurking in the background of the novel is violence between Palestinian and Jew. It builds from minor bureaucratic annoyances and humiliations, to the surprisingly shocking destruction of grandmother's bathroom by Israeli soldiers, to a bomb set off in a Jewish marketplace by Palestinians. It exacts a reprisal in which Liyana's friend is shot and her father jailed. Nye introduces readers to unforgettable characters. The setting is both sensory and tangible: from the grandmother's village to a Bedouin camp. Above all, there is Jerusalem itself, where ancient tensions seep out of cracks and Liyana explores the streets practicing her Arabic vocabulary. 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."?Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CT

E. CONNECTIONS
Students should randomly draw countries from a selection and have to write about moving to a that country. What difficulties could occur? Would they think it an adventure and embrace it or be frightened?

Other books by Naomi Shihab Nye:
COME WITH ME: POEMS FOR A JOURNEY. ISBN 068815946X
19 VARIETIES OF GAZELLE: POEMS OF THE MIDDLE EAST. ISBN 0060097655
SITTI’S SECRETS. ISBN 0689817061
THE FLAG OF CHILDHOOD: POEMS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST. ISBN 0689851723