Making a Fist

A contemporary Palestinian-American writer in 2021, Naomi Shihab Nye serves as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate for the 2019-21 term. Nye, a world traveler and self-proclaimed “wandering poet,” receives inspiration for her work from ordinary life and people. She writes poetry for adults and children, essays, children’s novels, and edits anthologies. Nye works to create poetry that cross-culturally connects, bridging together her readers. Her poem “Making a Fist” (1988) was published in Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry—an anthology which seeks to bring Arab-American poetry into mainstream literature. “Making a Fist” has themes of growing up, the borders people cross in life, and life’s unanswerable woes. Nye writes from the perspective of her childhood and adult selves, connecting young and old through metaphor. “Making a Fist” also bridges generations through individual experience. The poem’s imagery, consonance, and dialogue are immersive and reflective, with an epigraph by Jorge Luis Borges to set the tone of the poem.

Poet Biography

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer born in St.