The Nature of Exile in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Poems: Does She Remember the Land?

Naomi Shiheb Nye is an American Arab poetess, who lives within the Arab diaspora of Texas in harmony with other Diasporas. Her tie with Palestine is a tie of 14 years stay. Her sympathy with her father, Aziz, becomes the inciting element for her poetry. Besides, her mother, who is an exiled German, has a great effect on the visionary aspect of the nature of her exile. Nye’s reaction to what is happening in Palestine seems to be very paradoxical and challenging in explanation. Her “peaceful” revolt seems to be against Zionism and the ideology of racism, rather than the loss of Palestine. Though she is far from her father’s land, she does not consider herself as a stranger – an other in America, where her father and some other intellectuals installed after the Nekba (War of 1967). These exile writers found this new land tolerant and accepting the melting pot. Such friction between their own culture and the cultures of other diasporas make them reconstruct another identity, which seems to exclude them from both their home and the host country – America. This in-betweenness is a home within literature – a home conceived with art, and where the self-reveals its nature and philosophical outlook through language