PositivePloughsharesIn a world that has been rocked in 2020 alone by a pandemic and racial violence, Gabbert’s essays feel incredibly relevant, dipping into epidemiology, othering, and compassion fatigue ... Gabbert interlaces the voices of scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and other thinkers to help explore disaster in greater relief. The myriad voices lend Gabbert a variety of entryways for exploring the problems of our world and make the book less a collection of worries than a highly-informed conversation that invites readers to consider our role in the world’s eventual end ... Gabbert skillfully explores this desire for spectacle, speaking the unspeakable, and why on a cultural level we might crave it ... Gabbert approaches the reader with vulnerability, sharing her own compassion fatigue which, at times, borders on apathy ... both an examination of conscience and a cataloging of modern American anxiety. Many times while reading, this book made me feel both less and more alone. Like a diary one revisits too soon after writing, there are parts of this book that are meant to discomfort ... Our own complicity in the problems facing our modern world is a theme Gabbert returns to again and again. What she does not prescribe are the ways in which we’re called to take action against the forces that threaten our—perhaps gradual—demise ... Gabbert brings the problems to our attention, acknowledges she’s in the same boat with us, and quietly challenges us to respond.
Naomi Shihab Nye
RavePloughsharesUsing both her own connection to the country—her heritage and her Palestinian father’s journalism career as a BBC reporter—and the youthful voice of Janna Jihad Ayyad, \'the tiny journalist\'...for whom the collection is named and who represents the future of Palestine, Nye makes the reader intimately aware of the suffering of Palestinians ... The poignancy of The Tiny Journalist comes from this exploration of voice—of those who have been fighting for a long time who fear things will never get better, and those who have just entered into consciousness of the conflict and are determined that they will. Nye’s melding of voices in The Tiny Journalist is an activism of its own. Not only does this decision create a space for Palestinian mourning, it also actively works to shatter an us versus them mentality with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict ... This collection encourages readers to hear, see, and feel the long-suffering of a people Nye intimately knows. The question left to readers is how will we respond.
