17 pages • 34 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeBlood
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Childhood
The speaker’s childhood is contrasted with her adulthood, specifically relating to how she views her identity. She described her childhood as a happy time; she is safe and secure and learns about her biracial identity from her father. Her mother is not mentioned in the poem, possibly because her American upbringing is not as exciting or mysterious to her. She lives as an American every day, but her Arab identity is much less familiar.
The speaker demonstrates a child’s curiosity with her questions and precocious comments, which bring her close to her father. Her family name, translated as “shooting star” (Line 12) implies a bright and special destiny, although the word “shooting” also has ominous connotations in the context of the poem.
The second child mentioned in the poem, “[a] little Palestinian” (Line 17), does not have the luxury of innocence. Its destiny is blighted at the outset as it “dangles a truck on the front page” (Line 17). The child is newsworthy for being a victim, crushed by a system that has robbed them of their humanity; they are nameless, faceless, and ultimately one of thousands of children killed in the region over the years.
In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker retains a childlike quality as she cries and pleads for answers. As a child, she received all the answers she needed from her father, but her father cannot help her in adulthood as she faces painful realities about the world.
Biracial Identity
In “Blood”, the speaker identifies as both an American and a “true Arab”. As a young girl, she has no idea her identity is part-Arab until her father explains this to her. Her comments reinforce his beliefs: “Once I said, ‘When we die, we give it back?’ / He said that’s what a true Arab would say” (Lines 14-15).
Her de facto American identity is something she takes for granted until she learns she is not only tied to America. In fact, the poem indicates a blood tie is stronger than any loyalty to one’s country. The “flag” she chooses to wave is one of her own design, a “table mat stitched in blue” (Line 21), which suggests she has stitched a new identity together, so she is not torn between two countries.
The poem questions to what extent one can identify with country over “blood” and dramatizes how biracial identity is constructed.
War
Shihab Nye confronts the issue of war in many of her poems—sometimes directly, but often obliquely. In “Blood,” the title of the poem alludes to war, but it is only in the fourth stanza that the speaker’s comfortable life is disrupted by news from Palestine.
For the speaker, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is personal because of her father’s displacement. The war is ongoing and painful for those in diaspora. The speaker draws attention to the distant conflict so others—perhaps Americans in particular—can empathize with the victims, who are often dehumanized in news reports. They are not considered “civilized” (Line 27), which justifies continued aggression against them and leads the speaker to protest such language.
At no point does the speaker name or identify the aggressor in the poem, and violence is implied. This suggests she cannot face the painful reality head-on, much as her father cannot; in addition, she longs for peace. “Where can the crying heart graze?” (Line 28) indicates she has no need for vengeance—she simply wants hostilities to cease.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
