Morning Song
Written for Janna Jihad, the child who began documenting occupation with her mother's phone at age seven: the 'tiny journalist' sees everything — and 'she's bigger than you are.'
The tiny journalist will tell us what she sees. Document the moves, the dust, soldiers blocking the road. Yes, she knows how to take a picture
(excerpt)
About this poem
“Morning Song,” dedicated For Janna, comes from Naomi Shihab Nye’s 2019 collection The Tiny Journalist (BOA Editions). The book was inspired by Janna Jihad Ayyad of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, who at age seven began filming protests and soldiers with her mother’s smartphone and posting the videos online — becoming known as one of the youngest journalists in the world. Nye’s poem gives the girl her full size: “It is her job to say / what she sees, what is happening. / From her vantage point everything / is huge—but don’t look down on her. / She’s bigger than you are.”
In her author’s note to the collection, Nye writes that the poems are her own words, imagining Janna’s circumstances through her Facebook postings. The poem’s grief surfaces quietly — “Her cousin, her uncle. / There might have been a shirt . . .” — a reference to the family members Janna lost before she ever picked up the phone.
Sources
- Morning Song by Naomi Shihab Nye — Academy of American Poets (from The Tiny Journalist, BOA Editions, 2019)