18 pages • 36 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeMy Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Rhetorical Context
In an interview on Idaho Public Television in 2012, Nye said of poetry: “I think it’s our job as human beings to keep extending our empathy” (“Naomi Shihab Nye: Sun Valley Writers' Conference.” IdahoPTV Video, 25 Oct. 2012, Accessed 29 Oct. 2021). This sentiment is key to her body of work, and often intertwines with political or cultural motivations. In “My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop,” Nye offers an empathetic portrait of a specific immigrant life, asking her readers to understand his humanity first, apart from any political opinions they might hold. By not naming the home country to which the uncle returns, Nye maintains focus on the man as an individual being and not the complicated and violent politics of the unnamed country. A reader might assume the country is Palestine, as Nye is the child of a Palestinian refugee, but the purpose of the poem is to humanize the uncle—not to make an argument about conflict in the Middle East. This doesn’t mean Nye ignores the political realities and complications of both America and the uncle’s home country. Throughout the poem, she alludes to conflict in both places: America has a “television full of lies” (Line 16), and the old country, the reader intuits, has been mired in violence. Nye uses this to emphasize the duality of the immigrant experience, the fact that complications exist everywhere, and the most important thing on which to focus is empathy.
Authorial Context
“My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop” exhibits many of the themes Nye identifies as important in her life and her work. Nye often writes about the Arab American experience and has spent decades working against racism and prejudice. Growing up the daughter of a Palestinian refugee strongly influenced her poetics. In an article for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Nye says:
When you grow up in a house with someone who lives with a very strong sense of exile, when they are disconnected from the place they love most, that casts a certain light on how you see everything - your sense of gravity, history and justice. (IMEU. “Naomi Shihab Nye: Poet and Author.” IMEU, 30 Jan. 2014)
This knowledge particularly influences “My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop,” as Nye examines an immigrant struggling to live in a new country while longing for the old. Nye’s firsthand, familial experience with Palestinian refugees (her grandmother also lived in the West Bank and Nye spent extended periods of time with her) allows her a particular poetic lens with which to tell their stories. Writing about Fuel, the collection in which “My Uncle’s Coffee Shop” appears, critic Victoria Clausi claims that Nye’s poetry confirms her “belief in the value of the overlooked, the half-forgotten” (Clausi, Victoria. “Rev. of Fuel by Naomi Shihab Nye.” Ploughshares). For Nye, the poet must work to humanize and share the stories of marginalized groups.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
