You’re Not a Girl in a Movie by Hala Alyan
Riveting.
I downloaded Alyan’s book a few weeks before the 2023 Hamas-Israeli war exploded.
Even without the emotionally charged atmosphere of daily reports from Gaza and Israel, You’re Not a Girl in a Movie will catch your breath and keep you holding it nearly until the Audible message of “We hope you have enjoyed this program” message plays.
I usually like to see words on a page when I am enjoying poetry. I respect spoken word immensely, but I like to linger and digest the phrases. Although, Hala’s reading seemed to pause or repeat a phrase each time I needed to absorb the haunting words in the poem. The pacing allows you to take in the powerful staccato beat of her gut-wrenching truths. Truths about worth, identity, losing her homeland, losing love and loved ones in Beirut, Brooklyn, and the American West. Artfully crafted truths to be unpacked more and more with each listen.
One poem, “In an Argument, My Love Calls Me Fragile,” cracks open her vulnerable inner world for the reader to see. Many of us may relate who have mothers with valid reasons to be overprotective.
“I don’t apologize for fragile / Some of us fragile had no summer houses or no motherlands or mothers who trusted the world enough, fragile, to let us be in it / I didn’t ask for a nervous system lit like Christmas, fragile . . .”
She is showing that fragile side in this short but on-point collection of poems. A glimpse at a side not to be overlooked but taken in through Alyan’s raw, rhythmical narrative.
