15 pages 30 minutes read

Naomi Shihab Nye

The Rider

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)

“Blood,” published in Nye’s collection Words Under the Words: Selected Poems is an important meditation on what it means to be Arab American during a time of war. In the poem, the speaker tries to reconcile their American upbringing with being half-Arab. It is very different in form and subject from “The Rider.”

The End of Exile” by Solmaz Sharif (2018)

Solmaz Sharif is an Iranian American contemporary poet. Like Nye, Sharif writes of a lost Middle Eastern homeland. “The End of Exile” speaks to what it feels like to leave behind a part of oneself (a city, a homeland) and try to continue living, despite this wound. As shown in “Blood,” Nye feels a similar wound living as a multiracial individual in America.

Bees Were Better” by Naomi Shihab Nye (2008)

In “Bees Were Better,” bees inspire the speaker in a way that the boy and his story did in “The Rider.”

Further Literary Resources

Naomi Shihab Nye” Dodge Poetry Festival Reading (2008)

In this short video, Naomi Shihab Nye reads four poems: “Please Describe How You Became a Writer,” “Fresh,” “During a War,” and “Truth Serum.

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