Naomi Shihab Nye is a teacher, editor, essayist, and a prolific poet, having published dozens of poems for both children and adults. Her father was from Palestine, turned refugee after the creation of Israel in 1948. He came to America, where Naomi was born in Missouri in 1952. She spent a year as a teenager living in the West Bank, just before the Six-Day War occurred, before returning to the US, where she has since lived in Texas.
Nye calls herself a “wandering poet”, as her work is influenced by her past travels, and is rooted in the experience of different cultures. She’s won numerous awards, including being named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In this very short but powerful poem, a sampler of her work, she asks the reader to consider how the same event can be experienced very differently by people with different backgrounds.

What is something that other people consider “fun” that you don’t like? Why not?