Potluck suppers with could-be relatives, junkets to exotic locales, and the importance of strangers in our lives In Never in a Hurry the poet Naomi Shihab Nye resist the American inclination to "leave toward places when we barely had time enough to get there." Instead she travels the world at an observant pace, talking to strangers and introducing readers to an endearing assemblage of eccentric neighbors, Filipina faith healers, dry-cleaning proprietors, and other quirky characters. A Palestinian-American who lives in a Mexican-American neighborhood, Nye speaks for the mix of people and places that can be called the "American Experience." From St. Louis, the symbolic "Gateway to the West," she embarks on a westward migration to examine America, past and present, and to glimpse into the lives of its latest outsiders―illegal immigrants from Mexico and troubled inner-city children. In other essays Nye ventures beyond North America's bounds, telling of a year in her childhood spent in Palestine and of an adulthood filled with cross-cultural quests. Whether recounting the purchase of a car on the island of Oahu or a camel-back ride through India's Thar Desert, Nye writes in wry, refreshing tones about themes that transcend borders and about the journey that remains the greatest of all―the journey from outside to in as the world enters each one of us, as we learn to see. YA-This collection of essays is an excellent addition to any library. Nye is a Palestinian American, married to a Swedish American, and has lived much of her life in San Antonio, TX. The essays are autobiographical reflections of people and places she has encountered throughout her life. She and her parents lived in Jerusalem for a year until the Six-Day War caused them to flee back to the United States; Nye and her husband have returned to her ancestral country on several occasions. The essays are short, quiet reflections on a variety of subjects. The author has the ability to perceive and describe her surroundings so skillfully that readers are drawn into these experiences and are enriched in the process. Such essays as "Favorite Cleaners, San Antonio" help readers step back, slow down, and contemplate the everyday role of the all too familiar in one's life. This collection is guaranteed to make YAs laugh, cry, reflect, or think about life from another point of view. Literature by and about the Arab experience in America is rare; to discover a well-written collection suitable for young adults is a joy. Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Nye is a Palestinian American poet whose world anthologies, such as This Same Sky (1992), have brought a host of new voices to American readers. Her picture book Sitti's Secrets (1994), about an American child's visit to her grandmother on the West Bank, is clearly autobiographical, and several of the lyrical essays and memoirs in this stirring collection draw on her experience across borders. The power of her writing is in the personal particulars, loving and rueful, whether she's talking about cleaning house in San Antonio, where she lives with her husband and son, or about the fun of gossip, or about the anguish in her six long years of infertility. It's the absence of rhetoric that makes unforgettable the scene where she returns with her father (the refugee) to his childhood home in Jerusalem and finds a friendly, innocent New Yorker (the settler) moving in. They like each other. Hazel Rochman Naomi Shihab Nye was born in 1952 and lives in San Antonio, Texas. Her poetry volumes include Red Suitcase and Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Editor of This Same Sky, and award-winning anthology of international poetry, Nye is featured on two PBS poetry specials, "The Language of Life with Bill Moyers" and "The United States of Poetry."