Why No Goodbye? by Pamela Laskin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Why No Goodbye? by Pamela Laskin Laurel Kallen (bio) why no goodbye? Pamela Laskin Leapfrog Press https://bookshop.org/books/why-no-goodbye/9781948585064 180 Pages; Print, $13.00 Why No Goodbye?, Pamela Laskin's delicately crafted young adult novel in verse, is the story of a Rohingya boy's journey through a painful and protracted separation from his family. His struggle, eased in part when he falls in love with a vulnerable young girl, reminds us that love will sprout in the direst of circumstances and, in so doing, lend hope and strength to those who must navigate those circumstances. This theme is one that Laskin has deftly handled before—in Ronit & Jamil (2017), the tale of an Israeli girl and a Palestinian boy who fall in love despite the enormous barriers that divide their respective communities. In Why No Goodbye? Jubair's story unfolds in 180 pages of free-verse poems. Part 1, "Letters to May-may," details the boy's sorrow at being left behind and his resultant anger toward his mother. In "The Girl in the Woods" (part 2), Jubair falls in love with Zahura, a girl his age who has been hiding in the woods. Finally, in "The Great Escape," (part 3), Jubair comes to a decision that is as heart-wrenching as the one his mother made when she left him behind. In "Letters to May-may," the boy's abandonment is front and center. His first letter to his mother poses the wrenching question, "Why did you leave, May-may?" Short, halting lines in the poems capture Jubair's anger at his mother, as when he cries out "Yaq! / Your letters should stop!" In a later poem, he confronts the fact that his abandonment has transformed him into a "street kid." "I never cursed you before. …/I would never do this to your face/like street kids do,/but now I am one of them./Gway Htoot / to you." [End Page 140] The curses then morph into a fantasy of hissed violence, characterized by a profusion of /s/ consonance: "I want to stamp you/in the soil/and stamp my feet/till you are crushed like the snake/I step on." Ha Jia, an older neighbor (and now de facto guardian), helps Jubair express his ambivalence. Ha Jia is teaching me. He wants me to read your letters.You can keep your letterssame way you keep my two brothers and sister with you.Why didn't you say bhine? Bhine is the Burmese word for "goodbye," whence Laskin's title Why No Goodbye? a question that recurs for Jubair not only in relation to his mother but later when he, too, must take leave of someone he loves without saying goodbye. Two alternating motifs in the poems, "This is what I think" and "This is what I know" highlight Jubair's struggle to understand and to accept his plight. This is what I thinkone day I had a fatherhe farmed, he made some moneysometimes we ate laphetsometimes we could not,but we were a family. This is what I knowThat is some cruel jokeSince you are gone, too. On every level, Jubair grapples with his identity. Questions are often the vehicle for this examination: Why do other Muslimshate us so?We are Rohingyas. Jubair wonders why he is despised merely as a result of his ethnicity. His [End Page 141] struggle with his identity also finds expression in discomfort with his name. In one of his letters to his mother, he asks: Why did you name me Jubair?It is an odd namean uncomfortable name,no one else has it. It is no accident on Laskin's part that the name Jubair means "brings together," which is the essence of Jubair's struggle throughout the book, a struggle for love and connection—both to the family that has left him behind and to "the girl in the woods," whom he comes to love. It takes a long time for Jubair to reopen his heart to his mother, to be willing to read one of her letters. But, eventually, he crosses that bridge...