As a mother, teacher, and writer, I have struggled to find the words to explain to my children what it means to live with the contradictions of being Arab American. How do I begin to make sense of the fact that taxes we pay as citizens of the United States have been used by our government to drop bombs, destroy cities, and devastate families in Iraq and Lebanon, the very places that our ancestors called home? How can I explain this to my children, when, even as an adult, I cannot come to terms with the cruelty and absurdity of this status quo? Understandably, as caregivers and educators, it is easy to get stuck in this line of thinking and justify why we might avoid hard conversations with our kids about the contradictions and challenges of existing between two or more homes/homelands.

I became unstuck only when I let go of the idea that my job is to “explain” the injustices of the world to my kids. Writing poetry has given me access to a new approach, offering up images and open-ended questions instead of tidy explanations. I wrote I Want You to Know, first, as a poem to my daughters on the twenty-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. My intention was to begin a conversation about the beautiful homeland where generations of our ancestors lived, what it was like for them to leave, and what makes returning difficult and complicated for us. The words “I want you to know” are repeated throughout the poem, as a refrain invoking the desire/duty that parents and elders carry in their hearts: to impart our histories (the stories that shape us) to our children and future generations. Linked across the poem through repetition, the refrain conjures images and ideas that are likely to raise more questions than supply answers. Some examples are excerpted below.

“I want you to know that you come from a place and a people that are beautiful.”

On one hand this is an uncomplicated and sentimental image. Yet imbedded within it is the implication that the child comes from a place they have not been able to see and experience with their own eyes as beautiful.

…

“And I want you to know that what made this place unsafe was greed. The greed of people from another place who already have more than then need. Those people who have so much, and still want more, they made war. They made horrible, ugly, impossible war.”

Inevitably, this raises questions that defy satisfactory answers: Why do some people want more than they need? Why do they make war? In this case, the emergence of such questions is exactly the point.

…

“And the thing about war is that that it does not end when the generals say so. War keeps burning.”

There is so much we must unlearn about war. Children are constantly engaging in make-believe wars, in playground games and screen-based media. War is marketed as entertainment, as parable about good triumphing over evil. War is imagined existing safely at a distance, contained to the realm of well-trained soldiers in far-away battlefields. Yet, when we are asked to imagine a war through the eyes of a family whose home has become the battlefield, it them becomes possible to recognize the long-lasting effects of war that can carry over from one generation to the next.

…

“I want you to know you do not carry it alone. And from this fire, something beautiful can grow.”

What comes next? This image comes at the closing of the poem to point toward the possibility of a different outcome, a return to a beautiful way in the world, free of wars. How do we get there? Again, raising such questions are precisely the point.

Through my collaboration with the illustrator Ishtar Backlünd Dakhil, the poem evolved into a picture book, inspired and shaped by our common heritage in Iraq. Together, we developed a visual story in parallel with the poem, one rooted in the intimacies of family life and specificities of Baghdad’s landscapes. Ishtar’s illustrations also deliberately structure the reader’s interaction with the text, embedding wordless pages that accommodate longer pauses in which readers’ questions might bubble up.

Without access to multiple perspectives that illuminate conditions under which human beings are forced to uproot their lives and migrate, well-meaning refrains like “Immigrants Welcome” and “We <3 Diversity” are unlikely to carry weight for children. Picture books give us access to the possibility of imagining life through the eyes of someone born of different circumstances. Human centered perspectives of war and displacement, written by diasporic authors with immediate or generational ties to family narratives of those experiences, can help young readers recognize how ordinary people survive and endure the indignities and cruelties inherent to war. Books offer children (and adults who read with them) invaluable tools to initiate conversations about what it means to create a new home in an unfamiliar place and how families might navigate the challenges of remaining connected to the home they had to leave. Conversations like these have the power to cultivate empathy, solidarity, and a valuing of diversity that is deep and lasting.