Ronit & Jamil by Pamela L. Laskin (review)

Ronit is an Israeli girl whose pharmacist father dispenses medicine where it’s needed, even to the Palestinians who continually threaten his home. Jamal is a Palestinian son of a doctor who travels between homes in Ramallah and East Jerusalem to tend the sick. When the teens join their fathers at work, they catch sight of each other and immediately fall in love. Like their counterparts Romeo and Juliet, they send each other private missives (via text) and brave danger to be together. Unlike the tragic lovers, however, they eventually arrange, through relatives, an escape that will force them to take on new names and identities but gives them hope for a better future. While this is a promising premise, the lack of clear context and similarity of voices in this verse novel make it hard to keep track of who is who; most of the poems focus more on sonically beautiful language describing interior longings than plot points. An author’s note at the beginning and the use of footnotes to explain some elements of setting and terminology is a necessary aid to comprehension. The strongest moments are when the fathers face off in unfinished crowns of sonnets that repeat many of the same lines from opposite sides of the conflict. This and other forms, including the ghazal, as well as quotations from Romeo and Juliet and other poets, make this a curricularly useful offering, but teachers will have to fill in a lot of context. Nonetheless, readers who enjoy getting lost in passionate love poetry may be willing to fill in or forgive their own gaps in understanding the full impact of this version of a perennially tragic love story.