Arabic Coffee

After I read the poem Arabic Coffee, by Naomi Shihab Nye I was compelled to Google the phrase how to prepare Arabic coffee, and I was directed to a page that described in elaborate detail what the process is to make Arabic coffee, as Nye did in her poem from the beginning of the second stanza until the conclusion of the poem.I believe that Nye used her poem Arabic coffee so show that there is a commonality between the American and the Arabic Cultures, although after 9/11 some Americans adopted an ethnocentric attitude towards the Arabians; believing that the American culture is better than the Arabian culture.

The poem is clandestinely using the preparation and serving of Arabic coffee as a way to rhetorically juxtapose that idea that spending time with family is known universally to man. This is a reoccurring theme in, Father and The Figtree, The Words under the Words, My Grandmother in the Stars.

In the first stanza she is dictating to her father how to make the coffee so that the audience is aware of the process as well. She is also demanding that he tells her more family stories as he has done so throughout the years. The family must gather together and drink coffee to talk about things. Ending that stanza stating, how luck lives in a spot of grounds, Arabic coffee must be one thing that completes her being.
In the second stanza there was a line that captured my attention it says, No sugar in his pot. I believe that sentence has a deeper meaning. I believe that she is capturing her father as a strong man, stating that he is not sweet.

Her poem signifies not only the glorification of a strong familial bond, she also is stressing that Americans should throw their ethnocentric ideas out the door.