|
Lise
Erdrich
|
Back to the
Honoring Authors main page
Joy Harjo
A registered member of the Muscogee Nation, Joy Harjo was born Joy
Foster in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her father was Muscogee, her mother
part French and part Cherokee. Her father’s ancestors were part of the
resistance to President Andrew Jackson’s removal of the Creeks from
Alabama to Oklahoma. Upon adulthood, she took her paternal
grandmother’s surname “Harjo,” which translates as “courage” in
English.
Harjo spent much of childhood drawing and studied painting and theatre
at the Institute of American Indian Arts, a boarding school in Santa
Fe, New Mexico. Harjo began writing poetry while at the University of
New Mexico and went on to study with Leslie Marmon Silko at the
University of Iowa.
Harjo’s first full-length book of poetry, What Moon Drove Me to This? (1990),
was published in 1980. It was made up of brief, autobiographical
passages and included the whole text of The Last Song, her 1975
chapbook. In contrast, the poems from her second volume, She Had Some
Horses (1985) are longer, more complicated and informed by feminist
theory. Her 1990 volume of poetry, In
Mad Love and War, which used prose poems to reflect a broader
sense of social justice, received considerable critical acclaim.
In 2000, she wrote her first children’s book, The Good Luck Cat. Her other
books include The Woman Who Fell
From the Sky (1994), A Map to
The Next World: Poems and Tales (2000), and How We Became Human (2002).
Harjo’s early work is populated by iconic figures such as Noni
Daylight, an amorphous and reoccurring character who stands in for all
women past and present. The themes of living landscape and history and
battling colonization and oppression underpin Harjo’s writing. In
addition to her poetry, Harjo has complementary careers as
screenwriter, narrator, and musician. She took a leave of absence from
academia to work with a musical ensemble, Poetic Justice, for whom she
provided both vocals and saxophone.
Sources
Bochynski, Pegge. American Writers, Supplement XII. Jay Parini, ed. New
York: Scribner's, 2003.
“Joy Harjo.” Contemporary
Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2004
“Joy Harjo.” Current Biography
Yearbook, 2001.
Related Links:
Joy Harjo – Poet, Writer, Musician
http://www.joyharjo.com/
The central portion of the site contains Harjo’s blog.
Gloria Floren’s Joy Harjo Site
http://www.miracosta.cc.ca.us/home/gfloren/harjo.htm
Joy Harjo: Internet Public Library Native American Author’s Project
http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A67
Books for Young Readers:
 The Good Luck Cat (2000)
A picture book about a girl’s relationship to her pet cat, Woogie.
Small details in the text suggest the girl’s Native American heritage.
top
Back to the Honoring Authors main page
|
