Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (born May 9, 1951) is a Mvskoke poet, musician, and author. She is often cited as playing a formidable role in the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln termed the Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She is the author of such books as Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), Crazy Brave (2012), and How We Became Humans: New and Selected Poems 1975 - 2002 (2004).

Life

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 9th, 1951, as Joy Foster. Her father, Allen W. Foster was from a Creek Tribe family, and her mother, Wynema Baker Foster, has a Cherokee, French, and Irish background. Harjo was the oldest of four children.^[1]

She fully registered herself as a member of the Creek Tribe’s Mvskoke Branch and took on her grandmother’s last name “Harjo”(very common name within the Creek Tribe) when she was nineteen years old.^[2]

Her parents divorced after their marriage failed due to her father’s drinking and harsh behavior. He was an abusive drunk, both emotionally and physically. Harjo’s mother married a man who despised Indians and was also very abusive. Both traumatic childhood experiences took a negative toll on Joy Harjo. At one point she became afraid to speak which caused her to troubling moments with teachers at school.^[3]

Joy loved painting and found that it gave her the ability to express herself. At the age of sixteen she was kicked out of her house by her stepfather and she became a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.^[4]

Harjo married Phil Wilmon, another student, and had a son and they named him Phil Dayn. Harjo and Wilmon divorced later on.^[5]

She enrolled at the University of New Mexico, beginning as a PreMed student, and later changed to an Art Major. During her time there, she became a creative writing major and was inspired by different Native American writers.^[6]

After poetry readings with Simon Ortiz, he became a mentor for Harjo, and later they had a daughter Rainy Dawn.^[7]

She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and received her graduate degree from the University of Iowa after being accepted into the M.F.A Creative Writing Program.^[8]

Harjo has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1978-1979 and 1983-1984, Arizona State University from 1980-1981, the University of Colorado from 1985-1988, the University of Arizona from 1988-1990, and the University of New Mexico from 1991-1995.^[9]

She also went to the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to take classes on filmmaking.^[10]

Known primarily as a poet and musician, Harjo has played alto saxophone with the band Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays.

In 1995, Harjo received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.^[11]

In 2002, Harjo received the PEN Open Book Award, formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award for A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales. In 2008, she served as a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation,^[12] for which she currently serves as a member of its National Advisory Council.^[13]

Harjo joined the faculty of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 2013.^[14]

In 2016 Harjo was appointed to the Chair of Excellence in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Literature and Performance

Harjo is a highly praised writer and has written several works within the genres of poetry, books, and plays. Harjo's works often include themes such as defining self, the arts, justice, and several others.^{[Literature Resource Center 1]} Harjo uses the oral tradition as a mechanism for portraying these issues, and believes that "written text is, for [her], fixed orality".^{[Literature Resource Center 2]} Her use of the oral tradition is prevalent through various literature readings and musical performances conducted by Harjo. Her methods of oral tradition include story-telling, singing, and voice inflection in order to captivate the attention of her audiences. While reading poetry she claims that "[she] starts not even with an image but a sound," which is indicative of her oral traditions presenting themselves through performance.^{[Literature Resource Center 3]}

The first volume of Harjo’s, published in 1975, titled “The Last Song” consisted of nine of her poems.^[15] Harjo, through many readings and performances, shows great passion and emotion for the subjects she writes about. She often mixes both reading and singing her poems during performances. Displaying the two sides of her many works.

Music

As well as being an acclaimed author and poet, Harjo is also a musician. She has produced five CD’s. all of which won awards, of original music and has music featured on CD’s with other Native American Artists.^[16] Harjo's mother was a singer, which influenced her to play the alto saxophone and the flute.^[17] She also sings and acts, frequently traveling with her group known as the Arrow Dynamics.^[17] She won the Native American Music Award in 2009 for best female artist and has received several other awards for her published CDs.^[17]

Activism

Harjo is currently an active follower of political and Native American affairs within the United States. Her website contains several blogs consisting of her stance on current political issues and her strong support for women's rights and equality.^[17] She is also an active member of the Muscogee Tribe and uses her poetry as "a voice of the indigenous people".^[18]

Awards

1970s

• 1st and 2nd Place Awards in Drawing, University of New Mexico Kiva Club Nizhoni Days Art Show (1976)
• Writers Forum at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado (1977)
• Outstanding Young Women of America (1978)
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1978)

1980s

• 1st Place in Poetry in the Santa Fe Festival of the Arts (1980)
• Outstanding Young Women of America (1984)
• New Mexico Music Awards (1987)
• NEH Summer Stipend in American Indian Literature and Verbal Arts, University of Arizona (1987)
• Arizona Commission on the Arts Poetry Fellowship (1989)

1990s

• The American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award (1990)
• Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University: In Mad Love and War (1991)
• Oakland PEN, Josephine Miles Poetry Award (1991)
• William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America (1991)
• American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation: In Mad Love and War (1991)
• Honorary Doctorate from Benedictine College (1992)
• Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont (1993)
• Witter Bynner Poetry Fellowship (1994)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of The Americas (1995)^[11]
• Oklahoma Book Award: The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1995)
• Bravo Award from the Albuquerque Arts Alliance (1996)
• Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Musical Artist of the Year: Poetic Justice (1997)
• New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1997)
• Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award for work with nonprofit group Atlatl in bringing literary resources to Native American communities (1998)
• Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award: Reinventing the Enemy's Language (1998)
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1998)

2000s

• Writer of the Year/children's books by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for The Good Luck Cat (2001)
• Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2003)
• Arrell Gibson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Oklahoma Center How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2003)
• Storyteller of the Year Native Joy for Real by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. (2004)
• Writer of the Year - Poetry How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2004)
• Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers "Writer of the Year" for the script A Thousand Roads (2005)
• United States Artists Rasmuson Fellows Award (2008)
• Eagle Spirit Achievement Award (2009)
• Nammy Native American Music Award (2009)

2010s

• Mvskoke Women's Leadership Award (2011)
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2014)^[19]
• Wallace Stevens Award in Poetry by the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors^[20]

Others

• University of New Mexico Academy of American Poets Award.
• Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award
• Featured in Pushcart Prize Poetry Anthologies XV & XIII

Works

Bibliography

Poetry

• I Give You Back .
• When the World As We Knew It Ended .
• The Last Song, Puerto Del Sol, 1975 .
• What Moon Drove Me to This?, I. Reed Books, 1979, ISBN 978-0918408167 .
• Remember, Strawberry Press, 1981 .
• She Had Some Horses, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1983, ISBN 978-1560251194 ; W. W. Norton & Company, 2008, ISBN 978-0393334210.
• New Orleans, 1983 .
• The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, 1983 .
• Secrets from the Center of the World, University of Arizona Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0816511136 .
• In Mad Love and War, Wesleyan University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0819511829 .
• Fishing, Ox Head Press, 1992 .
• The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, ISBN 978-0393037159 .
• A Map to the Next World, W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 978-0393047905 .
• How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975 - 2001, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, ISBN 978-0-393-32534-8 .
• Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, ISBN 978-0-393-24850-0 . (shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize)

As editor

• Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America, W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, ISBN 978-0393318289 .

Non-fiction

• Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo, Wesleyan University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0819571519 .
• Crazy Brave: A Memoir, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, ISBN 978-0393073461 .

Children's literature

• The Good Luck Cat, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000, ISBN 978-0152321970 .
• For a Girl Becoming, University of Arizona Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0816527977 .

Discography

Joy Harjo

• Native Joy for Real (2004)
• She Had Some Horses (2006)
• Winding Through the Milky Way (2008)
• Red Dreams: A Trail Beyond Tears (2010)

"Crossing the Border"

Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice

• Letter From the End of the Twentieth Century (1997)

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Studies

Notes

References

• Bochynski, Pegge (2002). "She Had Some Horses". In Jason, Philip K. Masterplots II: Poetry (revised ed.). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 3369–3371. ISBN 978-1587650376. 
• Bochynski, Pegge (2003a). "Joy Harjo". In Parini, Jay. American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement XII. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 215–234. ISBN 978-0684197852. 
• Bochynski, Pegge (2003b). "Review of How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001 by Joy Harjo". In Wilson, John D.; Kellman, Steven G. Magill's Literary Annual 2003: Books of 2002. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 379–383. ISBN 978-1587651298. 
• Stone, Louise M.; Bochynski, Pegge (2006). "Joy Harjo". In Kellman, Steven G. Magill Survey of American Literature (revised ed.). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 980–988. ISBN 978-1587652851. 
• Azfar Hussain. "Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis: A 'Postcolonial' Political Economy of the Body, Land, Labor, and Language." wicazo sa review: A Journal of Native American Studies 15.2 (2000) 27-61 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/36264

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joy Harjo.

• Official website
• Works by or about Joy Harjo in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Joy Harjo, Author - Poet - Musician
• VG biography
• Write TV Public Television Interview with Joy Harjo
• Audio: Joy Harjo reads She Had Some Horses
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Harjo, Joy
• Joy Harjo at Library of Congress Authorities, with 21 catalog records
• Biography, poetry excerpts from Griffin Poetry Prize website
• "Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis": An Essay on Harjo by Azfar Hussain