Joy Harjo

Life

She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 9, 1951, as Joy Foster. Her father, Allen W. Foster, was Creek and her mother, Wynema Baker Foster, has mixed-race ancestry of Cherokee, French, and Irish. Harjo was the oldest of four children.

When Joy enrolled at age nineteen as a member of the Creek Tribe’s Mvskoke Branch, she took her paternal grandmother’s last name “Harjo” (it is a common name within the Creek Tribe).

Her parents divorced due to her father’s drinking and harsh behavior. He was both emotionally and physically abusive when drunk. Harjo’s mother second marriage was to a man who disliked Indians and was also very abusive. Both of these harsh childhood relationships took a negative toll on Joy Harjo. At one point she became afraid to speak, which caused her to have difficulties with teachers at school.

Joy loved painting and found that it gave her a way to express herself. At the age of sixteen, she was kicked out of her family house by her stepfather. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Harjo married Phil Wilmon, another student. They had a son whom they named Phil Dayn. Harjo and Wilmon later divorced.

She enrolled at the University of New Mexico, beginning as a premed student. Harjo later changed to an Art Major. She became a creative writing major and was inspired by different Native American writers.

After Harjo had poetry readings with Simon Ortiz, he became a mentor. They developed a close relationship and had a daughter together, Rainy Dawn.

She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1976. Harjo earned her graduate degree from the University of Iowa in the M.F.A Creative Writing Program.

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.

She also attended the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to take classes on filmmaking.

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.

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, for which she serves as a member of its National Advisory Council.

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

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 has written numerous works in the genres of poetry, books, and plays. Harjo's works often include themes such as defining self, the arts, and social justice.

Harjo uses the oral tradition as a mechanism for portraying these issues, and believes that "written text is, for [her], fixed orality". Her use of the oral tradition is prevalent through various literature readings and musical performances conducted by Harjo. Her methods of continuing 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 expressed in performance.

Harjo published her first volume in 1975, titled The Last Song, which consisted of nine of her poems. 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 two elements of her works.

Harjo uses symbolism throughout her poetry to express her beliefs and values. She draws from personal experiences to shape her writing. In her poem titled "She Had Some Horses", she uses many different forms of symbolism. As an important animal in Native American culture, the horse has been often used as a symbol. This poem has four sections; they are each arranged to complement one another. In this poem, Harjo uses sounds and rhythm to energize her poetry. Chris Rohit wrote on her Christoph Young blog, "The many symbols of each repetition of a horse represented the experiences of the Native American woman, by starting each line with "She had horses" helped strengthen the Native's identity." Harjo used this distinct repetition to show a woman as strong as the animals she most depended on in daily life. She also used this distinct imagery to tell a story of a Native woman who had been victimized but showed her survival through an animal. Harjo uses repetition to emphasize her ideas.

She leaves the overall meaning of the poem up to the reader to complete. "This poem is all about the people in Joy's life and she referred to them all as horses, with a specific trait or characteristic following that. They were all the same but at the same time, different." Harjo is using horses in her poem to compare herself to all of the people in her community. She is using horses in her poem to explain how she feels in her community with others around her.

Julia Morse wrote, "Harjo's poems ache with grit, grief and nature. Her lines are curt and heavy but they construct delicate stories." In this poem, Harjo explains her growing years by using an animal very important in Native American culture. Harjo uses symbolism to express her hardships and values.

Music

As a musician, Harjo has released five CDs, all of which won awards. These feature both her original music and that of other Native American artists. Harjo's mother was a singer. Harjo learned to play the alto saxophone and the flute later in life. She also sings and acts, frequently touring with her music group known as the Arrow Dynamics.

In 2009 Harjo won the Native American Music Award for best female artist. She has received several other awards (see below) for her CDs.

She began to play the saxophone at the age of 40. For her it fills the void she felt left by her singing voice. She had also learned that her paternal grandmother, whose surname she took when enrolling in the Creek nation, had loved the instrument from her years in Indian Territory before Oklahoma was admitted to the union in 1909. Harjo believes that when reading her poems, she can add music by playing the sax and reach the heart of the listener in a different way. When reading her poems, she speaks with a musical tone in her voice, creating a song in every poem.

Activism

In addition to her creative writing, Harjo has written and spoken about US political and Native American affairs. Her website contains several blogs expressing her views on current political issues and her strong support for women's rights and equality. She is also an active member of the Muscogee Nation and writes poetry as "a voice of the indigenous people".

Harjo's poetry explores imperialism and colonization, and their effects on violence against women. She sometimes places her poem in a common setting, such as drinking in a bar in "An American Sunrise", and connects it to deep issues within the indigenous culture. Scholar Mishuana Goeman writes, "The rich intertextuality of Harjo's poems and her intense connections with other and awareness of Native issues- such as sovereignty, racial formation, and social conditions- provide the foundation for unpacking and linking the function of settler colonial structures within newly arranged global spaces".

In her poems, Harjo often explores her Muskogee/Creek background and spirituality in opposition to popular mainstream culture. In the United States, residents are influenced by the proliferation of images from television, film, and other media. In a thesis at Iowa University, Eloisa Valenzuela-Mendoza writes about Harjo, "Native American continuation in the face of colonization is the undercurrent of Harjo’s poetics through poetry, music, and performance." Harjo's work touches upon land rights for Native Americans and the gravity of the disappearance of "her people", while rejecting former narratives that erased Native American histories.

While Harjo’s work is often set in the Southwest, she writes about individual struggle. She reflects Creek values, myths, and beliefs. Harjo reaches readers and audiences to bring realization of the wrongs of the past, not only for Native American communities but for oppressed communities in general. Her activism for Native American rights and feminism stem from her belief in unity and the lack of separation among human, animal, plant, sky, and earth. Harjo believes that we become most human when we understand the connection among all living things. She believes that colonialism led to Native American women being oppressed within their own communities, and she works to encourage more political equality between the sexes.

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Others

Poetry

As editor

Non-fiction

Children's literature

Joy Harjo

"Crossing the Border"

Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice