This Memorial Day — a patriotic holiday that my partner and I do not celebrate — as I sit in the sadness that is America, I thought it fitting to post a reminder from Joy Harjo about the origins of this country. I had good fortune to see Joy at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the first video is a clip of Joy playing sacred music on the flute. Under that is the YouTube video of a review that I did of her memoir, Poet Warrior. Peace.
I’ve long followed the work of Joy Harjo—far before she was Poet Laureate of the United States.
When I discovered that she had a recent memoir called Poet Warrior (2021; W.W. Norton & Company), I couldn’t wait to read it. It is a powerful book that reaches far into the past and leaps into the future. It is a memoir of healing the past—of wondering what life would be like if what Joy describes as “the rituals of becoming,” were available to her ancestors, in particular to her mother. It is a book that gives us the cold hard truth and at the same time it is a book that talks about the importance of forgiveness.
When I heard Joy say that before the end of her life, she wanted to prove that Indigenous Americans are people, I felt glad for her. She did achieve her goal, especially by becoming U.S. Poet Laureate. But I also felt sad. Of course, Indigenous Americans are people. In Joy’s words, “some of us are poets.” That cannot be denied. This powerful memoir is told in poetry and prose. Even though it is about a life built from language, in many ways it cannot be contained in language.
It is also a memoir about the truth of the United States being built on racism and lies.
As Joy writes, bringing together the personal and the political:
“….. Dona Jo passed in the hospital as everyone in the country celebrated a false story of settlers and Natives having dinner together, when in reality Native heads were on spikes surrounding the settler community who were feasting on what they had been taught to plant by the Native people. Though at that moment I was far away in New Mexico, I felt my cousin’s soul lift from her body as she was taken home.”
To say that the book is eye opening is an understatement. Poet Warrior is a book that demands attention. I found that I could not put it down.
It is about the act of becoming—specifically about becoming a poet, a musician and artist. Joy is someone who found herself with words and she tells us how listening to her inner voice made her a poet. She also writes about art as survival.
She tells us that when she first began writing poetry, “Some of my closest friends were Navajo drag queens who taught me to accept the contradictions within myself and laugh hard about them and with them, as they bravely were themselves.”
Joy reminds us that “Everyone is a teacher.” And she tells us that “Poetry is a tool for navigating transformation.”
I found Poet Warrior A Memoir by Joy Harjo, published by W.W. Norton & Company, to be both a fascinating and necessary read. It is a memoir of courage and vulnerability and a memoir that puts the reader in touch with the mystery. I cannot recommend it enough.
This is Janet Mason writing for Book Tube.
To learn more about my latest published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
The Unicorn, The Mystery now available from Adelaide Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT
Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Janet Mason, author 