reviews_and_ramblings | Joy Harjo (born May 9, 1951)

Joy Harjo (born Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 9, 1951) is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is of Cherokee descent. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

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

Crazy Brave is a spiritual coming-of-age memoir; Joy Harjo was praised for her "breathtaking complex witness and world-remaking language" (Adrienne Rich). In Crazy Brave, a transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo’s tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary.

Author of: How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975 - 2001 (2002), A Map to the Next World (2000), The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994) received the Oklahoma Book Award, Fishing (1992), In Mad Love and War (1990) received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window (1983), New Orleans (1983), She Had Some Horses (1983), What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979), The Last Song (1975), Remember.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Harjo

Joy Harjo, 1990, by Robert Giard (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1123953)

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (July 29, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393345432
ISBN-13: 978-0393345438
Amazon: Crazy Brave: A Memoir
Amazon Kindle: Crazy Brave: A Memoir

“Compressed . . . lyrical . . . unflinching . . . raw. . . . Harjo is a magician and a master of the English language.”—Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle
In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo’s tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary. 12 photographs

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices