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A review by nattyyllie
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
4.0
(4.5 star)
Beautiful piece. The work did not focus on underlying hatred and grudge and rather took on a tone of quiet dignity and persevering strength. It is startling how humbly Harjo depicts the strength of the Indian/Native American people of Mvskoke and the cruelty they endured.
Poems/quotes:
Break My Heart
“Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you live.”
Exile of Memory
“If we pay enough, maybe we can buy ourselves back.”
Granddaughters
“I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling”
Directions to You
“Even in darkness you can be found”
Mama and Papa Have the Going Home Shiprock Blues: Song 6
“What we speak always returns / With a spike of barbs / Or the sweet taste of berries in summer.”
First Morning
“We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.”
For Earth’s Grandsons
Running
“I was afraid of the dark because then I could see / Everything. The truth with its eyes staring / Back at me. The mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth, / No words, just a hiss and a snap. // I could hear my heart hurting With my in-the-dark ears.”
“I thought I could take being a girl with her heart in her / Arms. I carried it for justice. For the rights of all Indians.”
Road
My Man’s Feet
Becoming Seventy
“at the door between worlds. I was happier than ever before to welcome her, happiness was the path she chose to enter, and I couldn’t push yet, not yet, and then there appeared a pool of the bluest water. We waited there for a breath: one, two, three, four // to catch up, and then it did, and she took it that girl who was beautiful beyond dolphin dreaming, and we made it, we did, to the other side of suffering. This is the story our mothers tell but we couldn’t hear it in our ears stuffed with junk advertising,”
Bless This Land
“Bless us, these lands, said the rememberer. These lands aren’t our lands. These lands aren’t your lands. We are this land. // And the blessing began a graceful moving through the grasses of time, from the beginning, to the circling around place of time, always moving, always”
Beautiful piece. The work did not focus on underlying hatred and grudge and rather took on a tone of quiet dignity and persevering strength. It is startling how humbly Harjo depicts the strength of the Indian/Native American people of Mvskoke and the cruelty they endured.
Poems/quotes:
Break My Heart
“Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you live.”
Exile of Memory
“If we pay enough, maybe we can buy ourselves back.”
Granddaughters
“I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling”
Directions to You
“Even in darkness you can be found”
Mama and Papa Have the Going Home Shiprock Blues: Song 6
“What we speak always returns / With a spike of barbs / Or the sweet taste of berries in summer.”
First Morning
“We will carry your memory here, until we join you In just a little while, in one blink of star time.”
For Earth’s Grandsons
Running
“I was afraid of the dark because then I could see / Everything. The truth with its eyes staring / Back at me. The mouth of the dark with its shiny moon teeth, / No words, just a hiss and a snap. // I could hear my heart hurting With my in-the-dark ears.”
“I thought I could take being a girl with her heart in her / Arms. I carried it for justice. For the rights of all Indians.”
Road
My Man’s Feet
Becoming Seventy
“at the door between worlds. I was happier than ever before to welcome her, happiness was the path she chose to enter, and I couldn’t push yet, not yet, and then there appeared a pool of the bluest water. We waited there for a breath: one, two, three, four // to catch up, and then it did, and she took it that girl who was beautiful beyond dolphin dreaming, and we made it, we did, to the other side of suffering. This is the story our mothers tell but we couldn’t hear it in our ears stuffed with junk advertising,”
Bless This Land
“Bless us, these lands, said the rememberer. These lands aren’t our lands. These lands aren’t your lands. We are this land. // And the blessing began a graceful moving through the grasses of time, from the beginning, to the circling around place of time, always moving, always”