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An American Sunrise

Poems

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About this listen

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and “one of our finest - and most complicated - poets” (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

©2019 Joy Harjo (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing Poetry United States World Literature Native American
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Her work really cements the link between the higher and lower worlds. Each poem has a consciousness and each consciousness is a song.

Everything Harjo touches with is pure gold

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My first foray into Native American poetry and it was a beautiful experience. Slow down, repeat, digest the beautiful words and songs of Harjo.

The beautiful audio experience

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I love the feeling in this book. And I am so glad to hear the author read it.

Beautiful

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