An American sunrise : poems

Summary: "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 ... 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." --

Record details

ISBN: 9781324003861
ISBN: 1324003863
Physical Description: print
xiii, 116 pages : map ; 22 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]
Copyright: ©2019

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue -- Map of the Trail of Tears -- Break My Heart -- My grandfather Monahwee -- Exile of Memory -- Granddaughters -- The Fight -- Directions to You -- Seven Generations -- In 1990 a congress -- Weapons, -- The Story Wheel -- Once I looked at the moon -- Washing My Mother's Body -- There is a map -- Rising and Falling -- The Road to Disappearance -- Mama and Papa Have the Going Home Shiprock Blues -- My great-grandfather Monahwee -- How to Write a Poem in a Time of War -- Mvskoke Mourning Song -- First Morning -- Singing Everything -- Falling from the Night Sky -- Our knowledge is based -- For Earth's Grandsons -- Running -- A Refuge in the Smallest of Places -- I'm Nobody! Who Are You? -- Bourbon and Blues -- My Great-Aunt Ella Monahwee Jacobs's Testimony -- Road -- The Southeast was covered -- Desire's Dog -- Dawning -- Honoring -- My Man's Feet -- "I Wonder What You Are Thinking," -- For Those Who Would Govern -- Rabbit Invents the Saxophone -- When Adolfe Sax patented -- Let There Be No Regrets -- Advice for Countries, Advanced, Developing and Falling -- Tobacco Origin Story -- My aunt Lois Harjo told me -- Redbird Love -- We follow the DNA spiral of stories -- Becoming Seventy -- Beyond -- Ren-Toh-Pvrv -- Memory Sack -- Every night -- Cehotosakvtes -- One March -- By the Way -- When we made it down last year -- Welcoming Song -- An American Sunrise -- Bless This Land -- Acknowledgements.