Media: Interviews, Reviews, Articles

Category: Reviews

August 13, 2019, Smithsonian
Joy Harjo’s New Poetry Collection Brings Native Issues to the Forefront

"In An American Sunrise, Harjo’s 16th book of poetry, released by Norton this week, she continues to bear witness to the violence encountered by Native Americans in the aftermath of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. Her words express that the...

August 13, 2019, The Washington Post
Joy Harjo’s stunning new collection

"If you read only one book of poems this summer, make it “An American Sunrise” (Norton) by Joy Harjo, the first Native American to be named U.S. poet laureate. In these stunning pages, Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Creek...

August 13, 2019, Vogue
In An American Sunrise, Joy Harjo Confronts Injustice Through Poetry

"...while the subject matter of her new poems continuously hits you in the gut, Harjo brings a sense of resilience..."

August 08, 2019, Washington Examiner
Speaking Poetry with a Pathbreaking Poet Laureate

"America may be getting more polarized, but a good way to talk about political issues, she says, is not through political language, which relies on clichés and prohibits people from understanding each other."

August 06, 2019, NPR
In 'An American Sunrise,' Joy Harjo Speaks With A Timeless Compassion

"Her poems are accessible and easy to read, but making them no less penetrating and powerful, spoken from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all — but also from a very specific and justified well of anger."

August 01, 2019, World Literature Today
In Mad Love and War nominated in The WLT Readers’ Poll

Earlier this summer, the editors of WLT invited more than two dozen writers to nominate one book, published since 1969, that most influenced their extraliterary commitments, along with a brief statement explaining their choice.

"As the book’s title asserts, In Mad...

July 25, 2019, BBC
An American Sunrise included in Ten books to read this August

Harjo, newly named US Poet Laureate, begins her radiant new collection with poems about the 1830 Trail of Tears. Led by Monahwee, her grandfather of six generations back, her Muscogee Creek Nation forebears were “driven away like livestock at gunpoint”...

January 18, 2016, World Literature Today
World Literature Today Review of Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

“This is not merely a book of poetry. These are instructions for the soul, a song to lead the reader home. With Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, the first lady of American Indian poetry arrives. In this volume, Joy Harjo...

January 30, 2014
January 30, 2014, Yes Magazine
Yes Magazine Book Review: Joy Harjo’s “Crazy Brave”

Native American poet Joy Harjo declares, “I was not brave.” But her memoir is a gift that urges us to enlist our own crazy bravery to step through the doorways in our lives.Read Review