num_pages: 116
description: National BestsellerA 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 familys 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 mothers death to her beginnings in the native rights movement to the fresh road with her beloved Harjos 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 finestand most complicatedpoets ( Los Angeles Review of Books ) Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.
language: English
title: An American Sunrise
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company