Joe Harjo Essay

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Joy Harjo is a Native American author born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9th, 1951 to a Creek Indian father, and a Cherokee French mother. Harjo clearly takes great pride in this heritage as she once stated “I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth, and beyond that to all beginnings and endings.” (Joy Harjo) Louise Stone claims Harjo’s writing is supported by her American Indian heritage, which allows her to use prevalent Indian myths and symbolism in her works, specifically one of her more famous poems, “She Had Some Horses” published in 1983. Harjo’s Indian influence surfaces in “She Had Some Hoses” with the continuous repetition of horses, an allusion to “Creek Stomp Dance songs,” and the nature imagery that closely resemble the American Indian ideology, in order to craft a multidimensional poem that personifies a female life and describes her positive and negative experiences. The speaker of the poem is clearly either educated on, or a descendent of Native American culture, in order to explicitly mention “Creek Stop Dance songs” as well as place emphasis on a very prevalent symbol in Native American culture, the horse. “The introduction of horses into plains native tribes revolutionized entire cultures” because Native Americans have utilized them for generations mainly for transportation. (NebraskaStudies.Org) American Indians are well known for their closeness with nature, and so the progressive interaction of a man and animal such as a horse naturally is a strong symbol of their culture. The word “horses” is included in every line of the poem, as well as the title, so as to draw attention that this poem has a very strong Native American influence at even a
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