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Literature of American Midwest

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Midterm: Joy Harjo
English 375: Literature of the American Midwest

Joy Harjo
Can we separate the artist from the art? If you read something written by Hitler, could you really understand his intent without knowing what the man himself was about? An individual may read thousands of books, articles or poems during their lifetime, but how many of us really try to understand what sort of background or values influence what we are reading? There is a reason that the Literature of the American Midwest is a collection. Each story or author has something in common that in some way has connected them to writing about what we define as the American Midwest. “If the Midwest is to act as a region, it must know what it is. It must define itself. It needs a unifying portrait, a communal myth. To paint this portrait, we look to our writers, especially our novelists (Longworth, 2010, pg. 1).” Joy Harjo is an example of a writer whose work uniquely defines the Midwest through her heritage, values, accomplishments, and social and political views.
Joy Harjo is a particularly interesting writer whose accomplishments and values can help you to understand a great deal about how and why her writings define her as much as she defines them. “Joy Harjo was born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Native American and Canadian ancestry. Strongly influenced by her Muskogee Creek heritage, feminist and social concerns, and her background in the arts, Harjo frequently incorporates Native American myths, symbols, and values into her writing. Her poetry tends to emphasize the Southwest landscape and need for remembrance and transcendence (Poetry Foundation, 2010, pp. 1).”
After reading the poem, “The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window,” by Joy Harjo, one can begin to picture how her history and beliefs have influenced her writing. This poem brings you in to the mind of what thoughts might have been running through a Midwestern woman’s head as she is preparing for her last moments. From the beginning we are told the story of this woman as if her life was flashing before her eyes. Through her many memories and her various emotions, we can picture the Chicago landscape, a Midwestern woman’s way of life and all of the sights and sounds she would vividly remember and cherish. These same sights and sounds we can imagine have also come from the very memories of a woman like Joy Harjo, a Midwestern writer, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The way she describes the sights and sounds throughout the poem may also be a reflection of the appreciation of the natural world and cultural history that comes from the influences of her Muskogee Creek heritage.
Joy Harjo is a noteworthy writer because she openly declares her devotion for her who she is and where she comes from. Her poetry and her autobiographical writings have made her a part of American Midwest history. Her accomplishments, such as Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award and her fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation, show her inner most devotion to her home, her country and all the life experiences that define who she is. She once commented, “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 (Poetry Foundation, 2010, pp. 2).”
Apart from her heritage and upbringing, we can also examine her social beliefs and political beliefs when it comes to women’s rights and her passion for the other who were also underrepresented. Harjo was known to have been a highly political and feminist Native American. One of the impressive qualities of the poem, “The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window,” is how intense she makes the reader feel by following the every thought that is going through the woman’s head while she decides whether or not to end her life. This sort of intensity brings the reader closer to the woman so they are able to feel what she is feeling and experience the events in her life that had brought her to this fork in the road. She makes us appreciate the sacrifices that women make for their family, all of the terrible emotions that come with it and we are left trying to figure out how this woman is still holding on. Our emotions peak at the end because we are left without knowing her fate and we are left hanging just like the woman at the end of the poem. This, to me, represents Harjo’s feelings about how extremely hard a woman must struggle to live up to the impossibilities expected from her by society and how difficult it must be to deal with being a disappointment to others when she falls short of these expectations.
Harjo’s passion for the underrepresented has come from her struggles growing up as a Native American. During an interview she talked about her life some of the unique challenges faced by Native American women, and how have those challenges have impacted her writing. Harjo replied, “As native women we are always dealing with the realities of our lives as human beings, along with having to constantly bump up against images of Indians that have nothing or nearly nothing to do with our lives. My grandmother Naomi Harjo, a Creek Indian woman in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in the early 1900's played saxophone. Now what does that tell you? We have to juggle all the usual responsibilities of home, family, nation, work, art as well as concerns about the ability to continue to maintain as peoples in a country that still works out of a genocide mode (Lily Literary Review, 2012, pg. 1).” We see how she reflects the idea of the forgotten and underrepresented individuals in “The Woman Hanging from the 13th Floor”, through a woman who is tormented by her inability to voice her life struggles. She is virtually invisible as suggested by her hanging from the 13th floor, which is ironic, since, as is tradition, the thirteenth floor is usually omitted completely.
After reading about Joy Harjo’s history and what she finds important, it could be somewhat difficult to really consider what message she might be trying to convey to her readers. There is a lot of depth and history that must be addressed in order to appreciate her art has to offer. She is a woman with an incredible amount of purpose placed in her writing and her music. It would be an incredible injustice to her cause to not understand where she is coming and attempt to separate the art from the artist.

References
Lily Literary Review, Vol. 5, Issue 9. (2012) The Growth and Change of the Poetic Voice. Retrieved March 24, 2012, from http://freewebs.com
Longworth, R. (2010). Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest. A Literature for the Midwest. Retrieved March 23, 2012, from http://www.globalmidwest.typepad.com
Poetry Foundation. (2010) Joy Harjo. Retrieved March 24, 2012, from http://www.poetryfoundation.org

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