Feminist screenwriter and poet Joy Harjo relishes the role of "historicist," a form of storytelling that recaptures lost elements of history. Typically listed alongside native writers Paula Gunn Allen, Mary Crow Dog, Wendy Rose, and Linda Hogan, she strives for imagery that exists outside the bounds of white stereotypes. As a force of the Native American renaissance, she speaks the pain and rage of the Indian who lacks full integration into society. Harjo's antidote to despair is a vigorous reclamation of living. Her poems resonate with Indian journeys and migrations; her characters combat the cultural displacement that fragments lives and promotes killing silences.
Of Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, French, and Irish ancestry, she was born Joy Harjo Foster on May 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is a lifelong music lover who plays jazz saxophone and enjoys community stomp dances. After switching majors from art to poetry, she earned a B.A. in creative writing at the University of New Mexico and completed an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa, followed by cinema study at the College of Santa Fe in 1982. In addition to teaching at the universities of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Montana, she has served as Native American consultant for Native American Public Broadcasting and the National Indian Youth Council and director of the National Association of Third World Writers.
