Review by Booklist Review
Musician, visual artist, and U.S. Poet Laureate Harjo continues her personal story in her second memoir, following the award-winning Crazy Brave (2013), in a genre-bending approach that interweaves poetry and anecdotes, memories, and familial and ancestral history. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Harjo grew up where the Trail of Tears halted in Oklahoma, where the U.S. government forcibly relocated her ancestors after brutally stripping them of their homes and land in Georgia and Alabama. Such trauma is carried forward, pain that Harjo views from an expansive, time-transcending perspective that allows her to place it within a larger story. "Does each generation carry forth the wounding that needs to be healed, from mother to mother, cooking pot to cooking pot, song to poetry, and poetry to beadwork, until one day in eternity we will understand what we have created together?" Creativity and imagination helped Harjo escape abusive situations. She was also gifted with the ability to listen deeply and find a place to exist harmoniously between sensuality and physical power and sensitivity and connectedness to other inner and spiritual energies. Throughout this lyrical, beautiful memoir Harjo generously shares her inspirations: family, nature, ritual, music, literature, her life lessons and insights gleaned from her dreams, psychic intuitions, and communications with ancestors.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a gorgeous and meditative work that blends poetry, philosophy, and nonlinear narrative, U.S. poet laureate Harjo (Crazy Brave) delivers a lyrical homage to her Creek Nation family. Her reflections travel through multiple territories: ancestral stories of Muscogee forced migration to Oklahoma; memories of her charming, womanizing father who abandoned the family; her life as a poet and teacher; and the words of other poets who influenced her. The thread that tethers each story is Harjo's late mother. Throughout, Harjo drifts in and out of dreams that bring her mother back to her, while reminiscing on her mother's talent as an orator, and shifts to painful moments in which her mother allowed the sexual, mental, and physical abuse of Harjo by her stepfather. Though Harjo's life was enriched with other maternal figures--including her "earliest mentor," the poet and activist Meridel Le Sueur, and Audre Lorde, whose "wisdom songs folded into the consciousness of my poetry"--no woman could replace the one who gave birth to her. In her mother's final hours, Harjo writes, "I breathed with her.... Later, I would realize I was midwifing my mother through to her next life." This mesmerizing story is a pleasure to get lost in. Agent: Kathleen Anderson, the Shipman Agency. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Three-term U.S. poet laureate Harjo (An American Sunrise) gives readers an in-depth look at her life and her poetry, and what poetry brought to her and to others. In this memoir combining narrative prose and poetry, Harjo recounts her upbringing in a Muscogee (Creek) Nation family and the trials she faced navigating the world. She also tries to understand how the earth has changed throughout the centuries and what its inhabitants must do to heal it. Harjo wisely advises readers to put down technological devices and connect with the earth on a deeper level. She maintains that individuals can become content by listening to animals, which provide friendship and sustenance, and to plants, which provide healing power. The memoir jumps around through time and place; this could be Harjo's way of pointing out that our lives and realizations about the earth do not have to be linear. Rather, she effectively shows how fluid a life can be. VERDICT This poignant read offers a lot of food for thought. Highly recommended for any library, especially for memoir collections.--Elizabeth Ragain, Rogers Heritage H.S., Fayetteville, AR
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this hybrid memoir, the acclaimed Muscogee Nation writer combines poetry and prose to trace her journey from avid word collector to seasoned wordsmith. As a child, Harjo hid under the kitchen table, eavesdropping on her elders. She later found out that her mother knew about and tolerated this habit because she, too, was a lover of words. The author's mother would routinely recite poems by writers like William Blake, a practice that Harjo credits with sparking her interest in poetry and songs. In contrast, her father's violence filled her with the instinct to hide herself and her literary journey. This pattern continued when Harjo's mother married another abusive man, forcing Harjo to leave home when she was just a teenager. Built on this solid foundation, the remainder of the story details the author's evolution from a shy, scared child to a driven writer and educator dedicated to nurturing her students in a way that she had never been. Critical to this journey was the time she spent studying at the University of New Mexico, where she formed community with other Native students and discovered much-needed healing. In 2019, she was named the U.S. poet laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor in U.S. history. The book is the perfect companion to Harjo's previous memoir, Crazy Brave, adding depth and new meaning to familiar characters and personal milestones. Despite having a difficult life, the author's capacity for compassion is astonishing. In one passage, she calls her abusive stepfather one of her "greatest teachers" because his abuse forced her into a life of the mind and "to find myself in the spiritual world." She masterfully holds both her past self and her abusers accountable while layering their characters with details that render them sympathetic in spite of their often horrifying behavior. On the line level, Harjo's words blaze with honesty and lyricism, and nearly every sentence is a delight. A gorgeous, compassionate memoir from one of America's greatest living writers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
