Unsung Voices

Join us at Downtown Huntsville Library this year as we explore writers from the 20th through the 21st century that you may or may not be very familiar with. This month we are reading An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo.

Joy Harjo is the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In An American Sunrise, Harjo traces the history of her ancestors and the land they once called home. 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 family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.