10/12/2025
Joy Harjo once stood in a cold university hallway — broke, divorced, and clutching her baby. A professor looked at her with a dismissive smile and said, “Native women don’t become poets.” That single sentence burned in her chest. “Then I’ll spend my life proving you wrong,” she whispered to herself.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Joy grew up between beauty and pain. Her father, a jazz musician, filled their home with music — and anger. Her mother, gentle but strong, tried to hold the family together. When Joy’s stepfather’s violence became unbearable, she ran away at sixteen, alone and scared. “I left because I wanted to live,” she later said. She hitchhiked to Santa Fe and joined the Institute of American Indian Arts — the place that saved her. There, she learned that stories weren’t just memories — they were survival.
In her early twenties, she was a single mother with no home, sleeping on friends’ couches, working wherever she could. Nights were for sketching and trying to stay sane. Then one day, she read a poem by a Native writer — and it felt like lightning struck her soul. “I didn’t know we could do that,” she said, tears in her eyes. “That we could use words to fight back.”
So she began to write — not for applause, but for healing. Her poems were bold, fierce, alive with rhythm and fire. “I am not afraid to be beautiful,” she wrote. “I am not afraid to be wild.” But the world wasn’t ready for her voice. Critics called her “too political.” Men shouted at her readings. Some told her to “go back to the reservation.” She didn’t flinch. “If they can shout,” she said, “so can I.”
She started performing her poems with a saxophone — the same instrument her father once played. Her voice and music merged into something sacred — a ceremony of resistance. Each note, each word, carried the spirits of her ancestors.
Years later, America could no longer ignore her. Joy Harjo became the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate — the voice of a people who had been silenced for centuries. When the Library of Congress asked her to write a “patriotic” poem, she smiled and said, “I’ll write one. But I’ll include the ghosts this country was built on.”
Even in her triumph, she stayed humble. “Every poem,” she said softly, “is a road back to myself.”
Joy Harjo didn’t just write poetry — she transformed pain into power. The girl who once ran from violence became the woman who taught a nation how to listen. “They told me my voice didn’t matter,” she said. “So I sang louder.”
