Digital Commons Network^™

Joy Harjo, Rhonda Pettit

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Who is Joy Harjo? To anyone familiar with Native American writing and/or contemporary poetry, the obvious answer to this question might be: a Native American poet. Readers familiar with her work might also consider her a Western U. S. writer, since she lives in the Southwest and uses Western landscapes and locales as settings, as vehicles for psychological probing, and as subjects endowed with transcendent power. If these labels seem reductive, other cultural and literary locations Harjo occupies complicate the issue of her identity.