"You Don't Have to Be Pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.' - Diana Vreeland. Joy (Foster) Harjo an inspiration to many people of all different ages and cultures, she has had her ups and downs throughout her life. But, she never let that get in the way of what she believes in. Harjo’s main topic of her writing is about her culture, and how the whites took everything that the Native Americans have. How did Joy Harjo’s childhood life influence her writing? …show more content…
Oldest child of four, at only eight years of age her parents went through a nasty divorce. Leaving Harjo out of the picture, she later moved in with her great aunt who soon became a parental figure to her. Joy Foster later took her aunt’s surname when she had enrolled in the Muscogee Nation. She later became Joy Harjo. Before, Harjo became a famous poet she was involved in many other hobbies like: screenwriting, teaching, writing, singing and even playing instruments. (Stone, Louise M. and Pegge Bochynski) Joy’s era of time mostly, revolves around her nationality and what she believes in. She is every serious about her ethnic group, a lot of her poems always lead back to the Native Americans and nature. A Native American is a person who’s a member of any of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. (Definition) A huge majority of her poems lead back to the Native Americans. Harjo first got her passion for her culture when was a child when she had moved in with her aunt. So, how did Joy Harjo’s childhood life influence her writing? Harjo’s childhood life and family influence a lot of her poetry and writing. When Harjo was a young girl her parents went through a divorce abandoning her, leaving Harjo with no choice but to move with her great aunt. Harjo’s aunt introduced Harjo to the Native American side of
For starters, while Joy fights through each of her challenges, Mary pushes them away. In response to the loss of her husband, Joy moves to the Bronx and comes across many barriers. Wes describes her response to these challenges: “But no matter how much the world around us seemed ready to crumble, my mother was determined to see us through
When Joy attends college she joined an organization to help the students on her camp. It was called the Organization of African and African and American Students. Joy work a lot, but she truly believed in a good education for her own children’s. So when she moves back to New York, after her husband dies. She moved in with her parents in the Bronx. She enroll her kids in a private school at Riverdale High School; this was the same school that President John F Kennedy went too as a kid.
Joy’s parents helped a lot with Wes and Shani taking them to the train station so they could go to school every day. With Wes going to a different school, he made new friends like Justin. After a few days hanging out with his new friends and Justin, he got into a bit of trouble choosing to do bad things. With Wes attending a public school, kids from the Bronx would make fun of him going to a white school. But Wes acted like it didn’t bother him, but then he started bragging to his friends from the Bronx that “A few weeks earlier I had been suspended for fighting” (Moore 50)....
Leslie Marmon Silko will enlighten the reader with interesting tales and illuminating life lessons in her story “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”. Silko, being a Native American will show the style in which people in her tribe, the Laguna Pueblo functioned and how their lifestyle varied from westernized customs. (add more here) Silko’s use of thought provoking messages hidden within her literature will challenge the reader to look beyond the text in ornate ways and use their psychological cognition to better portray the views of Silko’s story.
Although primarily known as a poet, Harjo conceives of herself as a visual artist. She left Oklahoma at age 16 to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, originally studying painting. After attending a reading by poet Simon Ortiz, she changed her major to poetry. At 17, she returned to Oklahoma to give birth to her son, Phil Dayn, walking four blocks while in labor to the Indian hospital in Talequah. Her daughter, Rainy Dawn, was born four years later in Albuquerque. For years, Harjo supported herself and her children with a variety of jobs: waitress, service-station attendant, hospital janitor, nurse’s assistant, dance teacher. She then went on to earn a B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa’s famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1978. She then went on to an impressive list of teaching positions beginning with the Institute of American Indian Arts and ending with her current position with the American Indian Studies Program at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Joy Harjo, born Joy Foster, lived in a relatively large family in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Joy lived with both her parents and three siblings until the age of eight, when her parents divorced due to the father's abusive drinking habit (Joy Harjo 1). Joy is the oldest of the four children in her family. Joy could often be found in her local church, writing passionate sermons that affected her peers(Joy Harjo 2).
From my understanding of the reading, Joy is a person of resentment due to the lack of mobility her prosthetic leg offers. The connection between Mrs. Hopewell and Joy brings me to the insinuation that Joy and Mrs. Hopewell contradict reality, both are blind to the world in their own way. “Good country people" unmasked: Hulga 's journey to salvation” helps me to see the irony in the relationship of Joy and Mrs. Hopewell. Mrs. Hopewell goes by the cliche "good country people are the salt of the earth!". A phrase that shows the optimistic view Mrs. Hopewell has towards the world. Hulga, on the other hand, responds to her mother with "Get rid of the salt of the earth," showing Hulga’s nihilist side. Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga have different thoughts, which lead to contradicting one another. Yet towards the end of the story Hulga becomes her mother. Hulga states to Manely “I have
In conclusion, the repetitive chant-like quality of the poem and making horses, animals that hold great magnitude in Native tradition, the main characters is no coincidence. It is clear that Joy Harjo has poured herself and her history into words. She has ripped away the shameful blanket the world has thrown over Native Americans. She has revealed the good, the bad, the ugly— both in her community and herself. “She Had Some Horses” is a brave, reflective poem in which Joy refuses to be like some of the horses in her poems, the ones who were “much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making.”
El Chavo del Ocho was one of the best actor in mexico history this is his story. A Mexican/Raza who is a big role model is El Chavo Del 8. He a good role model because he made cartoons for mexican and when little kids look up to him like a role model.El Chavo del Ocho is a Mexican television sitcom that gained enormous popularity in Hispanic America as well as in Brazil, Spain, United States, and other countries.
The passage relies on the setting of the story. It is written in 1955 and women were not seen as equal to men as they are in contemporary times. Women had more of a domestic role, while men were educated and worked to support the family. In that time, a country family had religious valves that Joy did not follow, unlike her mother. Mrs. Hopewell did not appreciate Joy’s success in her education. She believed girls went to school for their enjoyment not as a serious scholar, seeking intellect and a greater understanding of the world. Joy getting a Ph.D. in Philosophy is seen as a disappointment for a woman like Hrs. Hopewell. In an addition to the historical setting, the physical setting of their home on the farm plays a role in this story. For someone who is living in a rural area with wide-open acre...
...of a minor character in the story but she is referred to as having two emotions, “forward and reverse”. This is important because when a person is forced to go in reverse they must face something or learn something they don’t want to know about themselves. This seems to be what happens during the course of the story for Joy-Hulga. Although all the characters in the story are stuck in reverse, the only character that is forced to realize her weakness, which destroys the façade that she created is Joy-Hulga. It seems that in this story as in life the most high and mighty suffers the greatest fall. Joy-Hulga was the one who perceived herself to be the high and mighty of the characters. This attitude is displayed with many of her comment to Mrs. Hopewell. Perhaps when Joy-Hulga remarks to Mrs. Hopewell, “Woman, do you ever look inside?” she should’ve taken her own advice.
Joyner mother loved her so much she did everything she could for her
Joy did whatever it took and sometimes it meant not letting Wes leave military school to come home. She stood her ground and wanted to make him a better person, so she made him stick it out. She also valued her kids education so much that she did all she could which meant working multiple jobs just to keep them out of the public schooling system. If Wes didn’t have the support of his mother, he would of turn out like the Other Wes that was in the story and he mostly likely would have gone to jail
Joy was supposed to be Mrs. Hopewell’s happiness in life, but it didn’t really turn out the way she expected. Everything that Mrs. Hopewell wanted for Joy.... ... middle of paper ... ... Mrs. Hopewell says “All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair.she didn’t like dogs, cats, birds, or flowers or nature or nice young men” “She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity” (Flannery O’Connor).
...ated and had a Ph.D. in Philosophy. She could not call her daughter a schoolteacher, a nurse, or a chemical engineer and that bothered her. These people and episodes in Joy's life made her a very miserable person. They made her hate all that surrounded her, which included flowers, animals, and young men. This is why Joy changes her name to Hulga when she was twenty-one years old. She believed the name represented her as an individual. The name was fierce, strong, and determined just like her. The name reminded her of the broad, blank hull of a battleship. Joy felt the name reflected her inside and out. It separated her from the people who surrounded her that she hated the most.