Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, and teacher. She was born My 9th ,1951 in Tulsa Oklahoma to Wynema Baker and Allen Foster. Her name was not Joy Harjo yet though, it was Joy Foster. Joy’s father and subsequently her, are decedents of a long line of tribal leaders including a famous Native American chief that fought in the Red Stick War. At the young age of 19, Joy made a decision that changed her life, she changed her last name to Harjo and enrolled as a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Harjo is her grandmothers last name, and she credits her great aunt, Lois Harjo with teaching her more about her Native American heritage and blood line. After working many odd jobs and having her two children, Dill Dayne and Rainy Dawn, Harjo …show more content…
Within this work Harjo uses intense imagery and repetition to give the reader a strong dose of woman empowerment and encouragement. The words “I am a dangerous woman” are repeated several times throughout the poem. This repetition is a reminder and serves to emphasize on the power of the woman speaker. She is reminding not only herself but also all the people watching her every move, that she will not be intimidated by weapons of destruction or things she does not understand. She is dangerous and is to be feared as such. The beautiful imagery Harjo weaves throughout the work juxtaposes each other to emphasize the equal strength of woman, and technology. (Erdrich 3)The poem starts with the beautiful scenery of the “foothills of the sandias” , but quickly switches gears and brings up the security guards that wave the woman into the “gun catcher machine”. Then the woman chants “I am a dangerous woman”. The brief image that we are given with this first stanza , shows us that although the woman may not know fully understand the technology around her, she is not afraid, and she knows just how strong she is. Another example of Harjo’s feminist views appears in her poem , She Had Some Horses . In the first stanza Harjo compares the horses to “skins of ocean water” and “splintered red cliff” ,these things can be broken or submerged, but …show more content…
It pushes her everyday to do great things, and it also gives her the strength and courage to speak out about the wrongs that have been done to her people. Many people are somewhat familiar with the wrongs the American government have forced upon our native peoples, but unless one truly looks into it, we are jaded from many of the horrific realities that these individuals had to face. Although Native Americans specifically have been targeted over the years, so have other cultures and minorities, and Harjo does not ignore this fact. She calls for all people to be treated equal and speaks to her readers about ending the hate done to one another. One specific piece that deals with these inhumanities is Anchorage. In the poem two women are walking down the street and are describing their surroundings. They see a homeless Native American woman, and notice her smell and despairing appearance, but keep walking. This is Harjo’s call to action to her reader. She pleads with people to stop ignoring the issues faced by those around us, and to try and make a difference. Stop walking past people in pain and start helping them.(WordPress 1) Another place where Harjo cries for human interference is in the second to last stanza. She mentions the “6th avenue jail, of mostly Native and black men…”. This is a social issue that has always plagued our country and has caused many
Shoemaker, Nancy. “ Native-American Women in History.” OAH Magazine of History , Vol. 9, No. 4, Native Americans (Summer, 1995), pp. 10-14. 17 Nov. 2013
Owen, Narcissa, and Karen L. Kilcup. A Cherokee woman's America memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
...es her. The imageries of pink Mustang signifies her social class, while “Road” indicates her location as nowhere within a community. The commodification of her body means it can be touched in ways derogatory to her dignity whether she likes it or not because it is a saleable commodity that doesn’t belong to her. Her silver painted nipples identifies silver coins. Silver coins represent monetary value put on her body. Silver painted nipples also mean the attractive way in which a product is packaged. The poem also depicts the defiance of women against how she has been treated. She identifies man as the one that kisses away himself piece by piece till the last coin is spent. However, she cannot change the reality of her location, and temporal placement.
...mely carefully chosen rhetoric, she has demonstrated how women can break free of men. She has taken away the fear than many women feel when they want to stand up against the male figure in their life. When women are able to be strong, and use the power that they have always had, they are able to move mountains with that power. They can remove themselves from a man who takes advantage of them or objectifies them, and reduce them to nothing more than the coward that they are. Larcom’s poem painted a clear picture of progress that women have made against men, and how they are tackling the issues set before them. Because of Larcom and her ability to use her voice through writing to portray and strong vision of women, has empowered many others to do the same. They are able to break free from the chains of repression that so many men have restrained women by for so long.
A stereotype is a trap, a cage, which restricts individuals to one identity. Once a stereotype is created, it is hard to overcome and leaves traces of prejudice. In agreement with Alicia Ostriker’s The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking, Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song” is a reach out for women to express feelings on gender discrimination without coming across in a way that would engender negative support. “Siren Song”, is written from the perspective of a siren, in a mythological setting but with a contemporary tone, that is restricted to the stereotype of a seductress who seeks to sing men to their deaths but in reality, she wants to break free and find someone that will not fall for her song.
The influential roles of women in the story also have important effects on the whole poem. It is them that press the senses of love, family care, devotion, and other ethical attitudes on the progression of the story. In this poem the Poet has created a sort of “catalogue of women” in which he accurately creates and disting...
The attempts the women tries so to be in vain till the end when it over boils. The women set herself free in the only way she knew how. Sometimes when people are in tight situation, or when their goals are being blocked, they react even when it doesn’t make sense. The women reacted to being closed up and oppressed and, to her family, it didn’t make
‘The woman’ of the poem has no specific identity and this helps us even further see the situation in which the woman is experiencing, the lost of one’s identity. Questions start to be raised and we wonder if Harwood uses this character to portray her views of every woman which goes into the stage of motherhood, where much sacrifice is needed one being the identity that was present in society prior to children.
In the poem, Harjo portrays the importance of recalling the past to help shape one’s identity. She uses the repetition of the word “Remember” to remind that while the past may be history, it still is a defining factor in people’s lives (l. 1). This literary technique
The speaker begins the poem an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite). Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
...sed society with religious overtones throughout the poem, as though religion and God are placing pressure on her. The is a very deep poem that can be taken in may ways depending on the readers stature yet one thing is certain; this poem speaks on Woman’s Identity.
The third section of the story returns the reader to the calm security, but then quickly sends the tone of the story into a frenzy. These constant tone changes show the reader how strong and resourceful the woman is, but it also shows us how she can be thrown into a panic easily. We come to have little confidence in the main character's ability to react well if a dangerous situation arises.
In the age of industrialization when rural life gradually was destroyed, the author as a girl who spent most of her life in countryside could not help writing about it and what she focuses on in her story - femininity and masculinity, which themselves contain the symbolic meanings - come as no surprise.
...e, women are the weaker of the two sexes. Women are slaves and spoils of war, if they are valued for sex they are used for sex. The universal portrayal of women causes a reevaluation of modern day gender balances by the reader.