Book Reviewed: Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age by Joy Harjo

A joy to read Harjo This is the inner fury, and a reflection on the challenges of an indigenous American woman who has constantly sought a philosophical and poetical expression to the callousness of European settlers that changed American landscape for the native Americans. She is the daughter of Mvskoke (Creek) Nation located in Oklahoma between Sandia mountains, the Rio Grande River, and in the sunrise and sunset. Her message is simple; believe in your own strength, have courage, and work on life’s challenges with confidence, embrace the warrior power, the divine feminine energy that fuels creation, transformation, and destruction of obstructive forces, and constructing the bridges for inner peace. Her metaphysical thoughts are similar to the primordial Adi Shakti of Hinduism whose influence is woven throughout spiritual practices, rituals, and narratives, reflecting a deep tradition of Shaktism. This parallel of indigenous American religion and Shaktism of Hindu traditions is conspicuous in Harjo’s work. I am fascinated by one of her poems, THE LAST SONG, part of which reads as follows: “It is the only way I know how to breathe An ancient chant that my mother knew came out of a history woven from wet tall grass in her womb and I know no other way than to surround my voice with the summer songs of crickets in this moist south night air.” (From: Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years) The “warrior” here is Indigenous people’s survival. There are fifty-one essays (chapters) in this book of 162 pages, and it is fascinating to read the eloquence of Joy Harjo, it is mirrored in each and every essay. For example, in the essay, Orientation, she describes the Mvskoke belief system about sun, the planet earth, and the environment. The consequences of creating environmental challenges result in climate change, shifting shorelines, and lands disappearing. When people lose indigenous lands, they will also lose their culture. In the essay, Transform, she claims that she writes poetry to illuminate the world and making a path of beauty through uncertainty and chaos. The need for justice compels her to write and create. In one of the earlier poems, she transformed hatred into love. In the essay, Judgment, she meets a group of homeless indigenous men on the street. One of them was her classmate who got into hard times due to addictive alcohol and controlled substances. After a brief conversation about younger days, she gave them money even though she knew that it would be used for their “medications.” She mulled over the encounter, and thought these men were street warriors. They were learning to understand what it means to lose.