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| photo: Shawn Miller |
Joy Harjo's memoir provides some valuable insights into what it is like to grow up as a minority person surrounded by an often-hostile dominant culture. In addition to that cultural challenge, Harjo also had to contend wirh violent abuse by her step-father which ultimately drove her to abandon her family home as a teenager. Just surviving those experiences seems remarkable enough, but on top of that Harjo found her way to a functional and productive adult life; a life which included becoming the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States.
What struck me early on in Harjo's story was how much it resembled the story of another woman half a world away, that of novelist Arundhati Roy. As a member of a Syrian Christian family Roy had to constantly contend with living in the shadow of the Hindu majority. She also, like Harjo, was subjected to parental abuse which drove her to leave home as a teenager, and to negotiate a precarious voyage to adulthood to ultimately achieve success at the highest level.
Both women were highly intelligent and both showed early interest in creative pursuits which seemed to help to sustain their dreams in the face of daunting circumstances. Were those traits the secret to their ultimate successes? Many others with similar traits and experiences must have proceeded into unsatisfying lives and untimely deaths. Sheer luck certainly played a role.
I am left wondering if Harjo and Roy ever had the chance to sit down together to compare their life experiences or, if not, how such a meeting might help us to understand how devastating early adversity might be overcome.
