This collection gathers poems from throughout Joy Harjo's twenty-eight-year career, beginning in 1973 in the age marked by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the rejuvenation of indigenous cultures in the world through poetry and music. How We Became Human explores its title question in poems of sustaining grace.

About the Author
Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and two memoirs, most recently Poet Warrior. The recipient of the 2023 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Reviews
"Show[s] the remarkable progression of a writer determined to reconnect with her past and make sense of her present, drawing together the brutalities of contemporary reservation life with the beauty and sensibility of Native American culture and mythology....Alive with compassion, pain and love, this book is unquestionably an act of kindness." -- Publishers Weekly
"I turn and return to Harjo's poetry for her breathtaking complex witness and for her world-remaking language." -- Adrienne Rich


Awards
Winner of Oklahoma Book Award 2003.



Book Information
ISBN 9780393325348
Author Joy Harjo
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 377g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 155mm * 20mm