An American Sunrise: Poems

Beloved Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a stunning collection about the forcible removal of her Mvskoke ancestors from Alabama in 1830 due to the Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson. They traveled what is now known as the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Nearly two hundred years later, Harjo returned to her family’s lands and these poems are the result. She interweaves personal experience with tribal history, examining loss, survival, and the connection she still has to her ancestors.