As a toddler in her father's Cadillac, Harjo hears jazz on the radio and calls it her rite of passage into humanity.

Harjo is born fighting for her life and is placed on a ventilator to survive.

Harjo's mother divorces her father after years of drunken violence and repeated infidelity.

Harjo's mother marries a new man in a ceremony that excludes the children, and the family moves to a new house.

Harjo's stepfather isolates her mother from all friends, controls her every movement, and forces the children to do all housework.

Harjo and her siblings watch their stepfather force their mother to play Russian roulette with a gun.

Harjo applies to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is accepted.

At IAIA, Harjo reconnects with her Native American cultural heritage and rediscovers her passion for art and storytelling.

Harjo becomes secretly pregnant by her Cherokee boyfriend at IAIA and leaves school to follow him to Oklahoma.

Harjo gives birth alone at a cold, government-run Indian hospital while her husband goes to work.

Harjo discovers a love letter from her husband to the babysitter and leaves him.

Harjo enrolls at the University of New Mexico and joins the National Indian Youth Council and the Kiva Club.

Harjo begins a relationship with a charismatic NIYC leader who drinks excessively and eventually hits her.

Harjo has a vision of a Pacific Island shaman who heals through song and dance, revealing her path forward.

Harjo dreams that the monster chasing her all her life disappears, and she wakes to write a poem releasing her fear.

Joy Harjo's story begins with a transcendent childhood moment hearing jazz in her father's Cadillac and a birth that nearly claimed her life. After her parents' divorce and her mother's remarriage to a controlling, abusive stepfather, Harjo finds refuge at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where she reconnects with her creativity and Native culture. A teenage pregnancy pulls her out of school and into a cycle of poverty and neglect with a husband who cannot grow up. Moving to Albuquerque allows Harjo to enroll at the University of New Mexico and join the American Indian rights movement, but a relationship with a violent, alcoholic poet drags her back into familiar destructive patterns. A spiritual vision of a Pacific Island shaman finally reveals that poetry and art are her means of healing, and she breaks free from her abusive boyfriend. Harjo's path from a toddler in a Cadillac to an emerging poet represents the full arc of her struggle to reclaim her creativity and spirit.

Joy Harjo's core journey from a turbulent childhood to finding herself through poetry.

At age four, Harjo is rushed to the hospital during the polio epidemic and undergoes an excruciating spinal tap.

Harjo begins having a recurring dream of being dragged underwater by an alligator and transforming into one herself.

Harjo's mother scolds her for playing outside without a shirt while her brother is allowed to go shirtless.

On the first morning in the new house, Harjo's stepfather holds her sister upside down and whips her with a belt.

At a community picnic, Harjo's mother sings joyfully with the band, and the stepfather scolds the whole family on the drive home.

During a hurricane, a ball of fire flies through the house from the kitchen down the hall and disappears.

Harjo quits the school band after her teacher refuses to let her learn the saxophone because she is a girl.

Harjo's acting troupe tours the West Coast, where residents drive by screaming 'Dirty Indians' and throwing rocks at them.

After her boyfriend fails to send a promised bus ticket, Harjo borrows money from her brother and travels to Tahlequah alone.

Harjo's mother-in-law blows cursed cigarette smoke in Harjo's face in an attempt to harm her through witchcraft.

A circus trapeze artist approaches Harjo and later asks her to leave her life behind and travel with him to Corsica.

After returning to Santa Fe with her husband, Harjo takes a job pumping gas at a local gas station.

Harjo's brother Boyd is banished from their stepfather's house and comes to live with Harjo.

While her drunk boyfriend stumbles naked into a motel pool, Harjo feels her unborn daughter move for the first time.

After breaking free from her abusive boyfriend, Harjo opens her home as an informal safe house for abused Indigenous women.

From childhood hospitalizations and supernatural dreams to specific acts of oppression and survival, this pool traces the secondary currents running beneath Harjo's main narrative. Harjo's early spiritual life is shaped by strange and powerful experiences — a near-death illness, a recurring alligator dream she believes healed her, and a first encounter with gendered injustice when her mother scolds her for going shirtless. Life under her abusive stepfather is marked by specific acts of cruelty and rare moments of joy, including his brutal treatment of her sister, the family's precious moment at a community picnic, and the eerie ball of fire that signals his darker presence. Her time at IAIA and in her husband's hometown brings new forms of hardship and occasional absurdity — from touring as an Indian arts student to navigating a jealous mother-in-law who turns to witchcraft. In Albuquerque, her family begins to fracture and reconstitute as her brother moves in, she feels her daughter stir inside her for the first time, and she eventually transforms her own home into a refuge for women in need.

The formative experiences and secondary struggles that run beneath Harjo's main story.

Before birth, Harjo exists in a spiritual realm and is drawn to earth by the sound of her mother's singing.

Harjo accidentally steps on her fish, prays over it, and watches it revive — briefly restoring her sense of the sacred.

Harjo's stepfather breaks the lock on her diary and reads it aloud to the entire family, humiliating her.

Harjo ignores her inner warning — the knowing — while walking with a boy who then attempts to rape her.

After being abandoned at a party, Harjo finds a ride home by paying without money, leaving part of herself behind.

A preacher's racist sermon against three Mexican American girls causes Harjo to walk out of the church for good.

Dorm master Mrs. Wilhelm tears up a damaging letter written by Harjo's stepfather, stunning Harjo by choosing to believe her.

Harjo has a vision of a guardian taking her to the moon, where she watches her father kissing a blond stranger.

Harjo's stepfather denies permission for her acting tour, and the school attempts to take Harjo into its own custody.

After Harjo writes to her mother about the stepfather's abuse, he responds by banishing Harjo permanently from their house.

Harjo begins painting again at university and feels a profound spiritual connection to her grandmother, who was also a painter.

Harjo's poet boyfriend nearly blows up their home by lighting a cigarette near a gas stove he left running.

Harjo begins suffering intense, recurring panic attacks and an overwhelming conviction that she is going to die.

A psychic native woman confirms Harjo's suspicion that her environment is putting her life in genuine danger.

Harjo begins writing poetry and makes the decision to force her violent poet boyfriend to move out of the house.

This pool follows the key moments of revelation and decision that drive Harjo's inner transformation, beginning with her pre-birth existence in the spiritual realm and her calling to bring stories into the world. The painful years under her stepfather are defined by turning points in her identity — her diary violated and her voice silenced, her instincts tested and nearly destroyed, and her spiritual connections to the church severed for good. A series of revelations at IAIA — including the dorm master's quiet act of faith and a mystical vision of the moon — begin to restore Harjo's sense of self-worth and reconnect her to the spiritual world. In adulthood, she is cut off from her mother's household, rediscovers painting, and survives a violent near-miss with her boyfriend that signals how dangerous her life has become. Increasingly crippling panic attacks and a psychic's confirmation of danger force Harjo to confront the truth about her situation. The decision to start writing poetry and remove her violent boyfriend from her life marks the final and definitive turning point in her long journey toward freedom.

The revelations, warnings, and turning points that define Harjo's inner transformation.