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"Chat & Chew" virtual book club series returns Dec. 3

UA-PTC's Chat & Chew Virtual Book Club Series returns Friday, Dec. 3 at noon with discussion on national bestseller Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo. The discussion will be held through Microsoft Teams.

Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to participate at no charge. To access the meeting and for more information, visit www.uaptc.edu/bookclub.

About December's Book - Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth―owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and one previous memoir, Crazy Brave. Named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

The Chat & Chew Virtual Book Club Series was planned and initiated by the Chancellor’s Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

For questions, contact Carita Alexander at (501) 812-2811 or e-mail [email protected].