Book Club

Book Club | Monday, April 11 | 6:30-8:30 p.m.
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
Register Here

This community event is being offered virtually so that all may attend. Zoom link included in registration confirmation email.

The National Endowment for the Arts is partnering with the Massillon Museum for a community reading program focused on one book. Impact is pleased to, again this year, facilitate one of the discussions.

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared.

Recalling her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, and to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and “one of our finest—and most complicated—poets” (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

An American Sunrise by current Poet Laureate Joy Harjo is the National Endowment of the Arts 2022 Big Read selection, presented in partnership with Arts Midwest and local partner the Massillon Museum. In addition to the book club discussion, the Massillon Museum is offering programs around the book.

Register Here (Zoom link will be sent in registration confirmation email).