"Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write 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. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves 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"-- Back cover.