Critique on Harjo

Joy Harjo’s, “Suspended”, is a short and snappy piece that contains only three small paragraphs. From the very beginning, Harjo sets the setting of his surroundings of her own early childhood. The message that Harjo wants her audience to appreciate is how drastically music had changed her life from the moment she could comprehend the attraction of something new and distinctively different than everything else. The awareness of music in Joy’s childhood opened her ears in an entirely different way than anything else witnessed before. The descriptive detail of specific memories that triggered her reaction to the first times she had heard music was very remarkable in my opinion. I liked the way she reflected as far back as her memory would allow her to; in which, this time in her life was before she had acquired a solid language. Joy escapes briefly into a separate world of acknowledgement through her parents’ eyes of what the ordinary world is to them, allowing her to explore her mind in the way that it was naturally constructed. I thought it was interesting that she labeled her parents as “omnipresent gods”; in recognition that her parents were always there, constantly watching over her. Harjo brings the picture to life when she starts to descriptively describe the surroundings that appealingly engage the audience in a way that I felt as if I could almost touch and smell every description of her surroundings. These sensory details describe the utmost vivid characteristics that bring her story to life. The story takes a turn when Joy claims the very moment of time in where this setting takes place as the wheels spun around in her family Cadillac; she states, “We were driving somewhere in Tulsa, the northern border of the Creek Nation” (p. 83) Then a well-built description of particular sensory details that Harjo expressed really caught my attention, states, “I don’t know where we were going or where we had been, but I know the sun was boiling the asphalt, the car windows open for any breeze as I stood on tiptoes on the floorboard behind my father, a handsome god who smelled of Old Spice, whose slick black hair was always impeccably groomed, his clothes perfectly creased and ironed” (p. 83). This specific sentence really opened up my ability to venture into the feelings and thoughts that she created for her audience. Sensory details like these expand my thinking process in a way that allows me to flashback to my own memories of times that were slightly different than the author’s description at the same time as a read these descriptions. Being able to relate my musical emotions associated with my fascination with drums, in accordance with the way she felt the first time she heard the line of the jazz trumpeter allowed me to connect on a much deeper level than someone who does not fully understand and appreciate music.

Methods of improvement are notable in Harjo’s piece. In my opinion, the short story was a bit choppy for my liking. I know sometimes less is more when it comes to writing; nevertheless, I believe she could have expressed her unique journey of displacement, struggle, self-discovery, and self-healing through the music that changed her life wholeheartedly.