Joy Harjo When The World As We Knew It Gone Poem Analysis

An Alternate Reading: New Historicism and Harjo’s Depiction of 9/11 After the terrorist group Al-Qaeda violently attacked the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, writer William Heyan asked fellow poets to respond to how the destruction “had awakened us and shaken our senses of identity and security” (Publishers Weekly). The resulting work was published in the anthology September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. Rather than responding with surprise and shock, however, Joy Harjo’s poetic contribution, “When the World as We Knew It Ended,” displays a remarkable sense of expectation, as if 9/11 was a depressing inevitability. Viewing the event through the lens of a Native American, Harjo composes a unique historical narrative and motivation
She delineates the Native American experience as one separate from the whole of America, claiming “We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen” (Harjo). Enslaved, violated, and forced onto reservations, Harjo views America, or at least, the traditional, ultra-patriotic (and by some studies, increasingly-racist) American patriotism that emerged after 9/11 (Traugott, Michael, et al.), as an extension of the racism and bigotry that forced her people into a weak, passive state. As “the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything,” the Native Americans are forced to be a “watcher” among the powerful, American others
Note the specific word choice of, “coffee, cooked rice and potatoes”; none of these are of American origin — all come from areas of US imperialism. Potatoes stem from South America, rice from China, and coffee from Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Potato”) (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Rice”) (Myhrvold). The imagery of nature, “each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea and desert,” similarly connects to this idea of globality, of worldwide US interference. It is almost as if Harjo is bitter about 9/11, as if it is a product of US conquest. And according to some historians - it is. As explained by M. Chossudovsky, “The Soviet-Afghan war [1979 - 1989] was part of a CIA covert agenda… which consisted in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda” (Chossudovsky). In a single-minded attempt to defeat the communist Soviet Union, the US funded Islamic fundamentalist groups (many of which would soon warp into terrorist organizations) like the Mujahideen. And when the US did exit Afghanistan, “The massive infusion of military aid to multiple sides of the Afghan conflict, the power vacuum left behind from the Soviet withdrawal, and persistent ethnic divisions set the stage for continued fighting” (World Peace Foundation). While Harjo makes no assertions of whether