When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through

by LeAnne Howe (Primary Contributor), Jennifer Elise Foerster (Primary Contributor), Joy Harjo (Editor)

This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete.

Library Binding

Published February 1, 2021

About the author

LeAnne Howe is the author of three books, including Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (Aunt Lute Books, 2007), and is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. In 2006-2007 she was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. She was the screenwriter for Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire, a 90-minute PBS documentary released in November 2006. Howe's first novel, Shell Shaker (Aunt Lute Books, 2001), received an American Book Award in 2002. Her poetry collection, Evidence of Red (Salt Publishing, UK; 2005), was awarded the 2006 Oklahoma Book Award. Currently, Howe is Associate Professor and Interim Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and teaches in the M.F.A. program there. She divides her time between her home in Ada, Oklahoma and her academic life in Illinois.