Fresno City College recently received a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read initiative.  The Big Read project brings communities together around the shared activity of reading and discussing a book. FCC has collaborated with the Fresno County Public Library, FCC Art Space Gallery, and the SCCCD Foundation to make this event possible. This year’s Big Read focuses on the book, An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, the current US Poet Laureate and the first Native American to receive this achievement.

The kick-off will be on March 4 and finale with Joy Harjo will be on April 24, 2021. 

Our selection of Joy Harjo’s book, An American Sunrise, seeks to provide inspiration for the formation and reclamation of voice by Native Americans and other marginalized communities in California’s Central Valley. Our Big Read project will highlight Native American issues by engaging local cultural communities as both audience and participants in a series of book discussions, dance, music, readings, storytelling, and visual arts activities centered on the text.

About the book

"In this stunning collection, Joy Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where the Mvskoke people, including her own ancestors, were forcibly displaced. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings." (from the publisher)

Request a free copy of An American Sunrise

All Words Have Roots Here

Dates: March 11 - April 30, 2021

Installed in the Art Space Gallery and presented online. A link to view the exhibition will be made available soon.

All Words Have Roots Here is a group exhibition that draws connections between visual art, language, cultural expression, and ecology, expanding the reach of  “An American Sunrise” to explore its themes of loss, memory, time, land, and return through art, cultural materials, and poetry by Native American artists indigenous to and those living in California. The phrase all words have roots here is a line from Joy Harjo’s poem “Break My Heart.”

The exhibition is co-organized by Elena Harvey Collins, Art Space Gallery curator, and Dr. Leece Lee-Oliver (Blackfeet and Choctaw), Director of American Indian Studies and Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at CSU-Fresno. 

We are excited to welcome Joy Harjo as the keynote for the Big Read program. Her address will be our final event on Saturday, April 24.

This virtual keynote event is free and open to the public. A link to register in advance will be available soon.

About Joy Harjo:

Writer, musician, and current Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. An American Sunrise—her eighth collection of poems—revisits the homeland from which her ancestors were uprooted in 1830 as a result of the Indian Removal Act. It is a “profound, brilliantly conceived song cycle, celebrating ancestors, present and future generations, historic endurance and fresh beginnings,” wrote critic Jane Ciabattari. “Rich and deeply engaging, An American Sunrise creates bridges of understanding while reminding readers to face and remember the past” (Washington Post). Harjo’s many awards include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas; the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets; and two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. “To read the poetry of Joy Harjo is to hear the voice of the earth, to see the landscape of time and timelessness, and, most important, to get a glimpse of people who struggle to understand, to know themselves, and to survive” (Poetry Foundation). “Joy Harjo is a giant-hearted, gorgeous, and glorious gift to the world," said author Pam Houston. "Her belief in art, in spirit, is so powerful, it can't help but spill over to us—lucky readers.” (From the NEA website)

Image © Matika Wilbur