Joy Harjo (Creek) focuses on the significance of womanhood and its many facets in this collection of poetry. She unites several poems using the imagery of horses. However, the focus on womanhood is a truer unifier. Many of the poems have subtle hints of violence against women, but Harjo also directly addresses violence in other poems.

Part I is called “Survivors” and many of the poetry deals with womanhood—both as survivors, and as mother figures that give birth. The poem “For Alva Benson, And For Those Who Have Learned To Speak” is unique in its description of motherhood:

as she squatted down against the earth
to give birth. It was not when it happened,
now giving birth to itself again and again
between the legs of women. (8)

While “For Alva Benson” shows some of the positive aspects of mothering and of womanhood, not all of the poems are as positive in their imagery. “The Black Room” deals with domestic violence and rape, both quite negative aspects of being a woman in a dangerous world:

Joey had her cornered. Leaned her up against the
wall of her room, in black willow shadows his breath
was shallow and muscled and she couldn’t move and
she had no voice no name and she could only wait
until it was over –like violent summer storms
that she had been terrified of. … (17)

In this poem, we are unsure of who is being attacked—but this is perhaps the point. It could be any woman getting attacked. This poem describes this type of violence as between the two individuals though—Joey and the woman.

Yet a later poem in the collection, “IV. Ice Horses” discusses violence against women as a practice that has been adopted by the medical industry:

These are the ones who cut your thighs,
whose blood you must have seen on the gloves
of the doctor’s rubber hands. (66)