Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-Fiction | 921 HARJO JO Har | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Betty Rodriguez Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Biography Area | HARJO JO Har | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Madera County Library (Madera Co.) | Searching... Unknown | California Room - Ask Staff | 811.54 HAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mariposa Branch Library (Mariposa Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-fiction | 921 HAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Merced Main Library (Merced Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Non-Fiction | 921 HAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... North Fork Branch (Madera Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-fiction | 811.54 HAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Politi Branch Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Biography Area | HARJO JO Har | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Sunnyside Branch Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Biography Area | HARJO JO Har | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo's tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary.
Author Notes
Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and two memoirs, most recently Poet Warrior. The recipient of the 2023 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A lyrical, soul-stirring memoir about how an acclaimed Native American poet and musician came to embrace "the spirit of poetry." For Harjo, life did not begin at birth. She came into the world as an already-living spirit with the goal to release "the voices, songs, and stories" she carried with her from the "ancestor realm." On Earth, she was the daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and a Creek father who made their home in Tulsa, Okla. Her father's alcoholism and volcanic temper eventually drove Harjo's mother and her children out of the family home. At first, the man who became the author's stepfather "sang songs and smiled with his eyes," but he soon revealed himself to be abusive and controlling. Harjo's primary way of escaping "the darkness that plagued the house and our family" was through drawing and music, two interests that allowed her to leave Oklahoma and pursue her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Interaction with her classmates enlightened her to the fact that modern Native American culture and history had been shaped by "colonization and dehumanization." An education and raised consciousness, however, did not spare Harjo from the hardships of teen pregnancy, poverty and a failed first marriage, but hard work and luck gained her admittance to the University of New Mexico, where she met a man whose "poetry opened one of the doors in my heart that had been closed since childhood." But his hard-drinking ways wrecked their marriage and nearly destroyed Harjo. Faced with the choice of submitting to despair or becoming "crazy brave," she found the courage to reclaim a lost spirituality as well as the "intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors." A unique, incandescent memoir.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Born to a Cherokee mother and a Creek father, Harjo is now one of the oldest living members of her family line. Explaining the impetus for writing this stirring memoir, she says, My generation is now the door to memory. Even as a child, Harjo loved poetry, which she called singing on paper, a love encouraged by the novel-like dream stories told by her Cherokee Irish grandmother. Harjo calls the years from elementary school through adolescence an eternity of gray skies, as first her father and then her stepfather were consumed by alcoholism and became abusive. Once she enrolls at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she feels as if she's finally been set free and that she and her fellow students were part of an enormous indigenous cultural renaissance. Harjo mimics her mother's bad marriage choices but is eventually saved from her demons and the panic attacks that haunt her by the all-encompassing spirit of poetry. In her harrowing and ultimately hopeful story, Harjo allows the reader to know her intimately, and we are enriched by her honesty.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist