Reading Joy Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave is a lot like dreaming. or maybe, more like dreaming another person’s dream. The first few pages seemed abstract and indistinct to me. Then I caught the underlying poetry and the events began to make their own sense. Just like the events of a dream only make sense within the context of the dream. If you let yourself into Joy’s dream, you won’t be sorry.
“This is my heart” she writes, “it is a good heart.” Then she breaks it open for us and pours its contents into our hands.
Confession time: I normally don’t like memoirs. They are too often full of naval gazing, self-therapy. Some authors are trying to justify them selves. Others are trying to create an image. Either way, I usually find them disingenuous. But Joy does neither. She simply observes the development of her artist’s voice in the context of the life she lived through snapshots of time, that spoke to her spirit.
Joy takes us on a journey through the four directions of life as she has traveled them. She rises above the cliche struggles of both Native American life and the life of a young woman adrift in the 60’s. She doesn’t avoid the familiar subjects of poverty, abuse, abandonment, alcoholism, single motherhood, or the lure of the wrong men. Instead she treats them as mere scenery. they are her stage, not her story. Her story is not about these things. Her story is about a spirit becoming self-aware, finding it’s voice through her. It’s a story any artist or crafts-person of any ethnicity will recognize.
Those who know Joy Harjo, know her as the accomplished Native American poet. Her poetry testifies that Native American culture in the USA is not confined to history. It is present, dynamic, modern, and edgy. Any trip to a modern powwow will show you that while leather fringe, beads, and feathers are still staple materials of design, those designs are new, modern, and alive. The are not just throwbacks to the 18th or 19th century. The same can be said of Joy’s memoir. She thinks and writes in traditional native rhythms but her story is fresh, relevant, and current.
What about you? Did you always know your true self? Did you always hear your inner-artist’s voice? How did you come to recognize it? What would happen if you were Crazy Brave enough to let it speak out loud?