36 pages • 1 hour read
Joy HarjoCrazy Brave: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Alcoholism, Abuse, and the Oppression of Women in the Home
One of the most consistent and pervasive themes in Crazy Brave is alcoholism and abuse by men against women. Harjo is surrounded by abusive, alcoholic men throughout her life, beginning with her father, who abuses her mother. While she adores her father, she often remembers him with a flask of liquor. Later, her alcoholic stepfather is much more abusive to her, her mother, and her siblings. He not only abuses them physically by beating them with his belt, but also abuses them psychologically by controlling their lives both in and out of the house. While her husband does not physically abuse her, he drinks heavily and neglects her. Finally, her poet boyfriend is violently alcoholic, striking her as well as getting in bar fights and putting her in dangerous situations.
Harjo structures the narrative to suggest that her attraction to such men is a consequence of her experience worshipping her father, despite his flaws. She often remembers her father and his destructive behavior when she writes of these men, and her friends explicitly tell her she is dating her father when she is with her poet boyfriend. Harjo does not explicitly state it, but the intense panic and fear she experiences at the end of the narrative is connected to this cycle of abusive men in her life. She learns to release her fear just as she learns that she needs to move on from her destructive boyfriend.
Beyond physically and emotionally abusing Harjo throughout much of her life, the men she endures also suppress and diminish her connection to the spiritual world. This spiritual connection is fundamental to her character as a child, and the loss of this connection is one of Harjo’s principal struggles throughout the narrative. When she has an abusive man in her life, she loses touch with her spirituality and creativity, and when she breaks away from that man, it reemerges. The long period living with her stepfather, for instance, almost completely suppresses her spirituality and imagination—yet when she moves to Santa Fe to attend IAIA, she is away from him, and her visions and dreams come to her once again. This dynamic between alcoholic, abusive men and Harjo’s connection to her own spirituality is the primary conflict in the narrative that defines her character arc. At the end, as she finally breaks away from abusive men for good, she learns to control her spiritual gifts and heal herself with them through creative art.
Sexism Within Society and the American Indian Community
Harjo frequently recalls instances of sexism and the systemic oppression of women throughout the memoir, yet rather than addressing this issue explicitly and consistently, she primarily expresses the theme through real-life examples. The first example she provides, when she first realizes that females are subject to different standards than men, is when she is five years old. Her mother scolds her for playing outside without a shirt but does not scold her brother. Indignant, young Harjo recognizes the injustice in this situation and decides to abide by societal rules only when necessary to get by. Instead of internalizing the rules of a patriarchal society, she “would find a way, my way” (47).
This realization, combined with Harjo’s internal strength, gives her a broadly feminist perspective in life and in her writing, although she does not refer to herself as “feminist” in the book. Instead, she deconstructs instances of sexism in her personal life and explains her response to those instances, both then and now. In junior high school, for example, she quits band because the teacher does not let her learn the saxophone because she is a girl. Her stepfather forbids her from singing at the same time. Her response is to leave music behind, until she rediscovers it later in life. She and her sister are also forced by their stepfather to do far more chores in the house because they are female, a distinction she recognizes as an injustice. She also calls out the Church for indoctrinating women to be subordinate.
At the end of the book, she discusses how native women are uniquely repressed in American Indian society, particularly as was the case during the movement for American Indian rights in the 1960s and 1970s. She describes the feeling among native women that their struggles with sexism and domestic abuse must be ignored for the good of the larger Indigenous rights movement. Racial justice intersects with sexism in this case, rendering the adversities of thousands of native women invisible. Rather than judge the American Indian rights movement, Harjo uses her home as a de facto safe house for abused Indigenous women and creates informal support groups. Such action at the end of the narrative reflects the end of Harjo’s character arc, in which she takes charge of her own life and takes responsibility for others as well.
Racism and American Indian Rights
Similar to how she handles themes of sexism, Harjo does not generally use the language of racial justice, but she does note memories of racism against Indigenous peoples throughout the memoir. When her acting troupe is traveling in La Grande, Oregon, for example, a group of residents drives by them and scream “Dirty Indians” at them. Generally, Harjo does not elaborate on these events or discuss at length the effect that racism has on American Indian society. The story is more personal, focusing on her own life and individual struggles. When she describes one of these overtly racist anecdotes, then, she potentially jars the reader and in this way evokes an emotional response, just as such moments jar Harjo and evoke indignation and outrage in her.
Harjo explores systemic racism by the Church somewhat more. While she reads the Bible, appreciates the stories, and reflects on God, she openly criticizes the racism and sexism of the Church. In Part 1, for example, she expresses dismay that the Church disapproves of her visions and dreams, which are considered “evil and most likely of the devil” (46). She finally leaves her local church when the preacher is outwardly prejudiced against a trio of Mexican American girls and throws them out.
She also evokes the theme of racism against American Indian peoples by recalling the founding of her home city, Tulsa, as a Creek town at the end of the notorious Trail of Tears in the mid-1800s. Her respect for her Creek and Cherokee ancestry is prevalent in the book, and she is finally able to explore it with others at IAIA. There, she describes herself as part of a cultural revolution that invigorates her and reignites her creativity and spiritual connection. Eventually she joins American Indian rights groups such as the National Indian Youth Council and the Kiva Club. There she learns to organize with others and direct her talents and interests toward helping others in the American Indian community. After her violent breakup with her poet boyfriend, she narrows her activist focus toward abused American Indian women and organizes one of the first, albeit informal, support groups for them.
Related Titles
By Joy Harjo
