Examining Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave from Native American Feminism

Abstract

[Abstract] The object of study of this end-of-degree project is Joy Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave, published in 2012. The aims that I will pursue are the following: to delimit the concept of Native American feminism, from which to analyze Harjo’s Crazy Brave (its form and content) by focusing on the Native American aspects developed in the work. In terms of methodology, I began by reading Harjo’s mentioned memoir. This was followed by consulting scholarly articles on Native American feminism by Maja Annette Jaimes Guerrero, Andrea Smith, and J. Kēhaulani Kauanui. Next, I consulted the works of Maggie Humm and Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan. Their definitions of terms such as “feminism,” “gender,” “sex,” or “sexuality” proved of substantial importance. I then dug into the scholarly literature that Ana Knežević, Carmen García Navarro, or Katja Sarkow sky have dedicated to both the figure of Harjo as a Native American feminist and to Crazy Brave. The next step I followed for the elaboration of this thesis was an active listening of the artist’s complete discography; this helped me greatly in gaining a broader view of her artistic and poetic work. Also, Chris Baldick’s dictionary and his definitions of literary concepts such as “narrator,” “voice,” “tone,” “oral tradition,” or “imagery” were crucial in the development of this work. Finally, I carried out a close reading of Harjo’s memoir, where I paid attention to the formal and content aspects that allow it to be framed within Native American feminism. Following the above-detailed methodology allowed me to investigate and define terms such as “Native American feminism”—a denomination only embraced by some in digenous women—, “memoir”—as different from “autobiography”—, or “memory”—and its impact, both in its individual and collective dimension, as a healing element, and a weapon of historical and cultural legitimization. The structure of this thesis is as follows: in Part One, I discuss Native American Feminism, its trajectory and current reality. In Part Two, I conduct an analysis of why the form of Crazy Brave makes it a Native American feminist work. This Part includes three sections: “The Literary Genre of Crazy Brave: A Native American Feminist Memoir,” “Structure, Setting, Theme and Poetry,” and “Voice, Language, and Rhetorical Devices.” Part Three of this project is a content analysis of Crazy Brave in its dimension as a Native American Feminist book. A conclusion, a works cited list, and an appendix close this essay. With this end-of-degree project, the dimension of Harjo’s Crazy Brave as a vital contribution to the feminist movement, to Native American feminist literature, and to the construction of Herstory have been ascertained.