Essay Questions

Joy Harjo, in Crazy Brave, explores the concept of drug and child abuse. Illustrate how these themes are brought out in her work of the same name

The theme of abuse in Crazy Brave is brought out explicitly. Particularly when Joy Harjo’s father dies, leaving her and her mother at a young age, her mother is left to fend for them. However, the situation becomes dire as she is unable to cope and thus has to remarry. The man whom her mother remarries is hooked on drugs, alcohol, and women most of the time. He abuses both his wife and the children. The situation becomes slightly improved for Joy when she leaves home for boarding school. However, later when Joy becomes indulged with the hippies, she takes to drug abuse a thing that is presented as being deep-rooted within her family. Even then, Joy Harjo wishes to be the one to break the family’s line of abuse. In Crazy Brave, the concepts of abuse both of hard drugs and children are well presented.

Harjo’s life in Crazy Brave is presented as rather difficult. Support this statement with illustrations from the work

Starting with the death of her father when she is still young, Joy Harjo’s life is dotted with specific events that present the difficult life she had in conceptual terms. After her mother marries a man that is seventeen years older than she is due to her situation being tight in financial terms, her difficult life takes another turn. Her stepfather is abusive on top of being a drug abuser and a womanizer. He hits both her mother and even the kids instead of being a caring father to the kids and a loving husband to her mother.

When Joy leaves for boarding school, it all seems like she will have the break she so desired in her life, that is, until the hippie movement arrives. She then gets into drug abuse and later becomes pregnant. Later, she marries twice, both of her marriages falling apart. She then decides to use her house as a shelter for other people who suffer abuse. Having herself suffered abuse both as a child and as a woman in her relationships, she exhibits empathy as she is able to identify with those situations. In the literary work, the difficult life of Joy Harjo is explicit.