Joy Harjo’s ‘Crazy Brave’ Path To Finding Her Voice

In Crazy Brave, Joy Harjo recounts how her early years — an abusive stepfather, the hardships of teen motherhood — suppressed her artistic gifts and nearly broke her. “It was the spirit of poetry,” she writes, “who reached out and found me as I stood there at the doorway between panic and love.”

Joy Harjo has released four CDs, and won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year for her album, Winding Through the Milky Way.