Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews

A lyrical, soul-stirring memoir about how an acclaimed Native American poet and musician came to embrace "the spirit of poetry." For Harjo, life did not begin at birth. She came into the world as an already-living spirit with the goal to release "the voices, songs, and stories" she carried with her from the "ancestor realm." On Earth, she was the daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and a Creek father who made their home in Tulsa, Okla. Her father's alcoholism and volcanic temper eventually drove Harjo's mother and her children out of the family home. At first, the man who became the author's stepfather "sang songs and smiled with his eyes," but he soon revealed himself to be abusive and controlling. Harjo's primary way of escaping "the darkness that plagued the house and our family" was through drawing and music, two interests that allowed her to leave Oklahoma and pursue her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Interaction with her classmates enlightened her to the fact that modern Native American culture and history had been shaped by "colonization and dehumanization." An education and raised consciousness, however, did not spare Harjo from the hardships of teen pregnancy, poverty and a failed first marriage, but hard work and luck gained her admittance to the University of New Mexico, where she met a man whose "poetry opened one of the doors in my heart that had been closed since childhood." But his hard-drinking ways wrecked their marriage and nearly destroyed Harjo. Faced with the choice of submitting to despair or becoming "crazy brave," she found the courage to reclaim a lost spirituality as well as the "intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors." A unique, incandescent memoir.

ALA Booklist (Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

Born to a Cherokee mother and a Creek father, Harjo is now one of the oldest living members of her family line. Explaining the impetus for writing this stirring memoir, she says, My generation is now the door to memory. Even as a child, Harjo loved poetry, which she called singing on paper, a love encouraged by the novel-like dream stories told by her Cherokee Irish grandmother. Harjo calls the years from elementary school through adolescence an eternity of gray skies, as first her father and then her stepfather were consumed by alcoholism and became abusive. Once she enrolls at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she feels as if she's finally been set free and that she and her fellow students were part of an enormous indigenous cultural renaissance. Harjo mimics her mother's bad marriage choices but is eventually saved from her demons and the panic attacks that haunt her by the all-encompassing spirit of poetry. In her harrowing and ultimately hopeful story, Harjo allows the reader to know her intimately, and we are enriched by her honesty.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

A lyrical, soul-stirring memoir about how an acclaimed Native American poet and musician came to embrace "the spirit of poetry." For Harjo, life did not begin at birth. She came into the world as an already-living spirit with the goal to release "the voices, songs, and stories" she carried with her from the "ancestor realm." On Earth, she was the daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and a Creek father who made their home in Tulsa, Okla. Her father's alcoholism and volcanic temper eventually drove Harjo's mother and her children out of the family home. At first, the man who became the author's stepfather "sang songs and smiled with his eyes," but he soon revealed himself to be abusive and controlling. Harjo's primary way of escaping "the darkness that plagued the house and our family" was through drawing and music, two interests that allowed her to leave Oklahoma and pursue her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Interaction with her classmates enlightened her to the fact that modern Native American culture and history had been shaped by "colonization and dehumanization." An education and raised consciousness, however, did not spare Harjo from the hardships of teen pregnancy, poverty and a failed first marriage, but hard work and luck gained her admittance to the University of New Mexico, where she met a man whose "poetry opened one of the doors in my heart that had been closed since childhood." But his hard-drinking ways wrecked their marriage and nearly destroyed Harjo. Faced with the choice of submitting to despair or becoming "crazy brave," she found the courage to reclaim a lost spirituality as well as the "intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors." A unique, incandescent memoir.