Structure

Crazy Brave is divided into four sections, and each is labeled for a direction: East, North, West, and South. The Four Directions is a common native people’s concept that has been used for generations for health and healing. Joy Harjo uses the Four Directions as sections in her memoir that outline learning lessons and tools, such as East being the direction of beginnings or North the direction of difficult teachers and prophecy. Native American culture also interprets the Four Directions as stages of life: birth, youth, adult (or elder), death; as aspects of life: spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical; or even the elements of nature: fire, air, water, and earth. Joy Harjo incorporates many of these representations in her work; for example, she notes her mother as the fire element and her father as water. She is an amalgam of both, of East and West, metaphorically always...