Crazy Brave: A Memoir

photo: Shawn Miller

Joy Harjo's memoir provides some valuable insights into what it is like to grow up as a minority person surrounded by an often-hostile dominant culture.  In addition to that cultural challenge, Harjo also had to contend wirh violent abuse by her step-father which ultimately drove her to abandon her family home as a teenager.  Just surviving those experiences seems remarkable enough, but on top of that Harjo found her way to a functional and productive adult life;  a life which included becoming the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States.

What struck me early on in Harjo's story was how much it resembled the story of another woman half a world away, that of novelist Arundhati  Roy.  As a member of a Syrian Christian family Roy had to constantly contend with living in the shadow of the Hindu majority.  She also, like Harjo, was subjected to parental abuse which drove her to leave home as a teenager, and to negotiate a precarious voyage to adulthood to ultimately achieve success at the highest level. 

Both women were highly intelligent and both showed early interest in creative pursuits which seemed to help to sustain their dreams in the face of daunting circumstances.  Were those traits the secret to their ultimate successes?  Many others with similar traits and experiences must have proceeded into unsatisfying lives and untimely deaths.  Sheer luck certainly played a role.

I am left wondering if Harjo and Roy ever had the chance to sit down together to compare their life experiences or, if not, how such a meeting might help us to understand how devastating early adversity might be overcome. 

Survivor

I just finished reading another book by one of my great favorite writers, Arundhati Roy.  Mother Mary Comes to Me is autobiography, telling what it was like to grow up in India in the care of a mother who provided life lessons embedded in nightmares.  The story is an excellent example of how some children endure horrific life conditions and yet seem to arrive at adulthood with functional personalities supporting often successful and rewarding lives. 

Roy left home as a teenager, unable to support her mother's continuous abuse.  She got herself through school to a degree in architecture, but it still took her many years to climb out of poverty.  She spent four years writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize and made her wealthy.

Beyond recounting her personal story Roy also provides a first-hand account of India's  history which cannot be found easily in journalistic reports.  Roy lived through Ghandi's era and the following genocidal clashes of Hindus and Moslems, and the rise of the current authoritarian Hindu state under Narendra Modi and the BJP.

In the face of those challenges Roy became an activist supporting resistance against giant dams which displaced vast numbers of rural people, as well as reporting about the on-going persecution of the Moslem population of Kashmir, about which she wrote another of her popular novels.   Roy, like her mother, has also been a champion of women's rights in India.  That and her political  activism has made her the target of constant threats and governmental persecution.  In spite of that, when she could live in ease in any part of the world, she continues to live and work in Delhi.

As I wrote in one of my previous posts about Arundhati Roy, 

"Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril."

Inspiration

 Arundhati Roy, The Interview

How to survive in a culture of fear

She speaks as eloquently as she writes.

Deja Vu

 Nearly five years ago I posted some thoughts about Arundhati Roy's fiction and political writing that have often brought her threats for her courageous stance against despotism in her country.  Now, as reported in The Guardian, she is again under siege:

Indian authorities have granted permission for the prosecution of the Booker prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy over comments she made about Kashmir at an event in 2010.

After watching that online presentation by Roy and Naomi Klein on  the web site of "The Nation" I wrote that:

Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril.  It is a country of over a billion people ruled by an authoritarian regime which operates comfortably in the neo-liberal global economy.  One result of that is that India is far along the path to the environmental disaster brought to us by a combination of global warming and continuing bad economic and political choices.

The comparison of political trends in India and the U.S. seems to me even more apt now given Trump's plan to harness the Justice Department to go after his critics should he win the election in 2024.

In the News

 NM Political Report:

"On Thursday, Lujan Grisham issued an executive order declaring a public health emergency with regards to gun violence on Thursday. This was replaced by a more in-depth public health order released at Friday’s press conference.

The public health order restricts firearms in either open or concealed carry on public property for 30 days as a cooling off period, she said.

The change was made to open up more resources to help New Mexico get the gun violence issue under control, Lujan Grisham said.

“We need to use the power of a public health (order) in a state of emergency  to access different levels, different resources, and different opportunities to keep New Mexicans safe,” Lujan Grisham said. “So that’s what’s changed today and we’re gonna keep doing this work very closely until we see dramatic additional productive changes in the state.” 

* * * 

The responses from Republicans in and around the State were as predictable as they were cynical, mostly along the line that we need to lock up more people.

And then this from Colorado:

* * * 

KOB 4 News:

Dudley Brown, founder and president of the Colorado-based gun-rights group, called the governor’s action unconstitutional.

“She needs to be held accountable for stripping the God-given rights of millions away with the stroke of a pen,” he said in a statement announcing the lawsuit and request for a restraining order."

 * * * 

Lujan Grisham's order came right after the road rage murder near the UNM Sports Complex of an eleven-year-old and the serious injury of his aunt who was driving the car.  In August a five-year-old was killed lying in her bed during a drive-by shooting.  Hardly a day goes by in Albuquerque without the report of a shooting.  

* * * 

KOAT Action 7 News:

According to Albuquerque police, there have been 73 homicide cases opened, with a total of 77 victims in the city so far this year.

Update:

KOAT 4 News: 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – More than a hundred people openly carried their guns in Old Town as they protested Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent controversial move on firearms. 

* * *

And for a preview of where all this is going see the Aljazeera interview of Arundhati Roy on the G20 get-together in Delhi. 

Lessons for America

I came across this video of Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein on The Nation yesterday.  I'm not usually pleased when lecturers deliver their presentations by reading from a prepared script.  However, Roy is such a marvelous writer that having her read her own written words produces a great experience for the listener.

Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril.  It is a country of over a billion people ruled by an authoritarian regime which operates comfortably in the neo-liberal global economy.  One result of that is that India is far along the path to the environmental disaster brought to us by a combination of global warming and continuing bad economic and political choices.  It is a scenario that is very likely a preview of what is coming to the U.S. and the other most prosperous nations which tend to think of themselves as much more advanced than those of the sub-continent.

Roy does a marvelous job of explaining all that in this video as well as in her recent books including The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a novel which focuses on the plight of Kashmir whose people are living through a nightmare of military control over of every aspect of their lives.

The written version of Roy's story about India is available in an article at The Nation.