Journal 5: What is Joy Harjo like to me?

            In my opinion of Joy Harjo as a person in Crazy Brave, I think she is a person who is brave and strong. To prove that she is brave and strong is when she went off to live with her boyfriend’s mother, sister, and daughter. Joy’s “mother-in-law-to-be’s tiny one-bedroom house” (pg. 120) She’s pragmatic and Joy had no choice what to do, she stayed, that shows that she’s strong whatever happens in the house. The brave part of her is she’s not afraid of her boyfriend’s mother or so call mother-in-law of how bad who she is.  

Joy’s weakness is the time when she’s four pregnant and going to move to live with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, “the baby’s father promised he’d send a bus ticket for me to Tahlequah, in Cherokee land, where he was living with his mother and daughter.” (pg. 116) She has been waiting for the ticket for two weeks. The ticket is not arriving then she asks her brother Allen for money to get to Tahlequah. Her weakness was she can’t afford to get the bus ticket to get to Tahlequah. But, I could see that her strength in this situation was she “was no yet eighteen years old.” (pg. 116) She could travel by herself couple miles away from home to live with her boyfriend.

          What I think she cares about more is likely her mother. Her mother who gets violent from Joy’s father when he’s drunk, also there are periods when her mother works all the time while the stepfather does pretty much nothing in the house. I think Joy is objective and trustworthy because she does make her own decisions in a positive way. She could take care of herself and be responsible without her mother next to her when she’s not even eighteen years old. In the book Joy doesn’t fully and persuasively explain why she made certain decisions in her life, but while I was reading I kind of understand why she made her decision. I don’t think that there are aspects of her personality that she underplays or misrepresents in my opinion.