JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. For former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, art was a literal escape as a kid. She grew up in Oklahoma as a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She lived with an abusive stepfather until she was able to move away and enroll in art school. She told my colleague, Rachel Martin, that she writes a lot about those kinds of periods of transformation. It's a theme in her children's book, "For A Girl Becoming," which is out in a new edition this week.
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JOY HARJO: It's a book for coming of age. And I seem to land on that period a lot, and I think it's because I went through so much during that coming-of-age...
RACHEL MARTIN: Yeah.
HARJO: ...Period. Maybe I'm just working out trauma, but I want to be helpful. I think even in trauma, that's where you...
MARTIN: Yeah, of course.
HARJO: ...Learn yourself.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HARJO: Really, that's where you learn yourself and who you are and what you're made of.
SUMMERS: On this week's Wild Card with Rachel Martin, Joy Harjo talked more about that period of life.
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MARTIN: Where would you go when you needed to escape as a teenager?
HARJO: As a kid, I would escape into the closet - as a little kid. And I - my drawings - they're probably still in that closet or outside. You know, I would go out at times when everyone was asleep or the world was quiet, and I still like that. That's where I find things. That's where I find images and sounds and fresh ideas. That's how I discover, I guess you could say, a kind of peacefulness but also a kind of depth that isn't always present when you're in the realm of chatter.
MARTIN: Yeah. Is there something in particular that you felt that you needed to get away from when you were an adolescent? Or was it just...
HARJO: Oh, if you go...
MARTIN: ...Adolescence?
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HARJO: Yeah, I needed to get away from adolescence.
(LAUGHTER)
HARJO: I know I always feel for those kids when I've gone in and talked to them and vibe with them because, you know, I still - that's - I still understand that period, which is a time of - I think of adolescence as being like a chrysalis moment, like you're - here you've got the caterpillar and eating leaves and experiencing the world as a caterpillar. And then they build this chrysalis, and the chrysalis is where they essentially liquefy and then reform. So it's a time of chaotic form, of, you know, I was this, but I'm going to be something else.
And I would imagine in that chrysalis period, the known parameters have fallen away to some extent, to some extent, and then the butterfly emerges. And that's how I think of adolescence as being in that chrysalis - kind of being in that chrysalis stage. But in that stage is a lot of innate power. Any time of transformation, you know, whether it's a transformation of a country, you know, transformation of a human being or of a butterfly, you know - a caterpillar becoming a butterfly - there's a lot of power, creative power, in that.
SUMMERS: You can watch that full conversation by following Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube. The new edition of Joy Harjo's children's book, "For A Girl Becoming," is out now.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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