Summary

“South” the direction of release, fire and creativity, opens with Harjo realizing she has placed her own dreams on hold. She was poor, had two small children and a husband “who was essentially a boy” (135). Although she had flashes of joy with the children, she had abandoned her artistic dreams. Her husband also felt this way; they move to Santa Fe. Harjo finds odd jobs, one at a gas station. She pays half her paycheck to the babysitter, a young woman who she found was having an affair with her husband. She leaves with her son, her husband not allowing her to adopt the stepdaughter, to study premed on a scholarship in Albuquerque. After writing a letter admonishing her stepfather for kicking her younger brother out of the house, Harjo is banished from her adolescent home and her name is not to be...