Out of the Crazywoods - (American Indian Lives) by Cheryl Savageau (Paperback)

About the Book

Out of the Crazywoods is the insightful and riveting story of Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau's late-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder and personal journey toward the acceptance and management of this lifelong illness.

Book Synopsis

Out of the Crazywoods is the riveting and insightful story of Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau's late-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Without sensationalizing, she takes the reader inside the experience of a rapid-cycling variant of the disorder, providing a lens through which to understand it and a road map for navigating the illness. The structure of her story--impressionistic, fragmented--is an embodiment of the bipolar experience and a way of perceiving the world.

Out of the Crazywoods takes the reader into the euphoria of mania as well as its ugly, agitated rage and into "the lying down of desire" that is depression. Savageau articulates the joy of being consort to a god and the terror of being chased by witchcraft, the sound of voices that are always chattering in your head, the smell of wet ashes that invades your home, the perception that people are moving in slow motion and that death lurks at every turnpike, and the feeling of being loved by the universe and despised by everyone you've ever known.

Central to the journey in Out of the Crazywoods is the sensitive child who becomes a poet and the writer who finds clarity in her art and a reason to heal in her grandchildren. Savageau's journey reveals the stigma and the social, personal, and economic consequences of the illness but reminds us that the disease is not the person. Grounded in Abenaki culture, Savageau questions cultural definitions of madness and charts a path to recovery through a combination of medications, psychotherapy, and ceremony.

Review Quotes

"[Savageau] shows her diagnosis rippling through each part of her life in brief and stunning prose. . . . Ultimately Out of the Crazywoods is a hopeful book. Prior versions of yourself may shatter, but you are not shattered."--Bruce Owens Grimm, Brevity-- (9/21/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"In this unique and poignant memoir, Abenaki/French Canadian poet Cheryl Savageau describes her bipolar disorder in lyrical, clear, and candid prose."--Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

"Savageau is a generous guide, establishing the book's implicit rules early to create an easily legible narrative system. . . The book's bipolar time is vibrantly episodic, with an intensified focus on the subject at hand, while everything else falls away. . . . Using exquisite prose, Savageau leads us, traveling at a pace that creates narrative time set to her cognitive clock. . . . [Euro-American story forms] conflate self and story, and they demand personal progress. Out of the Crazywoods instead offers an experience in meaning making that depends not on outcomes but on the lush beauty and acute pain of the immediate and on the gratification of watching a writer build a story and its world on her own terms."--Elissa Washuta, Native American and Indigenous Studies

"Abenaki poet and memoirist Cheryl Savageau's stunning collection of braided vignettes leads us through the chaos many of us know, toward tenuous, hard-won places of compassion, joy, and possibility. Savageau writes, 'I live on that edge between what is true, what is sacred and magical, and where madness begins.' Yes, this memoir is disturbing, disruptive--and, reading it, we are stronger, heartened for this journey between spaces of identity, the cusps and edges of brilliance, becoming human."--Deborah A. Miranda, author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir-- (9/19/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Cheryl Savageau's memoir Out of the Crazywoods maps the experience of 'bipolar' again and again--defining and redefining, remembering and remaking, etching and resketching the shape, substance, sensation, and sentiment of her experience of 'being' bipolar and coming to that diagnosis and recognition. . . . Savageau's luminous prose ripples, soars, and shines with grounded honesty, some biting humor, and richly textured sensory detail (some quite synesthetic). This is a compelling work of complex embodiment, complicated relations (with self and other), and careful narrative. It demonstrates how one writes identity and, too, how identity can be (well) written."--Brenda Jo Brueggemann, editor of Disability Studies Quarterly-- (9/19/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Styled as a series of vignettes, the episodic structure of Out of the Crazywoods creates an enthralling narrative."--Haydee Marie Smith, Disability Studies Quarterly

"With lyrical language and powerful episodic storytelling, Cheryl Savageau brings luminous clarity to her experience of navigating the Crazywoods. She draws us into an inner world, both mythic and mystifying, of being bipolar, which at times reflects the dynamic intricacy of New England's recovering forestland but also illuminates the ongoing activity and struggle of alnôbawôgan, being and becoming human."--Lisa Brooks, author of The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast-- (9/19/2019 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Cheryl Savageau teaches at Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She is the author of the poetry collections Home Country, Dirt Road Home, and Mother/Land. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation.