Out of the Crazywoods

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.

“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 “[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 "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 “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 “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

• About This BookBagw and TekwUnder the CribThe Pivot PointLearning to SpeakWhat It IsAge Three—The Witch in the BagAngelsDiagnosisDirtShe’s Not Heavy, She’s My SisterThe TarotTiger ButterLOOKAge Seven—The Body BookPoppiesAt the Welfare OfficeExuberanceShoppingCrazy Lady in Grad SchoolIn Fourth GradeWhat’s Happening?Jungle RoadBlackoutsVoicesThe Bad MotherExceptional ChildrenThe Twirling SkirtCrazy Talk IThe Death TurnpikeLife in the Fast Lane: Am I Paranoid, or Are They Really Out to Get Me?MedsArthur LloydshadesThe Bra ThingI Am in Love with Rita MorenoCrazy Talk IIBeautiful DollThe Ugly YearKrishna, My LovePoetry for BreakfastCribbageTeaching CastanedaLosing ThemMeditation—The Barren RoadThe TasterHorse Dream IWretchedBabySunday Afternoon with Betty GrableIslands of Sanity: PoetryMy BookstoreThe New House at Center HarborWhen You Can’t Keep a JobDeniedIslands of Sanity: GrandsonsoCrazy Talk IIIGetting Fat on AntidepressantsTo Whom It May Concern:Memere Stories: Sing á MemereSunday DinnersPookiePeach CobblerFalling in Love with DianeTalk Doc: JulieGrand PoobahLand of Enchantment IStories and StormsNew York in AlbuquerqueLeavingThe Witch at the WakeLand of Enchantment IIChina DollMy Special OneAfter Dropping Acid on a School NightYeatsYou Bet Your LifeCrazy Talk: LonelyEating Worms IMy Mother’s SideCeremonyFalling into GraceA Paycheck AwaySeven MiceChristmas with Tarot CardsGeraniumsCitizens for CitizensWet AshesThe Eighth MouseGood morning:Memere Stories: PaintNot Connect: Abilify ManiaPianoMemere Stories: TalkingTalk Doc: KarenListeningsGiving Myself to BeautyThe Green QuiltMemere Stories: HowlingEating Worms IIGreeley Park, Nashua—The TreeMaura’s BagTalk Doc: The Real WorkRelearning the Habits of ChildhoodCrying for RealHorse Dream IIMath GamesMeditation—FernAmbien: The Butterfly, Lock, and KeySADNearly NormalMemere Stories: BaseballStigmaWhat It Is ForHappyAlnôbawôganAcknowledgmentsSource Acknowledgments