Alma Luz Villanueva Crazy Courage Summary

To Have Courage or Not to Have Courage

In the poem “Crazy Courage” the author Alma Luz Villanueva tells the story of a man she went to school with named Michael B. In her poem she explains how Michael came to her fiction class as a man, then later on the same day he showed up to poetry class dressed as a woman. Michael got up in front of the poetry class for a reading

dressed in a miniskirt,

high boots, bright purple tights,

a scooped-neck blouse, carrying

a single, living, red rose, in a

vase, to the podium. (Villanueva 14-19)

Michael read to those in the class “who would kill him, and/ to those who would love him (Villanueva 27-28).

And of course I remember the surprise

of his foamy breasts” as we hugged

goodbye, his face blossomed

open, set apart, the pain of it,
the joy of it (the crazy courage
to be whole, as a rose is
whole.) (Villanueva 29-35)
Courage means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, however true courage is being yourself, standing up for what you believe in, standing up to those who mean you harm, and doing what you believe is right; even if it goes against what is popular, socially acceptable, the “normal” thing to do, or what is “expected” of you to do.
The first part of the definition of courage is “be yourself”. This sounds like an easy thing to do, however the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans-gender group (LGBT) have been persecuted for this very thing all throughout history. The current group of LGBT activists, who are fighting for their very rights to live, love, and exist, can be traced to a very specific event. According to The Leadership Conference, the LGBT movement is largely believed to have been started with the Stonewall Riots on June 28, 1969, “The riots inspired LGBT people throughout the country to organize in support of gay rights, and within two years after the riots, gay rights groups had been started in nearly every major city in the United States.” According to the organization Freedom to Marry, on May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to allow same-sex couples to marry, due to the courageous efforts by seven same-sex couples who sued the Massachusetts Department of Health in Superior Court. According to the ACLU on October 18, 2012, following the great courage of Edie Windsor, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and as a result courts all over the United States started ending the state bans on gay marriage. According to Freedom to Marry over the next couple of years, several other states started allowing same-sex couples to marry including Oklahoma on October 6, 2014. Not all of these courageous people are universally recognized or well known, and in fact there are many that are considered very controversial, however these individuals still showed great courage in the face of adversity.
All throughout history there have been individuals who showed true courage in the face of adversity and stood up for what they believed in. Following the civil war the 13th and 14th amendments were enacted, and later as recorded in the Library of Congress “in 1896 the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) sanctioned legal separation of the races by its ruling in H.A. Plessy v. J.H. Ferguson, which held that separate but equal facilities did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.” Following this ruling and several others at the time from 1849 to 1950 the United States kept African Americans and White Americans apart in a time called segregation. There were several individuals during and after this time of segregation that showed true courage by going against what was a popular or “social acceptable” at the time. Some examples of individuals with true courage are people like: the already mentioned Homer Plessy (he tried to sit in the “whites only” train car), Rosa Parks (she refused to sit in the back of the bus), James Hood/Vivian Malone (both help end school segregation in Alabama), and one of the most famous civil rights era people Martin Luther King Jr. (he was one of the prominent civil rights movement activists). Through civil disobedience and perseverance all of these people showed great courage if fighting for what they believed in.
One of the most difficult things in life to show true courage on is standing up to bullies or anyone else who means you harm. The Huffington Post wrote an article and presented a video about an autistic boy named Jake who did this very thing. Jake got up in front of his entire gym class and stood up to all of the bullies in his class. Jake did this as part of “The Bully Project, a social action campaign to stop bullying.” Jake stood in front of his class and said “I…don’t think you guys see me for me. I think you guys see me as a big target. You guys are always leaving me out of stuff…Never paying attention to me or anything I say.” In the video the boys in the class started snickering at him and Jake looked at them and said “I want to try to be your friend, but you don’t try to be mine, and that really makes me feel….bad.” Not surprisingly bullying in school is a very common thing and in an article in the Huffington Post many celebrities reported on being bullied at a young age including: Michael Phelps, Sandra Bullock, Megan Fox, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Tyra Banks, Robert Pattinson, Victoria Beckham, Rihanna, Jessica Alba, Chris Colfer, Howard Stern, Christina Hendricks, Christian Bale, Eva Mendes, and Jennifer Lawrence. This just goes to show that bullying can happen to anyone, but it takes true courage to stand up to those bullies and let them know how hurtful their actions truly are.
One highly persecuted group here in the United States and around the world is the Atheist, or someone who does not believe in a god or gods. According to the Scientific American, “Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to.” One very difficult aspect of life is standing up for your religious beliefs, or especially the lack there of. To show courage and stand up for your religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs can, in many parts of the world, get someone ostracized from their family, and in some cases it can be a matter of life or death. According to the BBC a blogger in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of one million riyals ($266,000) for the simple crime of “insulting Islam” and “setting up a liberal web forum.” To still stand strong in the face of such a punishment simply for not believing in a deity would take incredible courage.
True courage is being yourself, standing up for what you believe in, standing up to those who mean you harm, and doing what you believe is right; even if it goes against what is popular, socially acceptable, the “normal” thing to do, or what is “expected” of you to do.

There are many other things that take courage to do including public speaking, standing up for those who are unable to do it themselves, and even getting up on a stage and performing in front of a large crowd. For many, public speaking is extremely hard and can be quite debilitating, and for someone to ignore these fears, be courageous, and speak from the heart to a large crowd can be quite an accomplishment. There are also many courageous men and women in the military that are willing to give their lives for the defense of their nation. Some view this as the ultimate form of courage, and in some cases it is, but what takes more courage, dying for a cause or living to be there to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess? Showing true courage is not always the most popular, glamorous, or easy thing to do. Even something as simple as being a man, who stands up in front of a crowd to read poetry, while dressed like a woman, can be one of the most courageous things of

all.