Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Portraits of American Genius, 1) [Hardcover]

Greg Sarris (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520086120 | ISBN-13: 978-0520086128 | Publication Date: September 1, 1994 | Edition: 2nd printing

A world-renowned Pomo basket weaver and medicine woman, Mabel McKay expressed her genius through her celebrated baskets, her Dreams, her cures, and the stories with which she kept her culture alive. She spent her life teaching others how the spirit speaks through the Dream, how the spirit heals, and how the spirit demands to be heard.
Greg Sarris weaves together stories from Mabel McKay's life with an account of how he tried, and she resisted, telling her story straight--the white people's way. Sarris, an Indian of mixed-blood heritage, finds his own story in his search for Mabel McKay's. Beautifully narrated, Weaving the Dream initiates the reader into Pomo culture and demonstrates how a woman who worked most of her life in a cannery could become a great healer and an artist whose baskets were collected by the Smithsonian.
Hearing Mabel McKay's life story, we see that distinctions between material and spiritual and between mundane and magical disappear. What remains is a timeless way of healing, of making art, and of being in the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In his endeavor to write about McKay, the celebrated Pomo basket weaver and medicine woman, Sarris (English, UCLA) has been able to find his own identity. Part American Indian, Filipino, and Jewish, he was adopted at birth and is now chief of the Coast Miwok tribe. His bonding with this extraordinary individual and his growth during their relationship is described throughout the book. Sarris's catharsis is reflected on the last page: "I squatted in front of her and repeated my questions. 'Why did you do it for me?' She looked me in the eye and said, plain as day, 'Because you kept coming back."' McKay's life, simple yet spiritual, is as quintessential as the baskets she wove. Her stories are poignantly collected and captured in this biography. Recommended for public libraries.
Vicki L. Toy Smith, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

"Wonderful, and urgently needed in these days of confusion over Native American identity and spirituality. . . . Vibrant testimony to the survival of American Indians and the power of the old spirits."--Leslie Marmon Silko

"All the lean wit of a Castaneda tale, the lyric spark of the Black Elk translations, Weaving the Dream is a modern-day Indian classic."--Kenneth Lincoln, author of The Good Red Road

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 2nd printing edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520086120
• ISBN-13: 978-0520086128
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #441,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and inspiring book, January 1, 2008

By 

Longtalker (Richmond, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Portraits of American Genius) (Paperback)

Mabel McKay, Weaving the Dream is a profound, poetic, and magical journey. I have read it aloud a number of times to savor its depths. If you have any desire to know Native Californians as human beings rather than museum pieces, you may want to start here. The book, which is steeped in the oral tradition inspired me to write the following poem which was published some years back through U.C. Davis.

Mabel McKay (Weaving Poem) (by Norm Milstein, 7/97)

Plumage of a Pomo basket
Flame of feathers blue and black
Strung with glistening abalone
Rimmed with ivory disks of shell.

Read her book slowly or not at all.
She believed that stories should be heard many times
To sink in and merge with the heart of the hearer
To sink like pebbles in the soul of the listener
To grow like seeds in the earth of our minds.

Read her book slowly or not at all.
Better still, read it aloud.
Taste each word and savor the flavor
Of willow and redbud and sedge.

"I never knew nothing but the spirit," she said.
"Only the spirit trained me.
I only follow my Dream. That's how I learn."

Plumage of a Pomo basket
Flame of feathers blue and black
Strung with glistening abalone
Rimmed with ivory disks of shell.

Read her book slowly or not at all.
She believed that stories should be heard many times
To sink in and merge with the heart of the hearer
To sink like pebbles in the soul of the listener
To grow like seeds in the earth of our minds.

Read her book slowly or not at all.
Better still, read it aloud.
Taste each word and savor the flavor
Of willow and redbud and sedge.

"I never knew nothing but the spirit," she said.
"Only the spirit trained me.
I only follow my Dream. That's how I learn."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, December 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Portraits of American Genius) (Paperback)

I read this book for an anthropology class that i am taking, and i found it to be very good. We get a first hand account of what role Mable McKay played for the Pomo Indians as a medicine women and as a basket weaver. Everything that she did was for a purpose, even though at times she had to deal with not everyone accepting her. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in Native American ways of life

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars continues to resonate over time, August 17, 2005

By 

Tobey Crockett (Los Osos, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Portraits of American Genius) (Paperback)

This is just a wonderful piece of writing, one which keeps resonating with me, even several years after first reading it. This book should have more readers, and seeing so few reviews for it, I want to argue for it as a must read on anybody's list. We all know books or speakers, writers and lecturers who could take any subject and make it worthwhile, just to spend time in their company. Greg Sarris is one of those magical presences we can be lucky enough to get to know through the medium of the page. Saying this is not intended to undercut the amazing person of Mabel Mckay, by the way. The way the past present and future weave in and out of this book, her stories, Greg's life, the future of land use in California... all of this is here, an enticing mix of POV's, passed around like a sacred pipe.

A great read....