Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Volume 1) (Portraits of American Genius)

Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (Volume 1) (Portraits of American Genius) by Sarris, Greg. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780520086128.

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 McKays life with an account of how he tried, and she resisted, telling her story straight―the white peoples way. Sarris, an Indian of mixed-blood heritage, finds his own story in his search for Mabel McKays. 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 McKays 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.