cover image Sacred Stories: A Celebration of the Power of Story to Transform and Heal

Sacred Stories: A Celebration of the Power of Story to Transform and Heal

. HarperOne, $16 (273pp) ISBN 978-0-06-250852-2

These essays, first presented at a Common Boundary conference, take innovative views of the sacred and of narrative. Men's movement guru Sam Keen examines peanut butter as a metaphor for story because he continues to have a taste for it, despite the fact that other adults feel they have outgrown it; he also claims controversially that mythology is ethnically specific and that non-Native Americans ``will not find our animating stories in Native American myths.'' Edith Sullwold explores dreams as personal record and highlights their cryptic nature by relating how Jung himself admitted being unable to interpret his own dreams. Richard Lewis believes that ``the television set has become a substitute storyteller,'' and John L. Johnson compares the continuous stories of the Dogon culture of Africa to those of participants in 12-Step programs. A few inclusions feel gratuitous, such as Allan B. Chinen's brief examination of fairy tales, which covers the traditional ground that most of these authors are moving away from. But overall this is a thought-provoking collection that offers inventive perspectives. (Dec.)