“Susan­na Starr has cap­tured this lyri­cal and sen­ti­men­tal jour­ney from Taos to Oax­a­ca and back in her upcom­ing book enti­tled Our Inter­wo­ven Lives with the Zapotec Weavers: An Odyssey of the Heart.   It is part mem­oir, part pho­to­graph­ic jour­nal, part trib­ute to an ancient civilization’s sur­vival in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, and com­plete­ly a must-read to those enchant­ed with the sto­ry of the Zapotec Indi­an peo­ple.  She will host a book  sign­ing on June 21, the high­light of a month-long pho­to exhi­bi­tion that kicks off the gallery’s anniver­sary celebration.” 

 OUR INTERWOVEN LIVES WITH THE ZAPOTEC WEAVERS: 

An Odyssey of the Heart

by Susan­na Starr

 with Pho­tographs by John Lamkin

 The book is available right now through Starr Interiors!
A new mini-coffee table book — soft or hard cover 

Pages: 135
Price: $29.95 Hard­cov­er or $19.95 Softcover
Pub­lish­er: Palo­ma Blan­ca Press
Offi­cial Pub. Date: June 2014 (now avail­able through the gallery)

I hope this sto­ry serves as a reminder that busi­ness is not a neg­a­tive word. Trad­ing is as old as human his­to­ry, whether for goods or ser­vices. It does­n’t have to be exploita­tive nor imper­son­al to be suc­cess­ful. Rather, if it is infused with joy and hap­pi­ness, it can pro­vide a vital, impor­tant and enrich­ing aspect of our lives.
–  Susan­na Starr, Taos, NM

[See Excerpt Below.]

Advance Praise

“A must read for any­one who wants to do well by doing good in the world . This improb­a­ble sto­ry about an Amer­i­can “hip­pie” and tra­di­tion­al weavers in the Oax­a­ca Val­ley of Mex­i­co will fire your Imag­i­na­tion and touch your heart. Susan­na Star­r’s life sto­ry proves that love, respect, learn­ing and suc­cess in busi­ness can go hand in hand.”–Judith Fein, Author of LIFE IS A TRIP: The Trans­for­ma­tive Mag­ic of Travel 

“OUR INTERWOVEN LIVES WITH THE ZAPOTEC WEAVERS is a beau­ti­ful book, both the writ­ing and pho­tographs.  I own a Zapotec rug and appre­ci­ate the work of these artists. This book gives them cred­it where cred­it is long over­due.” –Tom Aage­son, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Glob­al Cen­ter for Cul­tur­al Entrepreneurship

One of life’s mem­o­rable intersections…

OUR INTERWOVEN LIVES WITH THE ZAPOTEC WEAVERS: An Odyssey of Heart cel­e­brates Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur and gallery own­er Susan­na Starr’s forty years of work­ing with the Zapotec weavers of the Oax­a­ca Val­ley in Mex­i­co. Starr  takes us back to the moment when she first nav­i­gat­ed dirt roads into the remote vil­lage of Teoti­t­lan in the 70s, and fell in Heart with the vibrant Zapotec hand-loomed weav­ings and the warmth of the weavers them­selves. She leads us on a three-gen­er­a­tional trek of mind and spir­it, as the Zapotec fam­i­lies and her own grow in par­al­lels of sym­bi­ot­ic pros­per­i­ty and mutu­al respect that reminds us that “busi­ness” does not have to be a neg­a­tive word.

Susan­na Starr is the own­er of Starr Inte­ri­ors in Taos, New Mex­i­co, which began as La Uni­ca Cosa in 1974, and fea­tures hand-dyed 100% wool rugs, wall hang­ings, and pil­lows tra­di­tion­al­ly dyed and loomed by the Zapotec weavers.

OUR INTERWOVEN LIVES WITH THE ZAPOTEC WEAVERS: An Odyssey of Heart reflects Starr’s phi­los­o­phy that busi­ness need not be kept sep­a­rate, but can be an inte­gral and mean­ing­ful part of every­day lives.

“I hope this sto­ry serves as a reminder that busi­ness is not a neg­a­tive word,” says Starr. “Trad­ing is as old as human his­to­ry, whether for goods or ser­vices. It need not be exploita­tive or imper­son­al to be suc­cess­ful. Rather, if it is infused with joy and hap­pi­ness, it can pro­vide a vital, impor­tant and enrich­ing aspect of our lives.

The weav­ings have been pur­chased by numer­ous celebri­ties includ­ing Paul Simon, Sting and Diana Ross, and fea­tured in style mag­a­zines such as “Archi­tec­tur­al Digest.”

With Love it began…With Love it flourished…And with Love it continues.
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The book is due out in 2014, and fea­tures poignant pho­tographs by pho­to­jour­nal­ist John Lamkin.

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BOOK EXCERPT:  Introduction

For a long time I’ve been encour­aged to write about the years I’ve spent work­ing with the weavers of a small Zapotec Indi­an vil­lage high up in the moun­tains out­side of the city of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co. Not only have I had this encour­age­ment from fam­i­ly, friends and peo­ple I’ve dealt with through my weav­ing gallery in Taos, New Mex­i­co over the past forty years but, most impor­tant­ly, I’ve been encour­aged by the weavers themselves.

Now the time has come to tell that sto­ry. Far from being a sto­ry of run­ning a busi­ness of intro­duc­ing and sell­ing these weav­ings in the Unit­ed States, this is a sto­ry of the per­son­al inter­ac­tions that have tak­en place between me and the Zapotec peo­ple over the past four decades. The gallery that I’ve run dur­ing this time has sim­ply been a vehi­cle to pro­mote and dis­trib­ute this par­tic­u­lar art form. In the evo­lu­tion of the gallery and of the weav­ings in gen­er­al, as in any oth­er part of life, many changes have tak­en place. But, as in any oth­er endeav­or, some con­stants remain.

For me the most impor­tant of these con­stants is the deeply per­son­al con­nec­tion I’ve had with par­tic­u­lar weav­ing fam­i­lies as well as with the vil­lage as a whole. This con­nec­tion has encom­passed half of my life and the pas­sion remains. Obvi­ous­ly, this is a per­son­al nar­ra­tive, but it also tells the sto­ry of peo­ple work­ing togeth­er to pre­serve a cul­ture and to pro­mote a craft that has great impact not only on the indi­vid­ual weavers but on the whole vil­lage. The suc­cess I’ve enjoyed is mir­rored in the suc­cess of that vil­lage and the indi­vid­ual weavers with whom I’ve been connected.

The sto­ry begins with my first vis­it in 1974 dri­ving, with my part­ner Ramon, down a long, dirt road through a some­what hos­tile vil­lage whose peo­ple were resent­ful of the peo­ple of the neigh­bor­ing vil­lage and refused to give any help­ful direc­tions. But, con­tin­u­ing on, we even­tu­al­ly reached our des­ti­na­tion. We final­ly arrived in the small square that was the cen­ter of Teoti­t­lan del Valle.

The book is divid­ed by gen­er­a­tions. The first gen­er­a­tion deals with that arrival and my ini­tial intro­duc­tion to the weav­ings. It paints a pic­ture of the ear­ly years. There is a descrip­tion of my own life at that time and the involve­ment with the Zapotec Indi­ans of the vil­lage that was to become life chang­ing for me.

The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion is my work with the chil­dren of those ini­tial weavers, after hav­ing had a long rela­tion­ship with their par­ents. This is the same gen­er­a­tion as that of my own three chil­dren. All of these chil­dren are now grown and well into the mid­dle stage of their own lives. Although I am still very much con­nect­ed to the par­ents, most of my busi­ness deal­ings over the past two decades have been with this sec­ond gen­er­a­tion, chil­dren when I first knew them, and now asso­ciates in the busi­ness of buy­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing on rug designs and purchases.

The third gen­er­a­tion, who are pri­mar­i­ly teenagers and young adults, is now just com­ing into its own. Once again, there’s the par­al­lel with my own fam­i­ly. In this sec­tion we look at the grand­chil­dren who have been raised in the weav­ing tra­di­tion but who have been afford­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties their own par­ents, and cer­tain­ly not their grand­par­ents, were unable to enjoy when they were of a sim­i­lar age.

In this time of instant com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cut­ting edge advances in the pro­mo­tion of prod­ucts, from smart phones to pur­chas­ing online, this nar­ra­tive illus­trates the fun­da­men­tal exchange, on a very per­son­al lev­el, of real peo­ple and the weav­ings they pro­duce com­plete­ly by hand. Each of the weav­ings I’ve ever han­dled is infused with spir­it. I know this to be a fact. It’s not only the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the peo­ple that per­me­ates all that they do, but also the authen­tic­i­ty with which they do it. Each weav­ing rep­re­sents part of someone’s life. No weav­ing machines or equip­ment of any kind are used, despite the avail­abil­i­ty of mech­a­nized looms and com­put­er­ized designs.

This is not to sug­gest that the vil­lage is back­ward or unaware of changes that have tak­en place in the mar­ket­place. Rather, they have cho­sen to incor­po­rate many aspects of our con­tem­po­rary world, while at the same time main­tain­ing the integri­ty of their tra­di­tion­al way of life. But this third gen­er­a­tion, as a result of the work and ded­i­ca­tion of their par­ents and grand­par­ents, has been afford­ed many more oppor­tu­ni­ties to make dif­fer­ent life choic­es. They have not only had the same expo­sure to the same things my own grand­chil­dren have, but they have also had edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions had been denied.

The weavers I first encoun­tered had only an ear­ly grade school edu­ca­tion in the vil­lage which was all that was avail­able to them at that time. This sec­ond gen­er­a­tion saw their chil­dren attend the new­ly built grammar/junior high school. The third gen­er­a­tion now has had access to high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. Weav­ing is still an option and a good choice for many of this youngest gen­er­a­tion but for some, as you will see, their lives are tak­ing dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Some things, how­ev­er, remain the same, among them the sanc­ti­ty of the fun­da­men­tal fam­i­ly unit and the con­tin­u­ing impor­tance of main­tain­ing their cul­tur­al heritage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Susan­na Starr is an entre­pre­neur, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, speak­er, artist and trav­el writer. She is the own­er of Starr Inte­ri­ors in Taos, New Mex­i­co, which began as La Uni­ca Cosa in 1974, and fea­tures hand-dyed 100% wool rugs, wall hang­ings, and pil­lows tra­di­tion­al­ly dyed and loomed by the Zapotec weavers.  Susan­na has lived in North­ern New Mex­i­co for forty years, and has over twen­ty years expe­ri­ence in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness as own­er of Ran­cho Encan­ta­do, an eco-resort and spa in Mex­i­co. Her degree in Phi­los­o­phy is from Stony Brook State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, and she is IFWTWA Region­al Mem­ber­ship Coor­di­na­tor (RMC) for Riv­iera Maya & Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co. Susan­na Starr is also the author of FIFTY AND BEYOND: New Begin­nings in Health and Well-Being pub­lished by Palo­ma Blan­ca. Her online arti­cles have appeared in numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Soul of Trav­el Mag­a­zine, The Exam­in­er, and the award-win­ning trav­el jour­nal, Your Life Is a Trip.

About John Lamkin (Pho­to­jour­nal­ist):

John Lamkin is a free­lance trav­el jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er based in Taos, New Mex­i­co (and lives part-time in Quin­tana Roo, Mex­i­co). He is a board mem­ber and Glob­al Mem­ber­ship Chair of Inter­na­tion­al Food, Wine & Trav­el Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (IFWTWA). Lamkin attend­ed the San Fran­cis­co Art Insti­tute and found­ed San Fran­cis­co Cam­er­a­work. In addi­tion to food, wine and trav­el writ­ing, he has worn many hats in pub­lic rela­tions, copy writ­ing, tech­ni­cal writ­ing, and poet­ry writ­ing. He is the for­mer edi­tor of Cam­er­a­work Quar­ter­ly and Music of the Spheres Mag­a­zine, and a mem­ber of the North Amer­i­can Trav­el Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion (NATJA). Lamkin is a con­tribut­ing writer for Lux­u­ry Latin Amer­i­ca, Lux­u­ry Avenue Mag­a­zine, Suite101, The Exam­in­er, Reuters Amer­i­ca, Your Life Is A Trip, Jet­set­ter, and he is also a colum­nist for The Syn­di­cat­ed News. He is flu­ent in Spanish.