Malcolm Margolin, writer, editor, publisher, and founder of Heyday Books, died yesterday, August 20, from complications of Parkinson's disease, reported Berkleyside. He was 84.
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Margolin founded Heyday Books, now called Heyday, in 1974 and retired in 2015. He made Heyday "into an outlet for Native Californian writing" and "exposed white audiences to Ohlone history and promoted Indigenous cultural renewal across the state," Berkeleyside noted, calling him "a fixture at cultural events and an ex-hippie who never gave up the ethos of his generation."
Steve Wasserman, current publisher of Heyday, said, "The death of Malcolm Margolin leaves all of us at Heyday, the independent, nonprofit publishing company he founded more than fifty years ago, saddened beyond measure. It is with surpassing grief that we mark the end of this extraordinary man, but we are summoned to continue the legacy he has left us--a profound commitment to celebrating the beauty and joy to be found in this broken world, a deep and abiding respect for California's indigenous traditions that he did so much to learn from and explore, a passionate engagement with the issues of social justice he sought to bring to light and, where possible, to heal and repair. Above all, we will miss his unrivaled talent as a storyteller and a dreamweaver. I shall personally miss his constant encouragement and his exemplary curiosity about the world. A mighty redwood of a man has fallen.”
In an e-mail last year, historian Kim Bancroft wrote, "Malcolm's most valuable support went to Indigenous California, through the magazine News from Native California, through the books by and about Indians in California, but also through his support--and that of Heyday's--to many Native cultural organizations, such as the California Indian Basketweavers. Malcolm would show up, with or without his Heyday books, at Powwows, Big Times, and friends' salmon feasts in order to, as he said, 'warm himself at the hearth of others' stories.' "
He spent three years researching what Berkeleyside called his "groundbreaking book," The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area (1978). The San Francisco Chronicle called it "one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer."
He received some criticism from Ohlone people about the book, and in an afterword in a later edition of The Ohlone Way, Margolin wrote: "As a writer and publisher, I have no choice but to acknowledge the right of a conquered people to control, or at least influence, the telling of their story and the need for that story to be heard. These are complex and important issues and my struggling to sort them out has defined much of what has been happening to me in the last 25 years."
Publication of The Ohlone Way led to a range of other Heyday titles about Native Californians. Margolin went on to write The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories, and Songs (1981) and Deep Hanging Out: Wanderings and Wonderment in Native California (2021).
And Heyday published It Will Live Forever by Beverly R. Ortiz as told by Julia F. Parker (1991), Alcatraz! Alcatraz! by Adam Fortunate Eagle (1992), Flutes of Fire by Leanne Hinton (1994), and Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah A. Miranda (2012).
Among his many projects and activities, Margolin founded several magazines, including News from Native California and Bay Nature, and the California Institute for Community, Art & Nature, and he co-founded the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, the Inlandia Institute, and was involved in the creation of the California Basketweavers Association and Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. He established Heyday's Berkeley Roundhouse program, which promotes the work of Native Californian writers.
Margolin won many awards during his career, including in 2012, the chairman's commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities; a lifetime achievement award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association; an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, PubWest's 2020 Jack D. Rittenhouse Award; and a lifetime achievement award from Heyday.