Sarris, in his own words, grew up in "Northern California, around Santa Rosa and west to Stewart's Point, with Indian and Hispanic mixed-bloods, street gangs. I was an adopted orphan, in and out of different families. Mabel McKay, the last Cache Creek Pomo Basket Maker, became kind of a guardian to me." He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he played defensive secondary on the football team and received a bachelor's degree in English in 1978. He then went to Stanford, where he completed a master's degree in creative writing in 1981. He worked as a lecturer in writing and American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, then returned to Stanford. After receiving a doctorate in modern thought and literature in 1989, he joined the UCLA English Department, where he teaches contemporary American fiction, creative writing workshops, American ethnic minority autobiography, a graduate seminar in cultural worldviews of Native America, and lower-division introductions to American Indian literature. From 1989 through 1991 he held the prestigious University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 1990 he was elected to the executive committee of the Discussion Group on American Indian Literatures of the Modern Language Association, and in 1992 he was appointed to the MLA Committee on the Literatures and Languages of America.
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