A song of a soul | Of Two Minds

Fabulosa | Of Two Minds | Sylvia Madrigal

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	• Of Two Minds Sylvia Madrigal iUniverse, Inc., 2005 - 110 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Beautifully written.

Sylvia Madrigal has crafted an engaging tale with vivid imagery, profound emotion and rare introspection. Beautifully written, Of Two Minds is an entertaining, satisfying read.

A song of a soul

Sylvia's first book is a delight. Her story is captivating, her words poetic, her character's struggle both heart breaking and so amusing. It is a wonderful read especially for anyone who is struggling with matters of identity, not only sexual identity but racial, personal and spiritual. A must read!

Fabulosa

I just finished this wonderful and brilliant novel. The writing was superb, and the story was both original and accessible. But what made it great was the passion, which was laser-like in its clarity and intensity. I did not so much read this book as inhale it. Madrigal has written love scenes that inspire melt-down in the reader without describing a body part or move, just the pure distilled emotion of the encounter. They were beautiful. This book may be more universal than she knows. I couldn't be more other than gay or Mexican, but I sure understand about being an outsider, and about hiding things that made me very happy from my mom...for decades. On that level I got all of it. And love is love. It's the only thing that's real and the only thing that counts, in any form.

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Of Two Minds

I found reading Of Two Minds to be totally different experience from my expectations. I expected it to be a story of growing up as a "gay woman," or possible a gay person (which it is), but found that it brought up many of the things from my personal past as a "straight person" that I had managed to gloss over or hide. These issues were not about my being gay (which doesn't seem to be part of my world) but about being a person trying to deal with all of those hormones, school, family, making a way on my own and love affairs. It helped me to recall my feelings of anguish of love lost and found because it resonated so strongly with my own first loves, losses and searching for meaning in partners that really had not much meaning beyond sexual adventure and satisfaction. I came to realize that much of that early experimentation was not so much to find a suitable life partner, but rather to find myself.

The book touched me deeply because of it touched a thread that runs though all of our lives. It helped me to more fully understand that we are not "gay" or "straight" or somehow "mixed," rather we are all just people trying our best to find love and joy and peace in our lives. How very generous of the author to help us in understanding each other.

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Exquisite multilayered love story

The book is beautifully written with multifaceted themes of love; familial love, romantic love and ultimately self love and acceptance. The story is timeless and romantic, the characters achingly real. We can see ourselves in Emily's yearning to be whole. I hope Sylvia keeps writing, I want more.

What happens when a seventeen-year-old Chicana from South Texas is dropped into the rarefied ambience of an Ivy League institution?

Emily Díaz has spent her whole life in two worlds. As a child of Mexican parents in South Texas, she had to maneuver the unruly terrain of two cultures, two economic classes, and two languages. At Yale, the discovery that she is in love with a woman sends her into a vortex of self-doubt that fragments her worlds even further. In Boston, she must face the divide between her outward heterosexual world and her internal emotional desires. Finally, she must risk destroying her relationship with her devoutly Mexican mother by telling the truth about who she is. But can she?

A wry, irreverent, warmhearted tale of self-discovery, Of Two Minds is a coming-of-age story about profound cultural shock, about unrequited love finally requited, and about fighting to become whole after a lifetime of living in incompatible worlds.

"Lyrical?poetic?authentic?precise?lush?vivid?beautifully written?a pleasure to read."
?Participants of Voices of our Nation Arts Foundation/Voices Writing Workshops

"A page-turner."
?The author's brother, Ricardo

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reviews: page 1, 2

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