A truly engaging, worthwhile memoir is a rare and wonderful thing. A writer must find the elusive intersection between autobiographical detail, intimate personal insight, and universally relatable human truth. In The Dream Speaks Back, no fewer than three chroniclers – Sue Hampton, Cy Henty and Leslie Stuart Tate – achieve this goal with clarity, humor, pathos and unforgettable storytelling. Woven into an interlocking series of vignettes, reminiscences and interviews with one another, their tales form a fascinating, sometimes bittersweet, always glorious roadmap to the wellspring of the creative spirit, reflecting on – and celebrating – the pursuit of one’s dreams and the embrace of our truest selves: as individuals, as artists and as fellow occupants of a wide, weird, wondrous world.Along the way, The Dream Speaks Back evolves into something rarer still – a moving, uplifting, exultant work of art that delivers not just truth but hope. Hope for readers young and old who may struggle to find their own voices, their own inner beauty, their own tribe, who may be casting about for a means of entering a world that so often can feel cold and dismissive to the kind of heart or the restless of spirit, to those who long to shed masks and don wings, who yearn to dance, to march, to speak and live out loud.This, one dares hope, is how humanity heals its oldest, deepest wounds; through words that spark understanding and empathy, and emotional connections that resonate across culture, across gender, across the gulf between Self and Other. A genuinely exhilarating reading experience.
