Experts' Praise for Skin of Glass

"I read Skin of Glass in two days all the way through, wishing as I read that there was a way I could inhale your book instead, draw this feast of story into me sooner, faster, more vividly. I need  the fragrance of what you have told. Only when the transmission is whole does beauty bloom with Essence. And in the flow of your stories I can see this beauty blooming. Your intimate poetry prose paints brilliant color and life, and I quicken with it. I feel it filling in the mesh of who I am, like water clinging to the holes in a sieve. I can only say Thank you. By it, I am blessed."
––Jenna Woods, author  of  The Dancing Cymbalist

"Dreamy, deeply searching, and so smart kinesthetically, this book beautifully punctuates poetic narrative with startling reality checks--school, food, father, shrink, guru, and other juicy reveals. As the memoir becomes more intensely 'Sufi', she journeys through organs, bones, muscles, delving into an 'other' realm of thinking. A wondrous and thought-provoking excursion."

—Janet Mansfield Soares, Professor of Dance Emerita, Barnard College, Columbia University

"If you have ever longed to dance, if you have danced, if you are a seeker, this book will touch you and open your awareness to the majestic inner landscape of our being."
—Laurienne Singer, MA. Faculty, Los Angeles City College dance department

"Memoir, prose poem, erotic journey, mystical discourse and cultural commentary--Dunya's brave book also launches a new genre of writing from the body. It is a book sorely needed by a culture disembodied by fascination with electronic devices. Dunya's sensuous writing will draw you in from page one. You will travel inside her body, within her shadows and glory, as she recounts her spiritual quest. The urge to devour this book for its content is almost irresistible. But you'll receive more from Skin of Glass, if you read slowly enough to let the author's rich language fire your neurons and seep into your flesh and blood."
—Mary Bond, MA, author of Balancing Your Body, & The New Rules of Posture

"Skin of Glass integrates narrative memoir with an almost microscopic focus on individual parts of the body (eyes, legs and crotch, spine, ovaries) in a way that does justice to the particularity of each subject area while also deriving rich and resonant literary metaphors for each of these "bodily stations." In fact, one has to return to Elizabethan conceptions of the "body politic" to find such ambitious use of the body-as-literary metaphor. Dunya's writing moves effortlessly from the particularities of subjective sensation to a more objective and generalized meditation on the significance of those somatic experiences. These are profound ideas, expressed in startlingly evocative language."
—Roger Copeland, author of Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance

"Dunya eloquently expresses how exploration of body awareness opens doors to understanding, not just of movement and skill, but also about the essence of being. Hers is a searing story about negotiating between life in an exotic enclave of rarified mystical practices and life in the "real" world, where the search for love and healing is no less mysterious. Her tale offers insights and inspiration on every page."
—Christopher Pilafian, Lecturer, Department of Theater & Dance, University of California, Santa BarbaraFormal reviews here