January 2021, mid-pandemic, Christina Vo--single, childless, and in her early forties--sets off on a road trip with a close friend in search of a new place to call home. What ensues is an illuminating spiritual journey that finally allows her to make peace with the painful pieces of her past--as well as the unexpected shape of her present.
Christina Vo is a writer who previously worked for international organizations , including UNICEF, the World Economic Forum and Solidaridad, in Vietnam and Switzerland. After spending time abroad, she moved to San Francisco where worked as a donor relations writer for the University of California, San Francisco, and then launched a boutique floral design business. Christina is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is working on her second memoir. The Veil Between Two Worlds, which will be published in April 2023, is her first book. You can learn more about her here: www.christinavo.com
Thuy Dinh is an editor-at-large at Asymptote, co-editor at Da Màu Magazine, freelance critic, and literary translator. Her works have appeared in NPR Books, NBCThink, USA Today, Prairie Schooner, Unbroken Journal, Rain Taxi, Pop Culture Nerd, diaCritics, Shelf Awareness, among others.
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More about The Veil Between Two Worlds:
Christina Vo has always struggled with the concept of “home.” The daughter of an emotionally distant father and a mother who died when she was just fourteen, she continues to grapple with that legacy of loss and her constant quest to, as a forty-something, find a reconciliation with the shape her life has taken. In January 2021, feeling a call to be closer to the land, she decides to leave San Francisco—this time permanently, she hopes—and set off on a road trip with one of her closest friends, David.
Christina and David begin their journey with an ayahuasca ceremony in Santa Barbara, then continue on to Ojai and ultimately Santa Fe—two magical lands that serve as deep portals for healing. Throughout their travels, Christina reflects on the recent and distant past: her relationships, her past experiences in Santa Barbara and Ojai (where she stayed for nine months around her fortieth birthday, two years ago) and her evolving understanding of her relationship with her parents. All the while, she ponders how the past has shaped her current identity as a single, childless, and motherless woman in her forties. Within the context of intimate friendship, she discovers how thin the veil between worlds can be, and gradually comes to realize that her mother’s spirit has accompanied her since day one of her journey.
Deeply reflective and ultimately joyful, Vo’s memoir takes us on a journey between two worlds—the physical and the spiritual—that eventually brings her to a newfound understanding of how to deepen connections with others, as well as to a place of peace and home within herself.
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