"Once again, Lillian Moats takes her readers on a profoundly moving voyage of self-discovery. The destination is healing and understanding, one might even say, peace – for herself personally, and for the privileged companions who accompany her. Through her eloquent prose and poetry and her compelling, dexterous manifestations of voice, she shares her pain, explorations, insights, and revelations. Speak, Hands, like Legacy of Shadows, is an uplifting story of the triumph of the human spirit."
    Kathleen E. McCrone, Executive Dean, College of Arts and Human Sciences, University of Windsor

"In a culture that privileges the analytic and the abstract, the lens of reason most of all, Lillian Moats, never denying the power of intellect, has the courage to follow the emotional and intuitive toward insight and revelation. In Speak, Hands, she shows us the incalculable value of the journey − stretching, plunging into the unknown, pulling ourselves forward − as she illuminates the wisdom of the body, the power of the hands, whose only rule is to reach."
    William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education, Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago

“In her creative and courageous book Speak, Hands, Lillian Moats offers us challenge and inspiration.”
    Sue Bender, Author of N.Y. Times best seller Plain and Simple, Stretching Lessons, and Everyday Sacred

"The journey on which Lillian Moats takes the reader is one of emotional healing through embodied understanding. Poetically written and beautifully designed, varieties of print and format styles make vivid and compelling the insights of Moats' hands, her inner world, and her external dialogue with others. While Speak, Hands (and Legacy of Shadows, before it) would be invaluable to those who seek healing, it offers great worth to anyone who wishes to deepen self-understanding, or to help others do so."
    William H. Schubert, Chair of Curriculum and Instruction, Senior University Scholar, University of Illinois Chicago

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BOOKLIST August 1999
Reviewed by Donna Seaman

Moats, a filmmaker, artist, and author of The Gate of Dreams (1993) has written a poetic fictionalized memoir that recounts the most bewildering and frightening of experiences, the onslaught of mental illness. In culling through painful memories, she came to the realization that “each of us is deeply directed by the legacy of unresolved emotion passed from generation to generation.”  .....read more

THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW January-February 2000
Reviewed by Virginia Christine Sumners

... Lillian Moats, in this fictionalized memoir of three generations, first crawls into the thoughts and fears of Christianna Pemberty, her grandmother, whose oldest child died of whooping cough. In the next chapter, into the thoughts and fears of her mother, Lisbet. Then, into her own. She traces with exquisite metaphor and sensitivity the dramatic onslaught of her mental illness. She does it with compassion for the fragile yet unbreakable threads that weave through and around their three lives. She lays no blame.  ...read more

“This book will hold its readers close and tight, will teach them its remarkable, affecting and important lesson: that experiences live and last over a family’s generations as memories that shape hearts and minds.”
    Robert Coles, M.D., Research Psychiatrist, Harvard University Health Services. Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Moral Life of Children.

“What she’s achieved in the form of a novel is the wildest dream of anyone who enters therapy – a view of oneself so lucid it reaches back beyond birth to the generation that bore the generation that bore you.”
    Michael Miner, Senior Editor, CHICAGO READER, May 7, 1999

“Moats has performed an act of remarkable courage and generosity that is likely to be of immense benefit to more readers than she would ever have imagined. Legacy of Shadows is no less than a great gift; a beautiful and profoundly moving tapestry of crisis and connection, forgiveness and healing.”
    Kathleen E. McCrone, Ph.D. Executive Dean, College of Arts and Human Sciences, University of Windsor

“More a journey through a dream than a journal, more meditation than memoir, Lillian Moats takes us on a voyage into madness that veers decisively toward the redemptive power of reflected love. Sensual, evocative, disarming, Legacy of Shadows speaks to our imaginations and our hearts, our spirits, our souls. As we peer into this one fantastic life, this finely drawn prose poem invites us, finally, to think differently about our own.”
    William C. Ayers, Professor of Education / Senior University Scholar, University of Illinois at Chicago. Author of A Kind and Just Parent

“If psychiatric case histories could include the poetic imagery and richness of metaphor that seems to flow so easily from Lillian Moats, I think we would be better communicators, maybe also better healers.”
    Robert C. Murphy, M.D., Psychiatrist. Author of Psychotherapy Based on Human Longing and The Unconscious

“I am deeply moved by Legacy of Shadows. In one slim volume Lillian Moats has taken me on a journey that visits the constraint of despair and the release of hopeful possibility. With poetic artistry she depicts three generations of women who struggle with life’s great mysteries: birth and motherhood, love and career, contribution and fear, death and art, madness and duty, unity and diversity, illness and hope, and more. In so doing, Moats’ art has the power to awaken insight about such mysteries for all who experience this beautiful, reflective journal.”
    William H. Schubert, Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago. Vice-president, American Educational Research Association

“In Legacy of Shadows, Lillian Moats writes prose-poetry that will intrigue you with its exquisite beauty. ‘Touching, evocative and engaging,’ critics will say of Legacy of Shadows. I know, as a family educator and theorist, one could have no more articulate parent-education text than the intensely poignant Legacy of Shadows.
    Alice R. McCarthy, Ph.D., President, Center for the Advancement of the Family

“Legacy of Shadows is an unusually revealing story of the stark emotional vulnerabilities and radical healing possibilities that come with being human. Deeply moving and extremely well written, the story inspires us toward liberating new levels of self-awareness, courage, and individuation from our family of origin. May we all take heart in our capacity to live and love as the people we actually are.”
    Marty Dybicz, Ph.D. Psychologist in Private Practice, Kansas City

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