Tao of the Iguana

After the traumatic events of his early youth, and in a tortuous process to become a well-adjusted and productive member of society, Daniel had to choose between answering the call of a creative drive he felt could help him cope with the hurt and the asphyxiating and leveling claims of society. Growing up in a family of conventional and unavailable parents and in the grips of a myopic and obtuse education system made the task even harder. At the age of ten, he was uprooted due to his father's career advances in the pharmaceutical industry. After struggling hard to get out of the poor house his ship finally came in, his father became a regional director for a major pharmaceutical company and was transferred abroad. From that point on, Daniel's life became a world trotting tour in search of identity, a home and an art. New Jersey, Bogota during the time of Escobar, Costa Rica, Boston, Miami, Florence, Barcelona, then back to Brazil to the place where he was abused as a child, then off to New York as the recession sets in, then as a humanitarian worker on the Thai-Burmese border in a Rohingya refugee center, then with Doctors without Borders (MSF) in Ivory Coast during the second civil war and in Guinea. There a several topics in this book that address popular contemporary discussions. The first is sexual abuse and all of its sad consequences. Another is Brazil that since the 2018 elections has become such a befuddlement in the world's collective mind. The author also discusses the hazardous side of our male dominated system, in a time when a women's movement that challenges the long standing patriarchal mindset that governs society gains momentum. His reflections about our notions of identity and nationality may find resonance in a period marked by xenophobia. His reflections about his parents, his native Brazil, and the countries and cultures he experienced, as well as the schools he drifted through in a turbulent academic career and his misadventures in the job market and during his creer as a humanitarian worker are also an indictment of patriarchal society, and a satirical attempt to make sense of human kind.