Illumination Author Reviews

My Review of Daniela Mini’s Stories

Powerful topics, poignantly illustrated

This story is the product of a prompt by Dr Mehmet Yildiz to highlight another author’s stories, selected from the writer’s “best of” compilation, which was also a recent challenge.

Here is Dr. Yildiz’s prompt for us to select another author’s article compilation and review the stories therein:

I took some time to review several of the other “best of” compilations. We are all biased to a certain degree, and I went into it assuming I would end up highlighting an author that I already knew fairly well.

However, as these things often work, what I actually discovered was that I had not been reading enough of Daniella Mini‘s writing! Rest assured, that will rapidly be rectified, and I want to highlight some of Daniella’s great work, as suggested by the author herself, so that you will become an instant fan as well!

Daniella obviously knows I am a sucker for animals, that is why she led off her “best of” series with a story about dogs. It even had a cute little pup in the picture. I, quite obviously, could not resist that story.

However, Daniella came at the dog ownership concept from a different direction than expected. One of the impressions I formed after reading through all of Daniella’s stories is how open she is to allow her perspective and opinion to evolve as new facts become evident.

This is the case with her first piece as well. She begins wondering how and why dogs take such a central role in American society; sometimes more so than our partners or children. But she admits in the end to the potential inevitability that she is likely on a collision course with dog ownership herself in the future.

Next Daniella provides us with an interesting glimpse into her family’s long-time business in Venezuela; animal rendering. A topic most of us rarely think about, nevertheless the recycling of animal parts after the most desirable portions are sold for food is a critical and necessary industry.

Popularized by in America by Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, which concentrated mostly on the immigrants that worked in hideous conditions at the turn of the 20th century, the novel also exposed what happens to the rest of the animal once the most prized portions are extracted.

Daniella points out that, without companies that render animal parts, we would face a worldwide health and environmental disaster. This was a thought-provoking look into her family’s history and the work they do in contrast to how detached most of us are from the unpleasantries our food sources.

Next, Daniella shares a true gift with us, compliments of her autistic son. It seems that Diego has mastered a skill that most of us have not; the art of saying “no” without actually saying no.

There were definite lessons in this one for me, and I know you will enjoy Daniella’s telling of this story:

After opening our eyes a bit into the world of her autistic son, Daniella lets us in on what it is like to have White Hispanic Immigrant Privilege. This isn’t a term I have heard before, and I feel significantly more informed after reading about how Daniella enjoys a different standard of acceptance in her upper-class neighborhood than those with the same cultural roots, but darker skin.

And finally, the last of Daniella’s choices that I reviewed is this piece on homophobia. Demonstrating, once again, her admirable ability to evolve her opinions after experiencing a widened perspective, this article examines Daniella’s views on homophobia with honesty and kindness. It is definitely worth a read.

To wrap things up I decided to delve a little further into Daniella’s portfolio outside her “best of” collection. I found this humorous little piece that any of us that write on Medium can identify with. Applications are being accepted within for a Medium Math Expert:

I truly enjoyed reading each of Daniella’s stories, and I know you will as well.

If you are reading this and haven’t accepted Dr Mehmet Yildiz‘s challenge to highlight your own stories or review the best of others, there is no time like the present to get going!

If you like this, you might like some of my other recent writing, including my July daily roundup of writing challenges such as this one:

And a my response to Dr. Yidiz’s first challenge to highlight our stories:

And a wrap up of June’s final week of new writer stories:

Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.