Profound and Perfect Things

Maribel Garcia is a Mexican-born, naturalized American citizen who is known for addressing bicultural themes that deal with the immigration experience of Mexicans crossing over to the United States. Her stories concentrate on the ways that race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect with family relationships, loss, forgiveness, and self-discovery. Her writing has been featured in academic publications and on the book review site Book Club Babble, which she cofounded and where she serves as managing editor. The inspiration for Profound and Perfect Things comes from her own experiences as both a native of the South Texas Latino/a community and from her anthropological fieldwork studying Mexican American women living on the US/Mexico border. Garcia completed her PhD and MA degrees in the anthropology department at the University of Texas, Austin, and taught in the women's studies department at California State San Marcos University for five years before settling down to write seriously.

When Isa, a closeted lesbian with conservative Mexican parents, has a one-night stand that results in an unwanted pregnancy, her sister, Cristina adopts the baby-but twelve years later, Isa, who regrets giving up her child, threatens to spill the secret of her daughter's true parentage.