“Cristina A. Bejan‘s collection of poetry Green Horses on the Walls (Cai Verzi pe Pereți) is a sensitive and vibrant radiography of the immigrant inbetweeness: the soul-searching negotiation between images/words/values immersed in her father’s native country, Romania, and the daily discoveries made by the poet as a young American woman in the #MeToo era. This lyrical coming-of-age puzzle takes us on a poignant journey into the future via the past, across geographical and emotional borders. Let’s go!”
–Saviana Stanescu, author of Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, Google Me, etc.
“Nothing prepared me for island life,” Cristina A. Bejan notes in a memorable poem of exile. The island of poetry has always been with her, a physical and spiritual island composed of people she loves or not, the dailiness of a lived and detailed life in her country of origin, the languages that express them. These poems infuse the English language with the pleasures of a world I loved surrendering to. She is a poet through and through, born that way, and generously ours now.
–Andrei Codrescu, author of No Time like Now: New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series, 2019)
“Cristina A. Bejan’s collection Green Horses on the Walls is a raw and startling odyssey of a quivering self, torn between cultures, languages, tormented family histories, wrenching traumas and a fierce drive to heal and transform experience into redemptive and empowering art. The poetic voice bursts with uncompromising honesty, and hints of nostalgia for luscious and disheveled landscapes such as the restless streets and people of Bucharest, as it also traverses frightening landscapes of a memory painfully replete with harrowing moments of sexual violence and sinister mental health wards. Experience is channeled in an effervescent and gutsy linguistic orchestration deliciously sprinkled with polyglossia, at times heartbreaking at other times suspenseful and yet at other times luminous and whimsical. A poetic tour de force of cathartic story telling!”
–Domnica Radulescu, award winning author of Train to Trieste and Country of Red Azaleas
“Bejan’s work traverses all matters of the heart: true love, mental health, home, country, and politics. Her careful attention to her family’s history and her own diaspora creates very intimate moments inside a larger artistic and political conversation. Her translations are fresh; energetic; and her bilingual work carves out a space for her Romanian-American identity. The raw emotion pulls you into this collection. Visit the mind of Bejan through her images, as she reckons with her experiences and family history.”
–Suzanne Richardson, author of The Softest Part of A Woman is A Wound
Cristina A. Bejan is a Romanian-American poet, historian and theatre artist based in Denver, Colorado. A Rhodes and Fulbright Scholar, Bejan received a DPhil (PhD) and Masters from the University of Oxford and a BA from Northwestern University. She has taught at five universities, worked in research at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and twice been a fellow at the Wilson Center. Her first book, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania,was released by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Bejan has written eighteen plays and has collaborated on theatre productions in the US, UK, Romania and Vanuatu. An advocate for NAMI and RAINN, Bejan is Executive Director of the arts and culture collective Bucharest Inside the Beltway. Please visit cristinaabejan.com; Cristina A. Bejan (FB); @CristinaABejan (Twitter); and @bucharestinsidethebeltway (IG).
2 reviews for Green Horses on the Walls by Cristina A. Bejan
“Green Horses on the Walls” is a revelation, freighted with lacerating truth. It reads deceptively simply, in its lean, hard language, but is incendiary.
Roxana Cazan –
https://indianareview.org/2020/07/microreview-cristina-a-bejan-green-horses-on-the-walls/
David John Adinolfi II –
“Green Horses on the Walls” is a revelation, freighted with lacerating truth. It reads deceptively simply, in its lean, hard language, but is incendiary.