W&L’s Radulescu Publishes Memoir Lexington's Downtown Books will host W&L Professor Domnica Radulescu for a book launch on Jan. 27 at 4:30 p.m.
Cover designed by Florinda Ruiz, director of the Writing Program and visiting associate professor of writing at W&L.Domnica Radulescu, the Edwin A. Morris Professor of Comparative Literature at Washington and Lee University, recently published her memoir titled “Dream in a Suitcase: The Story of an Immigrant Life.” On Jan. 27 at 4:30 p.m., Downtown Books in Lexington will host Radulescu for a book launch and signing. The event is free and open to the public.
Radulescu’s story is one survival, strength and love. Her book is the first English language memoir from a female Romanian-American survivor of Romania’s former communist dictatorship.
“This work offers an important opportunity for American-born people to develop understanding and empathy for all those who arrived in this country as refugees in search of freedom, peace and different versions of the American Dream,” said Radulescu. “Furthermore, considering the planetary crisis experienced by mankind at this time, this story of survival from trauma, displacement and loss from the perspective of an empowered female protagonist testifies to the power of human endurance through love, compassion and creativity.”
One reviewer called it “An extraordinary memoir of fortitude and freedom, a narrative that is vibrant and lyrical,” while another wrote, “From Radulescu’s girlhood years during the suffocating oppression of the Ceausescu dictatorship, through her crazy student days in Chicago to her current life in a small, sleepy, and sometime stultifying southern town in the US, Radulescu found ways to maintain her joie de vivre.” Yet another reviewer stated that “Domnica Radulescu is a courageous writer. ‘Dream in a Suitcase,’ like her other novels, is a breathless read.”
Radulescu is the 2011 recipient of the SCHEV Faculty Outstanding Award, and this is her 15th published book.
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