Dream in a Suitcase: The Story of an Immigrant Life by Domnica Rădulescu

Romanians of DC has the pleasure of inviting you on Saturday, February 5 at 7 pm EST to ”Dream in a Suitcase: The Story of an Immigrant Life by Domnica Rădulescu,” an event organized by the American Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS) in partnership with ARCHER, Arizona American-Romanian Cultural Collaborative (ARCC), Bucharest Inside the Beltway, Immigration Research Forum, Romanian United Fund, and Romanians of DC, and with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute in NY/USA.

What is in the suitcase of a refugee escaping from a politically oppressive regime? Drawing on Domnica Rădulescu’s recent memoir Dream in a Suitcase: The Story of an Immigrant Life, this event is an invitation to explore the multifaceted fabric of dreams and cherished memories immigrants bring to the US. Join us for a dialogue between the author and her special guests who share similar stories of exile, uprootedness and resilience.

You can register for the event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvd-uhqjkjHtAaLKmxqpUpeIwEFwQX_Fg6

Dream in a Suitcase unravels a fast-paced journey of survival, resilience, and the power of love. The story offers a rich multicultural mosaic of a life divided not only between two cultures and languages, that of the heroine’s native Romania and her adoptive US but also between Chicago’s urban culture and that of a small town in Virginia marked by a heavy confederate history. This book is deeply relevant for our times as it offers an opportunity for American-born audiences to develop a deeper understanding for all those who arrived in this country as refugees in search of freedom, peace, and different versions of the American Dream.

Domnica Rădulescu is the Edwin A. Morris Professor of Comparative Literature at Washington and Lee University. She is the author of three nationally and internationally acclaimed novels: Country of Red Azaleas, Black Sea Twilight and Train to Trieste. Train to Trieste has been published in 12 languages and is the winner of the 2009 Library of Virginia Fiction Award. Her play The Town with Very Nice People: A Strident Operetta has been chosen as a runner up for the 2013 Jane Chambers Playwriting award given by the Association for Theater in Higher Education. Her play Naturalized Woman was produced at the Thespis Theater Festival in New York City in 2012. She has authored, edited and co-edited several scholarly books on theater, exile and representations of women and received the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. She is also a Fulbright scholar and is presently working on her fourth novel titled My Father’s Orchards and on two new plays, titled House in a Boat and Crack in the Wall. Domnica has received a Fulbright Research Teaching Fellowship to study and teach at the University of Bucharest, Romania and was also a Fulbright to Romania 10 years ago. You can find out more about Domnica Rădulescu’s work here: http://www.domnicaradulescu.com.