Books
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Tethered to the Unexpected: Poetry about Illness, Alien Buddha Press, 2022,
https://www.amazon.com/Tethered-Unexpected-Poetry-About-Illness/dp/B09PP34HWB. Cover art by AURA etc. Find her on Facebook at @afrootic. Roxana Cazan’s new poetry book Tethered to the Unexpected dedicated with tremendous love to her grandmother gives us a lesson in understanding the suffering and a lesson in remembrance: “this slithering ink that marks your flesh with permanence” writes the poet, following her grandmother illness on her phone, across the Atlantic. The book is also a medical document that touches almost every aspect of body decay in a sharp language, yet not lacking the expression of love and tenderness. I admire the poet’s courage to look straight in the eyes of a devastating illness and to use the power of poetry as a catalyst against despair and lack of hope. From the “Waiting Room” in Sibiu, going through different forms of alienation to the “Pandemic” pain, illness (including poet’s own disease), exile, loneliness, despair, injustice could allow a liberation in beautiful passionate verses and “start teaching the lips / simple melody.”– Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, author of Traveling with Ghosts Tethered to the Unexpected is a lyrical treat despite its grim truth. Roxana Cazan offers a loving, lasting tribute to familial bonds though "some days the windows / don't withstand the rain." Reflected in "the obsidian waters of your mind's banquet," here is a heartfelt story of the human body in deterioration – closely, painfully observed, as the poet's "arctic heart churns the sea into ice." Beyond a body in decline, Roxana's unassuming voice explores her grandmother's life, tethered to her own, attempting to close the "distance / between home and crib."– Ken Hada, author of Contour Feathers Listen to a podcast about this book here. 
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The Accident of Birth. Main Street Rag, 2017,
mainstreetragbookstore.com/?product=the-accident-of-birth From a childhood in war-torn Romania to the horrors of watching Syrians wash ashore in Europe on American news, Cazan’s The Accident of Birth “looses” language from media spin and “unnames” the reality of persons labeled refugees: starvation and rubble, stones and lentils, bones and dirt, “tongues/planted between sea/and desert.” As Jane Hirshfield wrote: “Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins,” and Cazan’s poems speak those whose “name(s) unbecame poetry” while their homes and birthplaces, their families and histories were and are undone by war. This is news. Read this book. ~Romayne Rubinas, host of WFIU’s “The Poets Weave” and author of Then Gone (Ledge Mule Press). In the word-stunned, world-stung poems of The Accident of Birth, Roxana Cazan brings us on her journey from a childhood in communist Romania to the daily trials and joys of making a life in small-town Pennsylvania amid "the fumes of a fracked heart." These poems reach out with a fierce empathy toward those living in troubled landscapes. Like "tired finches who in the fig dark dusk/still have nowhere to land," their wings keep beating. ~Christopher Citro, author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books). Watch a short video about the book here. |
Winner of the Nonfiction Category in the Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. 2021 Writing Contest |
Voices on the Move: An Anthology by and about Refugees, Edited by Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan, Solis Press, 2020, https://solispress.com/9781910146460.html
This multi-genre anthology is a collection of diverse artistic works ranging from poetry to creative fiction and non-fiction, from drama to photography. The collection is inspired by the multilayered experience of displacement, with a focus on the migration of what Edward Said calls “large aggregates of humanity” of the last several decades. Most of the contributors to the collection are themselves immigrants or refugees, or have worked with displaced peoples, such as migrants unfairly kept in detention centers or struggling to resettle in their host countries. This offers an added level of authenticity and truthfulness to their work. The multifaceted artistic exploration of the trauma of migration unfolds with a sense of urgency that engages and awakens readers to the harsh realities faced by millions as they escape war, famine, and gang violence only to encounter new and unexpected difficulties in the countries where they have asked for refuge. This book could not be more relevant and necessary today, having arisen as a direct and impassioned response to the present realities of the migration of peoples, in the belief that artistic expression in all its forms has the power to transform, heal, raise consciousness, and incite to real action in the world. |
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Chapters
Mothers, Motherhood, and Globalization, Edited by Dorsia Smith Silva, Laila Malik, Abigail Palko, Demeter Press, 2017, http://demeterpress.org/books/mothers-mothering-and-globalization/
Chapter Three
Of Bodies, Borders, and European Belonging: Trial of a Child Denied and the Sterilization of Roma Mothers in the Czech Republic, by Roxana Cazan
Chapter Three
Of Bodies, Borders, and European Belonging: Trial of a Child Denied and the Sterilization of Roma Mothers in the Czech Republic, by Roxana Cazan
Women and Resistance in the Maghreb: Remembering Kahina, Edited by Nabil Boudraa and Joseph Krausse, London: Routledge, 2021, https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Resistance-in-the-Maghreb-Remembering-Kahina/Boudraa-Krause/p/book/9780367490072
Chapter Nine
Denouncing State Complicity in Prostitution: Activism and Resistance in Nabil Ayouch’s Film Much Loved (2015) and Laila Lalami’s Novel Secret Son (2009), by Roxana Cazan
Chapter Nine
Denouncing State Complicity in Prostitution: Activism and Resistance in Nabil Ayouch’s Film Much Loved (2015) and Laila Lalami’s Novel Secret Son (2009), by Roxana Cazan
