Award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist, and poet, Cristina A. Bejan shares the deeply foundational experiences and supportive Northwestern professors who encouraged her to pursue her intellectual and creative interests, and take advantage of fellowship opportunities abroad to expand upon her research. At Oxford she fell into the history department, and found intellectual joy and rigor in its all encompassing nature. Encouraged by mentors and inspired by her Romanian heritage, Bejan expanded upon her thesis exploring democratization in post-1989 Romania by looking further back into the country's complex political history. On this episode of Northwestern Intersections, Bejan shares insights behind her book Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association, and how Criterion and it's founder Petru Comarnescu inspired the creation of the arts collective, Bucharest Inside the Beltway. Bejan also shares the origins of her stage name Lady Godiva, and how her recent collection of spoken-word poetry, Green Horses on the Walls, has fostered connections and solidarity across the Romanian diaspora.
Northwestern Intersections will be featuring all-female guests during the month of March in recognition of Women’s History Month, so we may uplift and celebrate the alumnae who are shaping their respective fields.
Released March 17, 2022.
Transcript
CAT RECKELHOFF: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, a podcast where we talk to alumni about how key experiences have propelled them in their life's work. I'm your host Cat Reckelhoff from the Northwestern Alumni Association. And I'm delighted to introduce today's guest, Cristina Bejan.
Cristina is an award winning Romanian-American historian, theater artist, and poet. A Rhodes and Fulbright scholar, she currently teaches history at Metropolitan State University of Denver. A playwright, her work has been produced in the US, UK, Romania, and Vanuatu. And she performs her spoken word poetry under her stage name, Lady Godiva.
Cristina co-founded and currently runs the arts group Bucharest inside the Beltway. Her history book, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association, was published in 2019. And the following year her debut poetry collection, Green Horses on the Walls, appeared.
Both books have won numerous awards. Christina is currently working on publishing a volume of four of her 19 total plays. A polyglot, she writes creatively in five languages, and has been published internationally in every genre she writes in. Returning to the state of her and her grandmother's births, welcome to Intersections, Cristina.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Thank you so much for that generous introduction, Cat. And thank you and Northwestern for this opportunity and tremendous honor. I love Northwestern so much. And it is a great joy that I get to share why it's the best school on Earth today.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I'm so happy to hear that. So why don't we start from the beginning with your Northwestern experience. I know in our previous conversations you have said really explicitly how foundational it was and you had so many influential professors while you were in school. So tell me a little bit about your Northwestern experience and what shaped you while you were there.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Thank you. I think I should first share why I chose Northwestern. Because I think my story demonstrates that college can totally change your life. And so for me, I was going into college with the goal of becoming a professional Shakespearean actor. And I wanted to go to the best school in terms of acting training.
But also, because of my family background with just knowledge being so central to what we're all about, I wanted to go to a serious, let's just say, not just a liberal arts school as well, but a school where I could study many other subjects in addition to theater. And I think it's clear to everyone listening that Northwestern is the best school in the world if you want to do both those things.
So I entered Northwestern as a theater major really thinking I was going to be an actor. And I think it was my second quarter I took a philosophy class with Professor Terry Pinkard. And after that first lecture I felt like I had some kind of just transcendental experience of, oh my goodness, I am in intellectual paradise.
And I walked over to the philosophy department and declared a double major without even thinking about it. I just did it. I didn't even consult my parents. And that is part of the magic of university is you can make those discoveries. And it was declaring that double major that really opened up my world and my mind.
So I really dove into philosophy. Professor Pinkard became my honors thesis supervisor, but then he took a sabbatical for a year towards the end of my Northwestern experience. So I had the opportunity to work with Bachir Diagne. And Professor Diagne took over as my honor honors thesis supervisor.
And I think that was such an incredible gift. They're both world class scholars, but they brought very different things to the table in terms of just my exposure to all the different dimensions of philosophy. And so it was declaring that double major, and because of that I started taking courses in all sorts of different departments, including but not limited to history.
I took Peter Hayes' famous the History of the Holocaust course, which I had no idea-- I couldn't predict how that would shape my life. Because I eventually worked for a long time at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. And Ingrid Zeller in the German department became a mentor. And I did study abroad in Germany.
And that led to one of my most magical-- I keep using the word magic-- Northwestern experiences, which was a project that was in both the German and theater departments. I wrote a play about the Buchenwald concentration camp and produced it in both departments with the support.
Professor Zeller was the advisor on the project. But Northwestern's theater professor, Barbara Butts, a very well known theater professor, her husband at that time was a professional actor in Chicago. And he starred in the play. So I had this opportunity to work with this acclaimed professional actor. And so that was amazing.
I wrote my honors thesis in Deering Library, which is one of the most beautiful libraries probably in North America. And I also just had a lot of, I would say in terms of not thinking outside my studies, it was the geography of Northwestern-- I didn't realize when I selected the school, but being able to run on Lake Michigan every day was amazing.
I mean, if you've been to Northwestern you know how beautiful Lake Michigan is. And to be on the water, I was very fortunate to be going downtown all the time into Chicago, specifically the Ukrainian village and the Polish neighborhood. My best friend at Northwestern was Serbian. I'm Romanian.
So it was this opportunity to really dive into my roots in a way that I hadn't in North Carolina where I grew up. And maybe just a couple more things to say, it was my senior year that we, my roommate and I, threw these "Slove" parties, which stands for Slav plus love equals "Slove".
And we had these Eastern European themed parties in our little apartment above Einstein's Bagels. And everybody came. It wasn't just our theater friends. It was friends from all different parts of the university, including our professors. So it's pretty much every professor I mentioned so far and also Sara Vaux, the Director of Fellowships, professor in the religion department.
By that point she had become a mentor of mine. Because Professor Pinkard from philosophy insisted that I visit the Office of Fellowships, and that I would be a good candidate for international fellowships. And it's because of Sara that I did go on and apply for the Rhodes, and Marshall, and Fulbright.
And it is also because of Sara and Beth, the current director, that I was successful in winning the fellowship. I won Rhodes and Fulbright. So I think it all ties together in that Northwestern gave me so many opportunities and also just such a rich college experience that was both serious studies but also just this vibrant social life. Yeah, it was pretty awesome.
CAT RECKELHOFF: That sounds like such an amazing experience to have as a student. I love that you were throwing these Slove parties, and they were attended by all your friends, and your professors, and everyone was just like having a great time.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And actually I am going to plug my senior year roommate, because she just-- I mean, I'm so proud of her. She just became the Vice President of programming at one of the major theaters in New York state. And that was national news. So that just happened last week. Her name is Laura Savia.
And we both were coming at theater from these different angles and so supportive of each other. She took the very professional theater path here in the United States. And I took a very different path, but still creative. And the fact that she's risen to the top, and is so humble, and such a wonderful person, I'm just so, so proud of her. So Northwestern should be proud of her as well.
CAT RECKELHOFF: We at the Northwestern Alumni Association love knowing what our alumni are up to so we can invite them onto shows like this and talk to them, or invite them onto webinars, or have a chance to connect with them and share their experiences out with the Northwestern community. So I always, always appreciate a recommendation.
So let's talk a little bit about the Rhodes and the Fulbright. So I know you were encouraged by Sara Vaux. And you were encouraged by your wonderful professors to apply because you were a great candidate for international fellowship. So tell me a little bit about applying and about Oxford.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Sure. So I just have to, again, give so much credit to Sara, and Beth, and the team and the fellowships office. This is Beth Pardoe. It was very rigorous the training that we had in the fellowships office, but also very personal. So it was through that process that I actually made my Oxford best friend, because we went off to Oxford together.
Tracy Carson, another person who needs to be plugged, because she is tremendously successful in DC at the State Department. And it was this environment where we were really valued as individuals what we brought to the table. And I think that this is different from other schools where the fellowships office are kind of factories. And it wasn't like that at all.
So we were encouraged to study in terms of our proposal for Oxford what we wanted to study. And we were also really encouraged to figure out what we were passionate about. So I think that I brought those things to my Rhodes and Marshall interviews.
And I think it was just the nurturing of our passions that we had that definitely made me win the Rhodes, because I was sort of oblivious to all of the other stuff. I think I really, and I imagine Tracy would agree, I really benefited from not understanding all of the trappings around being a Rhodes Scholar.
I really just showed up and was like, this is what I care about. And why do you not care about this? Apparently, I grilled the former director of the CIA as to why he wasn't helping Romania more as the director of Freedom House, because my college internship was at Freedom House. And I think it was that fearlessness that I just kind of went in and was myself.
And so the most memorable part of my Rhodes interview experience was-- I mean, they're not really familiar with people coming from theater departments. I would say, unfortunately, the stereotype of a Rhodes scholar is a political science major who wants to work at McKinsey and go into politics.
And unfortunately, there's always truth to stereotypes. So they didn't really know what to do with me. And at the end of my interview, Johnny Apple, the chair of the committee, said, well, you know it's a shame we couldn't see you perform. And I said, well, I can do a monologue for you.
Because here at this point I was a trained Shakespearean actor. And so they were like, OK. And so I did Abigail from The Crucible by Arthur Miller, her monologue, her sort of profession of love to John Proctor. And this had been my audition monologue forever.
I mean any actor knows you have to have a number of monologues to pull out of your pocket. So this was not a big deal for me at all. And I performed and dropped to my knees at the end like I always do to plead with John Proctor. And the room was silent, and I left, and then I was declared one of the winners.
And Johnny Apple came up to me-- he was a very famous critic for The New York Times. He's since passed away. And I realize now I was really lucky that he liked me. So he said, you know, Cristina, it's not every time that Lady Godiva walks through that door. You had the whole committee in tears.
And so there are two parts of that. Why would they be in tears? Oh, I was interviewing in Washington. And The Crucible is an allegory for the McCarthy Era and accusing your enemies of being something that should then rule them out of society. Of course, McCarthy era being accusing people of being communists. So it really resonated with everyone apparently.
But then the second part is he named me Lady Godiva, the historical figure who rode naked through her town to protest tax exploitation. It was her husband who she was protesting against him. And what the allegory means is somebody who stands up for truth.
I, of course, didn't really realize it at the time, but then Lady Godiva very naturally became my spoken word stage name where I share all sorts of truths that people probably don't want to hear, but here I am.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I really like how the story of applying for the Rhodes Scholarship has already planted seeds for what we're going to see in the future. So we're going to circle back to Lady Godiva. But first, let's talk a little bit about why you ended up transitioning into the history department at Oxford.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yes, of course. We must arrive in Oxford. So I mentioned and emphasized how the fellowships office was really encouraging our passions and intellectual interests. And at this point, I was solidly in the philosophy department writing my honors thesis on Immanuel Kant, but also exploring democratization in post 1989 Romania.
And Kant's theory of autonomy, how does that apply to new democracies in civil society? So I was going to Oxford intending to continue that. But, and this is a funny thing about Rhodes Scholarship that I'm sure very few people know, is that the philosophy department at Oxford when I won the Rhodes was not accepting Rhodes scholars philosophy department.
Because they did not deem American Rhodes scholars as serious students. So the American Secretary called me up when I was not accepted to my program to say, Christina, this has nothing to do with you. They just don't accept Rhodes scholars this philosophy department. They don't think we're serious.
They think that we're all athletes and not really bookworms, which true there was truth to that. I can't really speak to today, because they've changed the requirements. But Rhodes scholars-- so I won it in 2003, you had to have a sport. And this was part of Cecil Rhodes' will was that you couldn't just be a bookworm, you also had to have manly athletic abilities.
Well, of course, they opened up to women in the late 70s. But I guess manly abilities still means you had to be on some sort of sports team. I don't know.
CAT RECKELHOFF: So bizarre.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yeah, so strange. But it was that that the philosophy department at Oxford, so they thought, well, they're not serious students, because they're all doing sports. But I also guess that they must have had experience with Rhodes scholars that led them to believe that they weren't serious students.
But a year or two after me Elliot, the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, was able to--I guess there had been pressure from Rhodes on the university saying, come on. This is ridiculous. So a year or two after I was admitted they did accept a Rhodes scholar who's now a professor of philosophy.
But I actually think that this barrier-- at the time it was devastating-- but I think it was one of those blessings in disguise because I had to find another department for my project. And what I did was I wrote up my proposal, which was an extension of my honors thesis at Northwestern.
And I shopped around. And I went to every department that I thought it was relevant, so poli sci, sociology, romance languages and literatures, and of course, history department. And I got super lucky because the Regius Professor, which is the most senior professor, Robert Evans of the history-- they call them faculties in the UK-- so the history faculty.
Well, he had already had some Romanian students. His wife is from Hungary. He speaks Hungarian. They raised their children speaking Hungarian. So he had this interest already in Romanian, not just contemporary politics, but history. Obviously, he had written all sorts of books himself about Central Europe.
And so it was kind of this natural fit. And I fell into this community of scholars already working on history of that region, Romania, Hungary, the Balkans, Moldova, et cetera. And then it was because of Professor Evans, one of his star students who was a professor at Oxford Brookes, Marius Turda, who's from Romania, became my mentor.
And I was working between two universities, University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes, which is the former Polytechnic. And I think I just got way luckier than I could have hoped to be.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I like that you were able to approach that barrier and think, well, I can't I can't do this, but there has to be another way I can do this project. And for you to stumble upon a professor who would be able to encourage you and actually be a really great resource in order for you to pursue this project--
CRISTINA BEJAN: And I must say, if I can sort of fast forward to right now--
CAT RECKELHOFF: Yeah.
CRISTINA BEJAN: It was falling into history that was the best decision for me intellectually. Because now that I'm teaching history, I see that it is the discipline where it encompasses everything. It encompasses theater, and poli sci, and philosophy, and literature, and film.
You name it, it's all in history. Because history is the story of humanity, human beings, our lives. And we are so multidimensional. So by kind of accidentally ending up in the history faculty, I set myself up for a lifetime of intellectual-- I mean, I know I'm using a lot of very enthusiastic words-- but I have set myself up for a life of intellectual ecstasy by being a historian.
CAT RECKELHOFF: You've come to the right place. As someone who studied art history, I was really interested right now as a student, and even now still as an adult, about the material conditions upon which an object is created. So I've had people say to me, why do you study art history? Just memorizing like Michelangelo and Picasso?
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's about history. It's about what were the material conditions that made this object possible. And what does it say about the people at the time despite-- what is say about people at the time that they were living there?
So you're absolutely right. You're constantly in the state of, I actually like what you said, intellectual ecstasy. You're always engaged. Because there's always layers to an event. Because we've talked about this before, being able to look at an event from multiple perspectives, from the ruling class, from the working class, from countries that were observing outside of the situation, and then we look back on it in retrospect, what is happening.
So yes, I am as excited as you are. I'm really feeding off your excitement right now as someone who also really loves history. So I'm all about this.
CRISTINA BEJAN: I mean, people have made fun of me because I am a learner. I come to where I teach, to my students, I want to learn. And I'm the sort of instructor that up until the very, very last moment I'm like trying to learn as much as possible. And that's, I think, history is great for that.
Because just what you said, there's always another layer. There's always another perspective. And that means-- I mean, maybe I'm sort of assuming how the rest of my life is going to go. But that means that life is never boring, because there's always something to learn.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I think that's a really wonderful way to think about it. And it's great that you as a professor you get to constantly be able to be engaged in history, and be learning something, and discovering something new. I think that's not something that many professions can offer as a kind of level of engagement and critical inquiry.
So I'm really glad that you have been able to pursue this life, and pursue this passion, and be able to have that kind of level of interrogation every day and excitement. So I think that's great.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yeah, I mean, no complaints. And also I have been able to balance my creative projects. So I think, for the moment, it's a really good mix. But I don't know. Maybe we're going to get to that in a little bit.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I mean we can, if you want, more than happy to pivot over to some of your creative projects, unless you want to talk a little bit about the Criterion Association and that project. What are you thinking?
CRISTINA BEJAN: Well Criterion is actually the best springboard to my creative projects.
CAT RECKELHOFF: Then let's get into it.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yes, so to return to I very accidentally ended up with this amazing history professor at Oxford and great community. And I knew I wanted to study-- it began with how is democracy going to work now coming after 1989? And then, oh wait, Romania had a democracy before.
And I originally knew that. I'm sure I could have figured it out on my own. But my father had fled communist Romania in 1969. So I am Romanian on my dad's side. And you mentioned in my intro I have Colorado roots on my mom's side. My mom's mom was the child of Danish and Irish immigrants here in Colorado.
You know, I grew up knowing, well, we weren't allowed to go to Romania. Because my father was considered an enemy of the state, and he would have been thrown in prison. And all this meant that he never saw his father again.
And when I was growing up in the 80s, it was just assumed-- I mean, I think it's really important at least for the older generations, myself included, to remember that it didn't seem like the Cold War was going to end. I mean, no one believed that Gorbachev-- sure, he was kind of loosening up restrictions, and perestroika, and all that.
But the fact that it just totally crumbled and all of these buffer states, including Romania, became democracies, quote unquote, overnight. I mean nobody could have predicted that. At least from my family's point of view, we thought we would never go to Romania ever.
My father put me and my sister at of bed every night with a bedtime story about his family and childhood growing up in Romania. And at one point it was, we heard about communism all the time, how about before all that? And he said, well, before communism there was fascism.
So at that point, we were aware enough of Hitler and Nazism and there's an awareness about that. So Romania had their own version of that. But what about before that? And my father shared that Romania was a democracy. It was a constitutional monarchy. It was representative government.
And it was in that regime, so we're talking '20s and '30s between the world wars, that his parents my grandparents met as students at the University of Bucharest. And so then I thought eventually fast forward in my own studies, well, this is a great case study as to why democracy can or cannot work in Romania.
Because they tried it and it didn't work. So why is that? So that became my history PhD. In order to understand what's going on now, let's return to the previous experiment with democracy. And it was that combined with, now we're returning again to Northwestern and it's greatness.
I had done an independent study with Professor Stella Radulescu in the French department. She's a very famous poet in French, English, and Romanian. And Romanians know who Romanians are. So I saw that she had a Romanian name. And I approached her and said, hey, can we do an independent study in Romanian language and literature? And she agreed, which was very nice.
And she's the one who introduced me to Eliade who was the historian of religions at University of Chicago. So there is a U of C connection. And during his time he was the most famous historian of religions in the world. But his reputation was severely damaged when it started to come out in the '80s that he supported fascism in his youth in Romania.
And so that became part of my question. How come these-- it wasn't just Eliade. Emil Cioran and his friends Johann in France, these smart, prolific, genius figures were fascist. And that just didn't make any sense to me. And the moral of the story here is that intellectuals can indeed be fascists.
So I wanted to understand how did democracy fail. I'm sure that these intellectuals becoming fascists was part of that. So that was what I saw when I went off to Romania to start my research. And I'm in the Library of the Romanian Academy.
And by this point, Professor Keith Hitchens, the late Professor Keith Hitchens from Illinois Urbana-Champaign, had given me a tip that Petru Comarnescu's personal archive was in the Library of the Romanian Academy. He was a friend in this group. He was not a fascist, but he was kind of the cultural maker.
And so that was my first stop. And his personal archive, part of it lands on my desk. And I discover the gold mine of material of the Criterion Association, which was the cultural society that he, Petru Comarnescu, founded in Bucharest when he returned from studying abroad at the University of Southern California.
And it was in California that he was inspired by democratic liberalism. He was inspired by American optimism and people smiling. And he had a great hope for Romania that Romania was going to succeed in being a democracy. And so this cultural platform that he created, it was democratic in set up and scope, inviting ideas from all over the world and across the political spectrum.
And all of these figures that I previously mentioned were part of it. Eliade, Cioran, and also this is relevant to one of my plays, Eugène Ionesco, the father of the Theatre of the Absurd, and many more. My book is both, my history book, which is based on my PhD, it's an investigation as to why intellectuals can be fascists, providing some conclusions.
And it's also the first thorough English language biography of the Criterion Association. And so I think it's a contribution on both fronts. So how does Criterion have anything to do with my own creative life? Well, I consider Petru Comarnescu to be the best friend that I will never meet. He was amazing.
I mean, what he was able to produce, and he was prolific as a writer himself, as a philosopher. But he ran this society that was promoting art. It was revolutionary what he was doing. It was basically the Romanian equivalent of the Bloomsbury Group. For many, considering Romania was a backward country in the 1930s, Comarnescu's vision was the opposite of that.
That's actually a Criterion. What inspired me, and what continues to motivate me to run Bucharest inside the Beltway, which is the arts organization that my friend Rucsandra Pop, who is an anthropologist and playwright in Bucharest, we collaborated on a cultural festival when I was there on my Fulbright, shout out to Sara Vaux and Beth Pardoe.
We had this idea we want to have our own cultural platform that's local, and international, and theater, but also all the things. And specifically in Bucharest you saw, and continue to see, amateur and professional artists collaborating. And in the United States you don't see that because everything is so siloed here.
And I wanted to bring that energy. At the time, I had moved to Washington DC when we launched it. So Bucharest inside the Beltway is inspired by the Criterion Association. And Petru Comarnescu inspires me. And the final thing I'm going to say about him, because he's so awesome, is that he is an LGBTQIA+ icon in Romania.
He went through a lot of difficult things, as I'm sure you can imagine. He did end up collaborating with the communist regime for his own survival I would say. And homophobia is still very alive in countries like Romania. So I think it's just really important to point out that this great cultural figure and pillar of what Romania could be and still can be part of that community.
CAT RECKELHOFF: All right, Cristina, so you've shared how the Criterion Association and Petru Comarnescu have linked into your own creative endeavors. And now I would like to make good on my promise to circle back Lady Godiva.
So let's talk about the intersections of these Lady Godiva, creative endeavors, and spoken word poetry. I believe that all sort of culminates in your poetry collection Green Horses on the Walls. Can you share a little bit about this collection with us?
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yes, thank you so much. I'm going to start this very brief story. In 2010, when I landed in Washington DC as a lonely postdoc, I felt very much on my own and kind of struggling. I didn't have any clarity about career or what I should be doing. So I was just kind of this leaf blowing in the wind.
And there was a Busboys and Poets at 5th and K, which it's at convention center near Shaw if you know Washington DC. The location has since moved a couple of blocks, but still, that's where it was. And I rode my bike one Wednesday night to an open mic to share, well, to get out of the apartment, but to share something that I had written.
I had been scribbling down various things my entire life in notebooks that could be called poems. But I'm sure real quote unquote "poets" wouldn't consider them poems. I shared on the mic that night and that became my, I wouldn't say creative home, because I also eventually got really involved in the theater scene. But it became this comforting place and community.
Started going to the main Busboys and Poets, from there was, quote unquote "discovered," but still maybe not really, but still invited to an underground open mic that really became my home base when it came to spoken word called Pure Poetry. There went to other open mics as well, so it's this underground scene in Washington DC. Of course, it's global. It's not just in DC.
But DC being probably, in my opinion, the best place in the world for spoken word. Kind of like the history faculty at Oxford, I just sort of landed accidentally in this place that ended up being perfect for me. So why would it be perfect? Well, spoken word poetry is, like I said, maybe more professionalized MFA poets would not consider spoken word to be real poetry.
Spoken word is often advocacy driven. It's often about social issues and difficult topics, protest poetry, performance poetry. Spoken word has its origins in the American South during slavery of enslaved African-American population, but also enslaved Africans who were not allowed to read. Literacy was, of course, not accessible during that period.
And so the oral traditions of Africa came to North America. Stories but also art were shared orally. And out of this we have today's spoken word and also rap music. So for me it ended up being perfect. Because everything for me is about justice and fighting for justice. So it was the perfect milieu.
But also, with my theater training and performance I have been able to tap into that side of me while also sharing my creative writing. Starting in 2010, over those 10 years until the book was published, I just wrote poems here and there when I felt like them, and performed them when I felt like them.
And it was just this-- I never had any, let's just say, careerism about this. This was just a joy that was in the fabric of my life. And I was in this community, this incredible creative community in Washington. Like I said, we're now 10 years in. I had just published my history book in 2019.
And I thought, well, I have all these poems. Maybe I should try to publish them. And I was very fortunate because the first publisher I sent them to picked them up. And that's Finishing Line Press. Green Horses on the Walls, it was easy to choose that title. It's the title of one of my poems.
Green horses on the walls as an expression, cai verzi pe pereti, in Romanian, which means to have impossible dreams. And my father would say green horses on the walls to me constantly. He still does. Well, he's a professor of engineering. So he's a very logical science mind.
So all of my creative activities from playwriting, to production, to spoken word poetry always seemed like green horses on the walls to him. And so that's how it got the title. And a lot of my poems are about, well, specifically, my family and their lives under communism in Romania, so about crimes of communism.
Unfortunately, this isn't talked about enough. And I think that the poetry book really resonated with the Romanian diaspora here in the United States. Because part of it is devoted to something that everybody can relate to in that community, but isn't really talked about. So I think it was cathartic for a lot of the readers. So that was a huge part of its success.
And maybe the final thing to say is I was very nervous because they're spoken word poems. So they're not meant to be written down much less available to everyone to read. And in addition to crimes of communism, the topics of mental health, and sexual assault are tackled in my book. I was nervous about sharing all this with the world.
But what I've seen since publication is that it has made me feel stronger. I've also seen these poems reach people they wouldn't have experienced in a basement in Washington DC in person. So even though it was scary, I think publishing them was a good idea.
CAT RECKELHOFF: Thank you for sharing. Have you been able to connect with more members of the Romanian American community through the publication of this book?
CRISTINA BEJAN: Yes. I was actually-- of course the pandemic has been horrendous and a nightmare for everyone. With my poetry book, however, I was able to really leverage technology and reach more people than I would have if everything had been in person.
So yes, the diaspora really has come together to support this book. Also there's this joke, but it's true. Romania has the highest speed internet in the world. And Romanian is the most common language spoken in Silicon Valley. So Romanians are just really good at the computer.
And so that worked in my favor. During the pandemic I was sharing my book and having performances and stuff. So as evidence that the diaspora has really rallied behind this, in a couple of weeks, I'll be performing some of my Green Horses poems at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City. So they're flying me out, and I'm very excited.
CAT RECKELHOFF: Congratulations. That's an incredible honor.
CRISTINA BEJAN: It's a little surreal, but I'm excited.
CAT RECKELHOFF: I think that's going to be such an incredible experience. I'm glad you're sharing it out on the podcast. Maybe some of our alumni in New York will swing by, support a fellow Northwestern alum.
CRISTINA BEJAN: That would be great.
CAT RECKELHOFF: So I actually do want to bring this back to Northwestern, unless you have anything else that you would like to share about Green Horses on the Walls.
CRISTINA BEJAN: Well, if I'm allowed to say this, you can find information about both my books, but all my publications, on my website Cristinaabejan.com. And if you order my books from me, then I can sign them and I sell them at a discount. So you can find my contact information on my website. Hope that's OK that I mentioned that.
CAT RECKELHOFF: So to bring this back to Northwestern, something that we have previously talked about in our last conversation was the pressure to stick to one kind of writing or one kind of creative pursuit. And you have clearly gravitated towards whatever you have felt most passionate and most strongly about.
What would you say to our Northwestern students who are feeling a pressure to remain very narrow in their intellectual pursuit or in their creative pursuits? What kind of insights can you share that might help them?
CRISTINA BEJAN: I'll begin by saying that you absolutely must follow your heart. So to deny a creative urge because of some external restriction, I mean, why would you do that? Because creativity is self expression. So I would say just follow your heart. Stay true to yourself.
And if you have the urge to write, write. But if you don't, that's no big deal. And I've really, I've come to believe this more strongly now that I'm on Twitter. That's a whole separate conversation is like authors on Twitter. Yeah, don't let that define you or influence you, because that's not reality at all.
And second of all, a lesson that I've learned from my father, write when you feel like it. Because if joy is associated with the act of writing, then it makes you happy. But if it's this labor, well then do something that makes you happy.
And then this links to do you need an MFA. Maybe this is a Lady Godiva moment, but no you don't. Why would you put yourself in insane debt to get an advanced degree that actually doesn't get you a job? It doesn't actually get you published at all.
I think that's another thing for students, I guess looking back I'm even more fortunate that I was able to study lots of things, because I didn't put all my eggs in one basket. So now I'm able to have this day job that I like.
Rather than have your sole identity be a writer, and then what if that doesn't work out, then what are you going to do. And maybe that's one-- I mean I could obviously go on about this. But something else to say is, don't define yourself by specifically national American gatekeeper success. Because you will never be happy.
If you're thinking, oh, I'm only a writer if Penguin publishes my book or I have an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Those things actually, I mean, yeah, here I am to tell you, they don't matter at all. Because they're superficial. To have that be what makes you a writer-- so this returns to my first point-- you make you a writer.
And so, yeah, you can write all kinds of genres. You can write a newspaper article if you want to. You can go get an MA in something really nerdy just because you're curious about it, but you can still be a writer.
And I think this is a huge problem with American careerism where we have to have this rubber stamp on making us whatever we are. I mean, at the end of the day you close your eyes at night and you're with yourself.
I guess my advice, in conclusion, for the young people is to craft a life where you can close your eyes and be like, yeah, today felt good. Let's do it again tomorrow. Because none of that other stuff, none of it, matters.
CAT RECKELHOFF: Yeah, I think there's also a really bad habit of particularly creative people trying to benchmark against one another. Because we're so used to measuring our success based off what our peers are doing. Because we spent 18 years in a schooling system where you were always benchmarking against your classmates.
But then once you graduate, those benchmarks begin to disappear. So you begin to look for them in other places like you were published by Penguin House, you had a reading at this particular theater, and using it as sort of like those mile markers to compare to how far you're going.
And it's really, really hard to break from that mindset when it was something that you grew up with and is very much ingrained.
CRISTINA BEJAN: I have found that I've been able to overcome that competitive spirit in myself because of Bucharest inside the Beltway. Because every day I'm promoting another creative. But every day, it's celebrating at least someone else if not more.
I think that's a great first step for people is to celebrate other's success. And I have found that once you start doing that, then not only are you makes you feel good, but you feel more of a community of artists than me, me, me, me, me.
Thank you, Cat. Thank you, Northwestern. Northwestern is a really, really unique and special school. And I think that every time that we can celebrate it, and so if I can encourage all of us to, when we have the opportunity, give a shout out to Northwestern and our professors. Because it really does make a difference.
CAT RECKELHOFF: Thank you, listeners, for tuning in to today's episode of Northwestern Intersections. For more information about our podcast, please visit northwestern.edu/intersections.
We will conclude our celebration of Women's History Month in the next episode, where we will be joined by Liza Katzer, Vice President of Doozer Productions, and Emmy award winning co-executive producer of the acclaimed sports comedy drama series Ted Lasso.
Liza will share how she struggled with mental health even as a Northwestern student and throughout the early years of her career in entertainment before finding a healthy and supportive work environment in Doozer Productions.
She will offer insights on being a woman in a position of power in the workplace, and the impact of the media on women's perception of themselves, and of course, how Ted Lasso is contributing to the way we understand mental health and the way we perceive older women in the media.
So please tune in. And until next time, stay safe and take care of yourself, your friends, and your community.