Growing up in communist Romania, under the shadow of the Holocaust, WW2, The Bomb, and the Iron Curtain, Ana Doina’s life was shaped by the Cold War and the search for political and individual freedom, all but forbidden in a totalitarian regime. In her twenties, forced by political, social, and ethnic persecutions, she left Romania, immigrating to the United States. As the inheritor of that tormented past, she is embracing the poetry as witness tradition of writing to explore the lament and the wisdom left us by the tumult of the twentieth century, thus bearing witness to it not only through dates and events but also through emotional, communal, and deeply personal images. Being an emigrant/immigrant poet, Ana writes about her personal experiences of losing and finding the elusive at-home state of awareness humans need in order to live and thrive. Although autobiographical, Legend of Bread reaches out to everyone interested in how place, language, and history are formative elements in the making of a multifaceted identity. The book hopes to foster a dialog with those trying to understand the experience of exiles, political refugees, emigrants; and with the children of immigrants living with the consequences of the history that gave birth to this story.
“Ana Doina’s Legend of Bread, filters life through a hastily manufactured Communist Revolution, and a well-executed Marshall Plan leading us to humanity that will never be undone. Her poems gleam with the energetic use of her second language’s texture, rich and rewarding with memory and relevance, with departures, burials, and returns. Readers will thank her for her stubborn belief in her story and the story of untold millions.” ~ Maria Lisella, Academy of American Poets Fellow,
author of Thieves in the Family
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Ana Doina is a Romanian-born American writer living in New Jersey. She holds a Master of Arts in History and Philosophy from Bucharest University. Due to political and social pressures, she had to leave Romania during the Ceauşescu regime.
Growing up after the Holocaust and during the Cold War, as the inheritor of that tormented past, Ana Doina is exploring through poetry the lament and the wisdom left behind by that history. As an emigrant/immigrant poet, she writes about her personal experiences of losing and finding the elusive at-home state of awareness humans need in order to live and thrive.
Her poems have appeared in numerous national and international print and online magazines, anthologies, and textbooks. In the last thirty years she has been, at one time or another, one of the coordinators of the group Bergen Poets, a New Jersey community-based poetry organization; the leader of Leonia Poetry Forum, a community-based poetry study group; and a workshop instructor in the JOY poetry workshop for the Middle School District of Oakland, New Jersey. One of her poems won Honorable Mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience contest in 2007, and three of her poems were nominated for the 2000, 2002, and 2004 Pushcart Prizes. Her chapbook, The Later Generation, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024.