Kentucky Proud Evening: Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House

Kentucky Proud Evenings is a series of monthly author talks hosted at the Extension Office. Each author is local to Kentucky and is connected to the community and history of the Commonwealth. Each event will have Plate It Up! Kentucky Proud food samples for those attending.

Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House by Katerina Stoykova The fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s ushered in a new tide of European immigrants to the United States. These populations, which hailed primarily from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, were largely adrift in America's cultural melting pot. Laden with their belongings and informed by their experiences, these immigrants became citizens of a new diaspora searching for space to exist in their adopted home. In Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House, author Katerina Stoykova follows that which "calls / the roaming mind / looking for land" with the shell of her homeland at her back. Through themes of domestic abuse, the death of a parent, the loss of a friend, and the search for cultural identity, the poems in this collection transcend the borders of language and nation-states. As a Bulgarian immigrant, Stoykova weighs the differences between safety and captivity, exploring how one can feel sheltered yet still not feel at home.