"Growing up I spent all of my summers going back to my parents’ hometown in Bulgaria. As a young girl living in California all I wanted was to go to summer camp and have poolside barbecues like all of my American friends. Instead I was in Bulgaria with my grandparents learning to speak a language that did not feel like my own, in a culture I was not ready to embrace.
As I returned year after year, I began to see Bulgaria differently. Every Time I left, there was a longing within me to stay, to experience what it would have been and who I would have been had I grown up there.
In Bulgarian, the word pletenitsa conveys a “woven tangle.” Pletenitsa is my reckoning with my own woven tangle of Bulgarian identity. Through images and text, I weave a tapestry of nostalgia for my childhood summers in Bulgaria as well as of an upbringing there that I will never fully experience. This tapestry is a part of who I am, a tender journey through my relationship with and appreciation of my cultural identity. Most importantly it is a gift, one whose threads I will continue to weave."
