Amy L. Sasser

05 July 2012

Resurrecting the Roma:
Have Gypsies Become the Forgotten Immigrant Culture?

          As a person who plays role-playing games largely based on adventuring far and wide from one’s home, I have always been interested in nomadic cultures. In particular, “gypsies” have always held a mystique and appeal that begged further exploration. While in this course, we have studied several immigrant and minority groups and their literature, as well as how these boundaries overlap one another. I began to wonder whether gypsies could be considered an immigrant group, or if there even is a significant gypsy population within the United States. In my research, I have not only found that gypsies are an immigrant culture, but also that they have a unique literary history.

          First things first, let’s look at the nomenclature. These proud people are not actually gypsies at all. This name derived from “Europeans who wrongly attributed their swarthy complexion to being vagabonds from Egypt. The people whom we call Gypsies refer to themselves as Rom or Roma” (Little Dust Productions). In fact, the Romani people “are part of an ethnic group whose ancestors left India a thousand years ago” (Little Dust Productions). For most of us, what we know of the Romani is the romanticized version we see in film or hear in song. “Novels, poems, plays, films and songs over the past several centuries have portrayed ‘gypsies’ as free-spirited, promiscuous, indigent criminals who dance around campfires and are fortunetellers, thieves and liars. ‘Gypsies’ are carefree and enjoy an almost childlike innocence and release from duty. ‘Gypsies’ practice witchcraft, steal babies in the dead of night and are filthy and unkempt, so the stories say” (Randall). In fact, this very stereotype of the dirty thief has helped the Romani avoid full assimilation into American or other societies, as their diaspora spread throughout the world. They maintain a coherent ethnic identity, however, because “they are united not only by a common origin, but also by a history of social discrimination and racial persecution which peaked in the Holocaust” (International Romani Writer's Association). I was surprised to learn more about the Romani persecution alongside the Jews during the Holocaust, but found that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an area devoted to just this aspect of it. Like the Jews, “the Nazis judged Roma to be ‘racially inferior.’ . . . . Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary internment, forced labor and mass murder” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). This prejudice still continues to this day. Take, for example, the Marks family. They are the subject of the documentary film “American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody’s Land.” In 1986, police raided the Marks family home, “during which police destroyed sacred items, searched babies’ diapers, body-searched women, removed decorative gold finger nails from their hands and seized a large amount of cash – without a search warrant” (Little Dust Productions). The search itself served to make the women “unclean” because “ritual purity laws mean that women are permanently tainted by the touch of outsiders” (Little Dust Productions). This family took a very American tack and decided to sue the police department for damages and discrimination. Because the world of the Romani is very secretive and fraught with “hush-hush conventions . . . the family has been ostracized by their own people; the rest of Spokane’s Romani community left town to avoid associating with the Marks family. Now they are pariahs in both American and Romani society” (Little Dust Productions). They can be neither fully Romani nor fully American now. Just like many of the other groups we have studied, the Romani are misunderstood and feared or hated simply by virtue of their birth.

          While all of this is fascinating, and is something I intend to look further into, I also wondered about literature. What might I be able to find about Romani writitngs, particularly considering the somewhat closed-off nature of their society? After my initial search, I was pleased to find that the tradition is rich and growing. “There has never been any shortage of literature about, rather than by, Gypsies” and this history portrays the familiar image of gypsies as cunning rogues and untrustworthy charlatans (Dowd). Recent efforts have begun to collect works from Romani authors, even sprouting an International Romani Writers' Association that is working on establishing a library, which “has two aims. On the one hand it seeks to contribute to nurturing and reinforcing the cultural identity of Romani as a language of contempoary literature and in particular to encourage the younger generation to read and intself to write creatively. On the other hand the Romani Library is intended to make Roma literature accessible to a broad spectrum of readers in order to combat prejudices, to enliven intercultural dialogue and to promote the recognition of Roma literature as in integral part of European and World literature and culture” (International Romani Writer's Association).

Sadly, I was unable to find many online resources with lists, examples or texts from Romani writers. One place that seemed promising did have a few poems, but it carried a warning that the page was “antiquarian – possibly outdated” and “brought to you by an archive” (http://www.oocities.org/romanionnie/). This site, however, still gives example of some common phrases in Romanes (the Roma language) and some short poetry by Romani authors. There seems to be a more recent push for preservation of the Roma heritage and history through websites, organizations and festivals. The Voice of Roma website (http://voiceofroma.com) has links to activities and events around the world, as well as some short educational bits helping to break the “Gypsy” stereotypes. The Gypsy Lore Society (http://www.gypsyloresociety.org) is also working to preserve and protect the Roma heritage, and has a few books, a newsletter and other resource sections. In particular, it lists several “Gypsy and Traveler Groups in the United States” along with descriptions of their immigration patterns within the US (http://www.gypsy

loresociety.org/additional-resources/gypsy-and-traveler-culture-in-america).

          In all, I’ve found that the Romani are, indeed, an immigrant society. In fact, similar to the Jews and the Irish we’ve seen in our coursework, they have managed to maintain their own culture and identity and to avoid assimilation to the dominant culture. Their history is rich and varied, and much like the Irish, they have spread around the world in tremendous numbers. With further research, I can learn more about their origins and their immigration story and increase awareness of this dynamic group of people.