I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies
by Yaron Matras
Penguin
6 Feb 2014
History | Nonfiction (Adult)
“So entrenched is our fictional image of Gypsies that we often brush aside real-world experiences as a mirage when they contradict the picture that we have absorbed and internalized.”
I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies offers a rare overview of the Romani people and their history, from their origins in India to modern day activism within the European Union.
For those with an interest in migration and linguistics, the first chapters provide a fascinating look at the Sanskrit roots of the Romani language. “People are often surprised to hear that Romani is in fact a fully fledged language just like any other, that it has its origins in India, that it is related to Sanskrit, an ancient language associated with Indian scholarship and religion, and that it has been preserved by the Romani populations through oral traditions and in a variety of dialects for many centuries.” Even in modern times, “On the rare occasions when Romani Gypsies meet south Asians from India or Pakistan, they are astonished to discover that they can understand many of the words these people use in their language, such as Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. There is thus a connection with eastern Europe – Romania and Hungary – but also with far-away India.”
I especially like how this book clears up the differences between the Romani, Irish Travellers and other groups often lumped together under the term ‘Gypsy.’ Many people are still under the impression that being Romani is a lifestyle, perhaps even one they can adopt themselves! It also describes how the Romani people have layered identities, with their ethnic backgrounds, countries of residence and countries of citizenship resulting in historical and cultural differences. This might be frustrating for some readers who were expecting an easy guide to the ‘Gypsy lifestyle.’
These differences among the Romani people offers a challenge to an author who couldn’t possibly cover every Romani community worldwide. “What do women who live in houses, wear traditional long skirts, speak Romani to their family members and are offended when somebody calls them ‘Gypsies’ have in common with women who live in caravans, wear shorts, use only the occasional Romani word and refer to themselves as ‘Gypsies?’ What does a Romani coppersmith in Bulgaria share with a Romani used-car dealer in Los Angeles? How can a Spanish musician of Gitano background feel represented by a Hungarian Romani member of the European Parliament?”
Unfortunately Matras does not explicitly outline how Romani face discrimination because of their (often) darker skin and surnames that are (often) immediately recognisable to the majority population as being a Romani surname. This has terrible implications for accessing employment, healthcare and housing and many readers may assume that a Romani person could easily pass as ‘White’ or just change their ‘lifestyle’ and avoid facing discrimination. Imagine applying for a job in a country where your surname basically means ‘Gypsy.’ For some, ‘passing’ is not possible. Indeed, there are many examples in this book of Romani attempting to pass as Greek, Italian, Jewish or other races to avoid discrimination, especially in countries that have a more multicultural population where such a thing is possible. “I recall my Romani friend who drives from village to village to offer his services to potential clients and who claims, when asked about his origin, to be Irish or Italian. ‘I make a living by denying who I am,’ he says.” Another telling story involves a Romani person giving an overview of the history of his people. “But on one occasion he was lost for words. ‘If it’s all as bad as you describe,’ asked an inconspicuous young man at the end of one of the lectures, ‘then why did you choose to become a Gypsy?’ His image of Gypsies had marked them as a mere lifestyle, a fashion, a brand.”
I would have also liked if it the author had specifically addressed the impact of slavery (a system in place until the 1850s) and segregated schooling has had on Romani people from certain countries. They are often described as the least integrated and the most visible, but few readers would have any knowledge that they had been held in long term slavery or had been denied education or put into segregated classes. If I recall correctly, he introduces the topic of slavery in another section briefly, when I think many of the readers would have little knowledge of slavery outside of African-American history or perhaps Russian serfs. “Romani slaves were in demand because of their skilled crafts and their importance to the economic market. With the growing dependency of landowners, monasteries and the Crown on Romani slaves, the Romanian term Tigan came to be used synonymously with ‘slave’ and it still has a derogatory connotation in the Romanian language today.” All these topics are covered in the books, but given frequent media debates about why some Romani people have ‘failed’ to integrate, I think a conclusion to that chapter really discussing the impact of these policies would have been helpful. On the other hand, so many books and articles on the Romani people are based strongly on the author’s opinion or political leanings that perhaps the author wanted to avoid that.
I see the reviews are a bit mixed and I believe it might be because of an uneven style of writing between the book chapters. For example, for some of the chapters Matras includes personal stories and direct quotes from Romani people. In other chapters, especially within the chapter covering the 1940s, the history is directly presented mainly through facts. I imagine this could be to avoid heated debate or to clear up misconceptions, but it does make for dry reading. For example, he says “Many Romani prisoners at Auschwitz were subjected to the medical experiments of Josef Mengele and his collaborators.”
How much more impact this chapter would have had if he had included, say the story of a survivor such as Theresia Seible ? Her story, from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: “The response was the Theresia should be allowed to continue the pregnancy on condition that the babies would be turned over, upon their birth, to the clinic at the University of Wuerzburg. There, Dr. Werner Heyde, professor of neurology and psychiatry, and a key member of the Nazi euthanasia program, was conducting research on twins. Apparently, Dr. Joseph Mengele also took a personal interest in the Sinti twins…The babies were not included, and Theresia immediately went to the clinic to see them. When she arrived she was told she could not see them, but Theresia pushed her way in. She found Rolanda lying dead in a ward with a bandaged head, the victim of experiments with eye coloration. Hysterical at this discovery, Theresia grabbed the surviving twin, Rita, and fled. Later that day or the next, Rita was removed from her parents and taken back to the clinic. Theresia and Gabriel did not see her again for another year. Within a few days of these events Rolanda’s body was released to her parents and they arranged for a proper Sinti funeral. A week later Theresia was forcibly sterilized.’ (Source here, under About this Photograph)
I say this because there is some debate in the reviews for this book about whether the Romani people really suffered enough during World War II or trying to make this some awful competition between them and the Jewish people. Indeed, there is no shortage of people in this book who have both Romani and Jewish heritage. “Claims for compensation for physical damage through sterilization and for psychological damage through incarceration were not recognized for this reason. Claims for lost possessions were rejected on the basis of a wholesale prejudice that Gypsies did not own possessions. Claims for compensation for lost income on the basis of a reduction of earning capacity (as a result of physical and psychological damage and years lost due to imprisonment) were rejected on the grounds that Gypsies were unlikely to have sought employment even under more favourable circumstances. Like the German Jews, the Roms had been stripped of their citizenship rights by the Nazi regime’s racist legislation.”
There is a scathing and lengthy summary of women who pretend to have Romani heritage, with no family tree or genetic testing proof to back up their claims. These seem to arise after employment issues, taking an interest in the new age or the arts. I have seen the Romani community on Reddit and Tumblr absolutely fed up with people pretending to be of Romani heritage to lend credibility to their tarot card reading or witchcraft publications, but honestly, I wish some of those pages had been dedicated to the very real victims of the Nazis. The women profiled seemed mentally unwell and caught up in a fantasy of what it means to be Romani (“have embraced a Gypsy brand of individuality and rebellion as an escape from situations of emotional despair where they felt desolate, abandoned and excluded.”) However, I hope the author obscured their identity well enough as I fear seeing themselves called out like this might result in some sort of self-harm. One of the women profiled is supposedly from my own state here in Australia. In fact, I attended a lecture here in Australia by a criminologist covering how many non-Romani women would dress up as ‘Gypsy fortune tellers’ during WWI to give families news of their boys at the front, and then of course people would blame actual Romani people for preying on anxious and grieving families. This is nothing new.
I’m not looking to debate cultural appropriation or mental illness here, but rather point out that the Romani people have a lengthy history of hiding their racial background (for good reason) and forced adoptions dating all the way back to the reign of Maria Theresa, if not even earlier. Forced removals is a common topic on the European Roma Rights Centre website and a number of posts in the Romani Reddit community are from Americans who were adopted from Eastern Europe wondering how they can find out about their background. For example, the author states “The thought of even more permanent separation of children through boarding schools or foster homes is even more troublesome, and Roms in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Hungary and Switzerland are still haunted by the memory of periods in the history of their communities during which the practice of separating Romani children from their families was encouraged by authorities as a means of forcibly integrating the young generations of Roms into mainstream society.” I personally would have hesitated to ‘call them out’ until they at least offered to provide a family history or genetic testing, which would typically show South Asian and West Asian heritage. Overall it’s a fine and occasionally humorous part of the book, but again more personal stories from the era covering WWII through the Cold War would have been better.
I enjoyed reading about the personal dramas of activists and the workings of the European Union, but it does require an interest in politics and bureaucracy. One can see the author has limited patience for many activists or some of their methods. He does recognise that some Romani come from more privileged backgrounds than others in this chapter. “Many Romani activists are in fact of mixed parentage. They are often individuals who grew up within the mainstream culture, ashamed of, or afraid to acknowledge, their Romani family connections. Others are persons of Romani background who acquired an education and spent the early years of their careers capitalizing on their Romani connections by engaging in academic research on Romani culture or providing expertise to public services and institutions on Romani society. They feel a strong commitment to challenging prejudice and to improving the destiny of their people. But many years of their lives have been spent struggling for recognition and acknowledgement among their non-Romani colleagues and peers.”
Overall, I found this book to be a useful, if occasionally dry, overview into the Romani Diaspora. I wish more people would pick up this book rather than watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and think they know or understand all about the Romani people worldwide. I have found many people have very strong opinions on the Jewish and Romani people, but can’t even describe who those people are and they have no familiarity with the different types of Jewish and Romani people. As the book says, “But I do hold the view that we need to rethink and revise our picture of the Romani people and to move away from the literary images and brands, and on to understanding the real everyday lives and aspirations of a real people.”
I note that many of the negative reviews on GoodReads refer to Yaron Matras as ‘she’ or ‘her.’ One review says “The author also spends a great deal of time talking about her experiences working with the Gypsy population as if that makes her an expert on it, when she should really be considered one of those do-gooder leftist types that tends to inflame rather than resolve the problems of identity politics in the contemporary world.’ I’m just basing this on the author profiles on The University of Manchester website, GoodReads, Amazon and Wikipedia, but Yaron Matras is a man and is referred to everywhere with ‘he’ and ‘his.’