American Gypsy by Oksana Marafioti (2012)

I was probably supposed to read this book before I introduced Okasana Marafioti as a speaker on a panel I was moderating at the American Library Association, but I didn't. After meeting Oksana, I was fascinated by her story and bought the book, even dipped into it, but it somehow got lost in my piles of other things I had to do that month. Now I finished it and am so glad.

During her talk to us librarians, I realized I knew so little about the Romani or Gypsies. Latvians have plenty of tales of them, and I too had mostly a stereotypical view of them, knew nothing of their history, just knew they were throughout Europe, were prosecuted by the Nazi's, were settled around Sabile in Latvia. Oksana gave us a quick history and because they were accepted in very few places, they became traveling entertainers, with little time to write down their histories, their stories. Now, people like Oksana are writing about the Romani experience.

The other reason I felt connected with Oksana, was that she was born in Riga, Latvia, though her family mostly lived outside Moscow, while she was growing up. Her grandfather ran a traveling troupe of performers who sang and danced. Oksana learned to play the piano, performed and traveled with them, but when she went to school, she found that being a Gypsy made her unpopular. Then about a year before the Soviet Union fell apart, her immediate family - father, mother, sister and herself got a visa to America. They landed in Los Angeles where they thought it would be easy to earn good money like they had in the Soviet Union, but found it was much harder.

I am assuming that most of this is her personal story, though I also know Oksana spent some time at the Library of Congress researching the Gypsies of the Soviet Union for her book, so she probably didn't get all the stories from her relatives. I felt her immigrant experience deeply, as I come from immigrants who dodn't quite fit in, have their own culture, community, family expectations. Plus it is a growing up story, issues with parents, boyfriends, finding oneself - on the one hand universal, on the other hand unique. I am afraid I have missed my chance to get to know this woman personally, but maybe I will have another chance to meet her, even if she lives in Las Vegas, a city I hadn't planned to visit again.