Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (Vintage Departures) [ペーパーバック]

This book opens with a chapter on the great Romany poet, Papusza (born as Bronislawa Wajs), which appeared earlier in The New Yorker. As Fonseca tells us, Papusza wrote a long autobiographical ballad about hiding in the forests during World War II--"Bloody Tears: What We Went Through Under the Germans in Volhynia in the Years 43 and 44." Discovered by the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski in 1949, Papusza also wrote of the Jewish experience and "the vague threat of the gadjikane" (non-Gypsy) world." But her 1987 death in Poland, where she had lived most of her life, went unnoticed.

That is an appropriate beginning, for this book is not academic anthropology--and it more than admirably explains, from the Roma point of view, what it means to live in a world that remains largely threatening to the Roma. The book is not uniformly complimentary. But Fonseca lived for a period with Roma families, learned their separate and distinct Romany language, traveled across Eastern Europe with them, observed the poverty-stricken ghettos and mud hovels in which the poorest made their beds. And one finds in her closeness to them a sympathy altogether lacking in many other works.

Fonseca writes of her own extensive experience, of course, but also refers to more than 140 scholars, including the fine work of Rom professor Ian Hancock and Jan Yoors. The latter likewise lived among Roma, albeit during the pre-war and World War II eras. She recounts the likely path that the Roma traveled from India to Europe, their centuries of enslavement, their high rate of illiteracy (and cultural reasons for it), their experience during the Holocaust, which the Roma appropriately term the Devouring--and the new generation of Rom leaders who hope to lead their people to a more productive and accepted role in European and world society.

For anyone who has ever wondered about the Rom--especially those wanting a portrait that moves beyond the stereotypes of literature and music like Carmen--this is a fine place to begin. Alyssa A. Lappen

My husband and myself are from one of the largest Rom villages in the former Yugoslavia. While we found Isabel Fonseca's book entertaining, some the information was inadequate. Most of the rituals and superstions she describes are not adheared to in our village at all. American Rom sometimes cling to these beliefs because they do not want to become assimilated into society. In our country that will never be the case. We will never be seen as equals, or as Slovenes,nor would we be treated as Slovenes. Our village is known for its celebration of Rom culture and its independence. We have our own stores, bars, disco, drama club, folklore dance group and are members of the International Romani Union. We speak only Romani in the home. While we do not adhear to the stringent codes of behavior that Fonseca's Rom subscibe to, we still remain a separate minority in society - and we are proud to be Roma!

Fonseca writes inteliigently, integrating many sources and personal observations, but this book remains rather too narrowly intent upon rather journalistic glimpses of Roma life throughout 1990s East-Central Europe. She combines her own interviews and reading with reflections upon how "gypsies" and Jews coexist and play off each other's stereotypes in the eyes of the dominant culture that illuminate from her own perspective (her mother's Jewish) how marginalised peoples have to survive often on the less respectable fringes of a world that both inflates and diminishes the power of "the Other." Especially revealing is her exploration of "the Devouring," the Roma cataclysm during WWII.

Others have commented on the fact that she only delves in-depth into one Albanian family, and I agree that this concentration lessens the impact of the rest of her book, which follows in a more general survey Roma in Bulgaria, Romania, Germany with glimpses in the Czech lands, Poland, and the Balkans. She refers to other "gypsies" in the West and India, and I realise that publication pressures may have limited her ability to give all the detail she may have wanted to, or, on the other hand, that she chose a few representative places and events to stand for the whole panorama.

But, I did feel that she sensed an exhaustion of the topic by the last chapter, a weary recountal of conferences and rather fruitless statements of purpose by "professional Gypsies" and the academic and public policy specialists who follow the Roma. She writes from an American identity but her prose uses Britishisms to arrive at a expat, mid-Atlantic style that makes her seem more detached from her subject than she may have meant. (Perhaps the influence of her now-partner, Martin Amis, in assistance when she worked on this book can partially account?) While Fonseca has done her reading and strives mightily at giving us an popularised introduction to the Roma, her chapters vary widely in interest and verve, and the book took me much longer to read as a result.

Lively depictions of a train trip from Poland to Germany vie with desultory recitals of conversations with countless individuals who have little of interest to relate. Careful crafting of her sentences collides with boilerplate renderings of findings reminiscent of anthropological term papers. This may have been Fonseca working as best she could with the interviews she had, but a more severe editor could've pushed her to do more with what she compiled, or to cut to the best portions for a much smaller but more energetic account.