RABBIT STEW AND A PENNY OR TWO

Maggie Smith-Bendell has a new book out.  I have not yet read it but I'm anxious to.

FROM BBC

Maggie Smith-Bendell's life on the road

A gypsy who was born in Somerset has written a book describing her experiences travelling on the roads during her childhood in the 1950s.

Maggie Smith Bendell's book, Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two, describes the prejudice her family dealt with.

She hopes the book will help to dispel myths about gypsy culture and foster better relations with the wider public.

Her book also reveals how past monarchs sent many to their deaths, and how these prejudices still survive.

'Born and bred'

Maggie Smith-Bendell comes from Romani Gypsy stock - although the spelling may be unusual to some - this is how Romani Gypsies would spell the term rather than with a 'y', which is more commonplace.

"I've delved into Romani Gypsy history from 1498 and my people have always been treated in that way ever since they hit the shores of Scotland and England back in the 1400s.

"I was shocked by some of the things that I read and what was recorded - kings and queens have ordered gypsies to be put to death because they were gypsies and anyone associating with them for hundreds of years, so today's attitude makes me understand that it's been born and bred in the settled community from royalty."

Maggie, who was born in a pea field in Thurloxton, also recounts early memories of how a farmer and his wife, whose land they were working on, wanted to take her little brother, Alfie, away from them.

"We knew nothing about the law in the 40s - and if someone, they didn't use the word 'adopt', they used 'take' and we thought they could just come along and take whatever they wanted from us because we didn't know we had any rights."

Maggie, who has worked with councils in Somerset over planning issues for travellers' sites in Somerset through the Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group, also believes that there is a lot of ignorance of the different groups of the travelling community.

"You cannot compare the Romani Gypsy with any other group and we are now recognised as the oldest ethnic group in this country, the Romani Gypsy will live by culture, customs and traditions and we still use our Romany language, English is still second to me, even today.

"You've got your Irish community and then you've got your new traveller community who are very well-educated kids some of those but their lifestyle is by choice, they have chosen to live that way of life."

Speaking about the lack of trust between what she terms as the settled community, or house-dwellers and travellers, Maggie admits that there are criminals in her community but that Romany Gypsies also get blamed for crimes that other people do.

Maggie herself married a house-dweller, but says despite putting down roots, she still yearns to take up her ancestors' traditional way of life.

"I have got wagons and have got a mobile home. I would dearly love to hitch horse and wagon and go back to the old lanes but there are no stopping places for us anymore."

SONIA MEYER

This week I am hoping to review DOSHA, the new novel by Sonia Meyer, a constant and reliable ally of the Romani people
I'm also working of the movies
THE GOEBBLES EXPERIMENT
and
THINNER, by Stephen King

I'd like to reprint a recent entry on Ms. Meyer's blog, Dosha.
It will make you want to read more.
Blog: Dosha

Post: Persecutions of Roma/Gypsies Have Never Stopped, 1400 to Now. Why?

Link: http://soniameyer.blogspot.com/2010/09/persecutions-of-romagypsies-have-never.html

Monday, September 6, 2010


Persecutions of Roma/Gypsies Have Never Stopped, 1400 to Now. Why?

Unlike settled Europeans, who fought war after war over territories, their own and those of their neighbors, all Roma ever wanted was to be left alone. Instead of war they showed respect to the territories they crossed, as well as the bigger animals that shared their living space.

They arrived into Western culture with a great variety of professions – iron-forging, horse-dealing, basket weaving, lace-making etc., and of course entertainment – music, dancing, traveling circuses with all kinds
of performing acts, fortune-telling.

So why the enduring hate? The reasons on the part of those who live a settled life have been explained, examined, over and over again – xenophobia, prejudice, misconceptions, the need to produce a scapegoat
to blame for their own times of trouble.

But what about the part of the Roma themselves? I personally believe, as more and more open territory came under control, the professions the Roma had travelled with for centuries became obsolete through
modernization, the Roma were forced into poverty and areas encircled by the totalitarian law of Might is Right. By then, what had once been the Romani way of survival was turning against them. Life in small,
traveling units, by then had resulted in division instead of unity, lack of unity in turn made them vulnerable to attack, lack of opportunity for work, forced them into petty crime (within their own culture, theft, lying were considered high treason, and practically non-existent).

Instead of human rights, a Roma baby received brands that he or she would never able to erase.

But I firmly believe a new day is dawning for the Roma people. I see, that instead of withdrawing into invisibility at the onslaught of persecution, as they have done in the past believing that only then they could survive, Roma people are starting to unite. Modern type leaders will start to emerge from their midst. They are starting to demand their European birth rights, thereby exposing the hypocrisy of countries who call themselves democratic. As they do so, idealistic non-Gypsies have
started to, and will increase in numbers, march along their sides in support.

'Opre Roma' (Roma Rise) is becoming a reality.

THE GYPSY CHRONICLES

The Gypsy Chronicles by Alison Mackie

This is the hardest review I have done so far on the blog.  And then again, this is the first totally negative review I have done.

This story is based on stereotypes and considering the ongoing oppression of the Romani people it is beyond  trite and irrelevant.

Oh, yes, it is the story of enchanted Romani who can make matrimonial beds which increase the love and sexual prowess of all who sleep upon it.

GIVE ME A BREAK.

Ms Mackie states in her book and I quote
"WHAT QUALIFIES ME TO WRITE ABOUT GYPSIES?
   During my formative years in Sevill, I had an Andalusian Gypsy nanny by the name of Ahalita.  Unable to bear children of her own, Ahalita poured all of her maternal affection upon me.......My mother felt her intense feelings for me bordered upon obsession....The time had come to let her go...
I feel that the residue of Ahalita's spirit is somehow linked with my own....."

Sort of reminds me of GONE WITH THE WIND, and hundreds of other statements by privledged white folk.
A white person having had an African American NANNY DOES NOT QUALIFY her to speak for Black people. 

I ask Ms Mackie to analyze her own class privledge in having a HIRED GYPSY NANNY and then her being let go when her mother thought she was TOO attached to her charge.  Does she comprehend the economic implications for Ahalita, her nanny ?

I must admit to having some personal correspondence with Ms Mackie which left me feeling exploited and vulnerable.  There is controversy over how she obtains some of her stories. 

I feel especially sad and confused because Ms. Mackie has a blog under the name Gypsy chronicles, which is quite good in publishing articles about the Roma.  I fear this is a ruse to get our trust.

I not only will not recommend this book but I shiver to think that it is one of a trilogy.
Save your money.

THE PAINTED BIRD

                                     THE PAINTED BIRD BY JERZY KOSINSKI

It"s taken me all week to reread THE PAINTED BIRD.  It is a gruesomely realistic story of a small boy, surviving on his own in Poland during the Holocaust.

As Kosinsky said himself in the Afterward of this book,

"...One of the villagers favorite entertainments was trapping birds, painting their feathers, then releasing them to rejoin their flock.  As theses brightly colored creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them..."

On reading the book, the choice of that title becomes apparent.
It is hard to believe that Kosinsky is the same man who wrote BEING THERE, which was made into a movie starring Peter Sellers and Shirley MacClaine.  Or is it?  The more I think about that movie........

Kosinsky committed sucicide in the early 1990's.

Here is an excerpt from

Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography

A Life Beyond Repair

By James Park Sloan. Dutton. 505 pp. $27.95.

Reviewed by D. G. Myers

. The one passage in which the Holocaust is discussed ("Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people") is immediately followed by a longer scene in which the rape of a Jewish girl is described in brutal and excrutiating detail.

 The Painted Bird is notorious for its horrors: eyeballs are gouged out of sockets, animals are tortured, women are violated with bottles holding manure, men are devoured by rats. "The Germans puzzled me," the boy says. "Was such a destitute, cruel world worth ruling?"

This is the question that Kosinski's whole life was given over to answering. That he died by his own hand suggests that his answer, finally, was No. And so Kosinski joined a line of Holocaust writers- Tadeusz Borowski, Jean Amery, Paul Celan, Primo Levi-who by committing suicide testified that the world was beyond repair. Although The Painted Bird may not be directly about the Holocaust, although it may not be based on Kosinski's own experiences during the Holocaust, it is nevertheless an indispensable document of the Holocaust. It is perhaps the greatest example of what is coming to be known as a "second- generation" book: a contemporary report of the hell in which a survivor of the Holocaust must live, one generation after the event

TWO FILMS

These two films could not be more different in subject or content.

THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF TARAF DE HAIDOUKS is a wonderful film which chronicles several concert by the Romani musicians from Romania.  The movie is narrated by Johnny Depp, a constant supporter of Romani music in general and Taraf de Haidouks in particular.  It is so obvious in the film how much Depp is effected by the music.  Taraf de Haidouks is featured in the Romanian segment of the movie LATCHO DROM.  If you feel like dancing or just smiling this is a great film for you.

The second film, CONSPIRACY, starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci (as Adolf Eichmann) could not be more different.  This movie is a terrifying account of the Wannsee Conference, where in little over an hour, the fate of Europe's Jews and Gypsies was decided by the nazis
This movie is slow on action and terrifying in that very fact.  As Hannah Arendt stated so eloquently, this movie shows "the banality of evil".