HEDERA'S FAMILY

THE ROM IN EUROPE
 
 

he Rom flag is blue for the sky, green for the earth and a red waggon wheel. These are Aryan nomads from India, arriving in Europe in the Middle Ages. In Romania they were slaves from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Genocide is practised against them.
 

I have the great privilege of their friendship and I wish to share this also with you.

Files on the ringofgold website:

Alleluia italiano. Hedera is singing in Italian though really her languages are Rom and Romanian. Her words are a complete and most beautiful theology - though she cannot yet read. ||Alphabet English ||Blue/green italiano/ English ||Child/Mother English ||Cradle English. On making gypsy cradles ||Fioretta italiano/ English/ portoghese ||Gypsy English. An essay on our friendship with Hedera embedded in an essay on Florence and Gypsies ||How to Raise a New-Born Child ||Lord's Prayer English ||Padrenostro italiano ||Mercy/Cruelty English ||Myriam di Nazareth ||Paola Cecchi, Rom in Italy English ||Rom e Firenze, italiano ||Via Crucis italiano/English/francese/spagnole/tedesco ||Francis Alexander, St Zita, The Gypsy and the Madonna italiano/English ||Rose's Story ||Karen Graffeo, Now Let Us Praise the Rom: || FACCIAMO DUNQUE L'ELOGIO DEI ROM (GLI ZINGARI) ||
FOTOGRAFIE DI KAREN GRAFFEO

Relevant Books in the Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, Florence's 'English' Cemetery, where we have taught Rom parents to write their names so they will not lose their children

Rom Studies:

Alla perifera del mondo: Il popolo dei rom e dei sinti escluso dalla storia. Ed. Isabella D'Isola, Mauro Sullam, Guido Baldoni, Giulia Baldini, Gabriele Frassanito. Milano: Fondazione Roberto Franceschi, 2003. With CD. Università di Firenze, 2003.

Isabel Fonseca. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey. New York: Random House, 1996. Father Matthew Naumes, 2001.

Gianni Berengo Gardin. La disperata allegria: Vivere da zingari a Firenze. Firenze: Centro Di, 1994. Paola Cecchi, Firenze, 2003.

Jean-Pierre Liégeois. Gypsies: An Illustrated History. Trans. Tony Berrett. London: Al Saqi Books, 1986. Jane and Philip Weller, Hampshire, 2003.

Le strage nazifasciste a Firenze e Provincia: Trasmettere la memoria. Catalogo della mostra fotografica 27 gennaio-10 febbraio 2002, Gallera Via Larga, Via Cavour, 7r, Firenze. Firenze: Amministracione Provinciale di Firenze, Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana, 2002. Michele Gesualdi, Firenze, 2003.

Romano Lil 4 (2001). Roma

William M. Sloane. The Balkans: A Laboratory of History. New York: Eaton and Mains, 1914. Syracuse University, Florence, 2005.

Antonio Tabucchi. Gli Zingari e il Rinascimento: Vivere da Rom a Firenze. Firenze: Feltrinelli, 1999. JBH

Portfolio on Hedera, etc.

Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. Gypsies of Britain: An Introduction to their History. London: Chapman and Hall, 1946. Jane and Philip Weller, Hampshire, 2003.

Duncan Williamson. Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children. Twelve Scottish Stories. Illustrated, Alan B. Herriot. New York: Harmony Books, 1983. Arizona State University/Mesa Public Library, Tempe, 2004.

Our Library in Florence will always welcome further materials concerning the Rom
 

And on the Victoria Discussion List the following suggestions were made for leads for research:

The list of material about the Victorian Roma/Gypsies is long, indeed, but it's a rich and fascinating topic.  If you want contemporary accounts, the second half of the century saw the advent of the "Gypsyologists."  You might start with The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society.  It started in 1888, I think.

You might also look at some of the individual C19 Gypsy Scholars/Scholar Gypsies like George Borrow (The Zincali [1841], Lavengro [1851], and The Romany Rye [1857]), Richard Burton (The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam [1898],
Francis Hindes Groome, Charles Godfrey Leland, et al.

For more recent examinations of the "Gypsy Problem" in the century, see David Mayall, Gypsy-Travellers in Nineteenth-Century Society (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) and Gypsy Identities, 1500-2000:  From Egipcyans and
Moon-men to the Ethnic Romany (London: Routledge, 2004); George K. Behlmer, "The Gypsy Problem in Victorian England," Victorian Studies 28 (1985): 231-53; Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, Gypsies of Britain:  An Introduction to
Their History (London: Chapman & Hall, 1944); Thomas Acton, Gypsy Politics and Social Change:  The Development of Ethnic Ideology and Pressure Politics among British Gypsies from Victorian Reformism to Romany Nationalism
(Boston: Routledge & Paul, 1974).

The book-length studies are quite good and offer longer, more nuanced considerations, but if you want a shorter and quite informative introduction to the subject, the Behlmer article is a fine place to start.

The past 10-15 years have also seen a handful of doctoral dissertations on the subject, including those by Audrey Shields, Michelle Mancini, Mary Burke, and myself.

I don't think it's out yet, but Deborah Nord's Gypsies in the British Imagination, 1807-1930, is listed as forthcoming this year from Columbia UP (I think), and based on an excerpt I heard her read at NAVSA, it promises to be intriguing.

Lance Wilder, Victoria List

And Gipsy Smith, His Life and Work (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901). was also suggested. While the discussion list went on to mention Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Marian Erle in Aurora Leigh, Robert Browning's Pied Piper, George Eliot and Matthew Arnold.
 

Links

http://www.rroma.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_people

http://www.vurdon.it/english.htm

European Roma Rights Centre http://www.errc.org/

Gypsy Lore Society, now based in the United States: http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/index.html

Baylor University http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm

http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/collections/gypsy/intro.htm

The Stories Exchange Project http://www.stories-exchange.org Funded by the World Bank, The Stories Exchange Project is an experiment in generating global dialogue about the Romany experience and tensions between the Roma and the white majority worldwide. Visitors to the site are invited to comment on articles and discussions and to share their own stories. Available in English and Cesky, the site offers summaries of workshop discussions, text excerpts from dramatic performances, video clips of the film Stories Exchange Project, as well as poignant passages from interviews of project participants.

Keep Exploring Google, both websites and images
 
 

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