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American Gypsy: A Memoir, by Oksana Marafioti
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A vivid and funny memoir about growing up Gypsy and becoming American
Fifteen-year-old Oksana Marafioti is a Gypsy. This means touring with the family band from the Mongolian deserts to the Siberian tundra. It means getting your hair cut in "the Lioness." It also means enduring sneering racism from every segment of Soviet society. Her father is determined that his girls lead a better, freer life. In America! Also, he wants to play guitar with B. B. King. And cure cancer with his personal magnetism. All of this he confides to the woman at the American embassy, who inexplicably allows the family entry. Soon they are living on the sketchier side of Hollywood.
What little Oksana and her sister, Roxy, know of the United States they've learned from MTV, subcategory George Michael. It doesn't quite prepare them for the challenges of immigration. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in the motels really free? How do you protect your nice new boyfriend from your opinionated father, who wants you to marry decently, within the clan?
In this affecting, hilarious memoir, Marafioti cracks open the secretive world of the Roma and brings the absurdities, miscommunications, and unpredictable victories of the immigrant experience to life. With unsentimentally perfect pitch, American Gypsy reveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.
- Sales Rank: #314627 in Books
- Published on: 2012-07-03
- Released on: 2012-07-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .85" w x 5.50" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Review
“Engaging . . . Marafioti describes with humor and introspection how the self-described ‘Split Nationality Disorder' she experienced growing up only magnified upon her family's emigration from the former Soviet Union to Los Angeles when she was 15 . . . Marafioti's probing observation of the contrast of American individualism with fierce Roma ethnocentrism, even xenophobia, yields a provocative exploration of identity. Contrasting cultural values shine in this winning contemporary immigrant account of assimilation versus individuation.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Touching . . . Funny . . . A rich, colorful story about a long misunderstood culture.” ―Publishers Weekly
“A most entertaining, informative and worthwhile read . . . American Gypsy is warm and funny--often very funny--and, always, is a revelation.” ―Ellen Stirling, Living Las Vegas
“Beyond the usual stereotypes of thieves in caravans, this drama of finding a home at last strikes universal chords, not least with the hilarious family theatrics and the contemporary immigrant mess-ups . . . [A] wry, unforgettable memoir.” ―Booklist
“American Gypsy is a fun, humorous and sometimes heartbreaking memoir of a teenage Russian immigrant . . . [A] spirited and touching coming-of-age tale.” ―Cindi Moon Reed, Vegas Seven
“[Oksana Marafioti's] witty, often hilarious account of her new life (not quite what MTV had promised) takes us for a ride through an immigrant's world, presenting the challenges of reconciling boyfriends, fast food, and séances with her family's strict Roma traditions.” ―Annasue McCleave Wilson, Biographile
“An illuminating and unvarnished peek into a much-misunderstood culture, one that's been plagued for centuries by discrimination and worse. That said, while American Gypsy documents some dark and troubling events, it offers just as many funny and heartwarming moments.” ―Geoff Schumacher, Las Vegas CityLife
“Oksana Marafioti's American Gypsy stands apart . . . A rare firsthand glimpse into the reality of contemporary Romani life.” ―Ian Hancock, director of the Program of Romani Studies, the University of Texas at Austin
About the Author
Oksana Marafioti moved from the Soviet Union when she was fifteen years old. Trained as a classical pianist, she has also worked as a cinematographer.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
AMERICAN CHEESE
The woman on the other side of the desk scribbled in her files. I studied her with interest: perfectly manicured nails, killer perm, and a beige pantsuit with the American embassy ID clipped to the left breast pocket. She warmed us now and then with one of those smiles that make you want to ask its owner to be your child’s godparent even if you’ve only just met. She didn’t look like someone who held the fate of my family in her hands.
Before the interview that morning, Mom had instructed Dad not to speak, for two reasons. First, he couldn’t complete a sentence without swearing. And second, but more important, he always said the wrong thing.
The woman looked up from her paperwork and turned to my father. In a version of Russian that made me feel like I was teetering on a balance beam along with her, she said, “Mr. Kopylenko, tell why you want exist in United States?”
I stared at Dad’s fedora, thankful that at least he had given up his earrings for a day. Mom tightened her grip on her purse, and my eight-year-old sister, Roxy, stopped swinging her legs.
Dad straightened, cleared his throat, and said in equally precarious English, “I want play with B.B. King. I great Gypsy musician and he like me. When he hear me play, we be rich. Here, I great musician, but nobody know. We live in 1980s, but feel like 1880s. Russian peoples only like factory and tractor. I no drive tractor. I play guitar. Her name Aphroditta. Also.” He lifted his index finger to stress the importance of what was coming next. “I super-good healer. I heal peoples. If you have hemorrhoid, I fix. I take tumor with bare hands. In Russia, I not free. I go to jail, you understand?”
I was mortified, my eyes jumping between Dad, the awfully quiet American, and my mom, who’d plastered on a smile like a fresh Band-Aid.
“We want our girls to have a better future,” Mom said in Russian, after recouping from the awkward pause. “You understand.”
Years of managing a Roma performing ensemble had taught my mother the schmooze side of business. She closed many impossible deals over black caviar and bottles of Armenian cognac, items she couldn’t bring to our interview, though not for lack of trying. That day, November 18, 1989, Mom had put on a periwinkle wool dress, a fox-fur coat—we had waited in line outside the embassy for three hours—a pair of Swedish-made boots, and not a flicker of jewelry except for her wedding band. She had made sure none of us looked too rich or too poor; it was important to appear like the average Soviet family. This was tricky, since, as far as Americans knew, the USSR did not have a middle class and was not supposed to have an upper class, which we happened to belong to.
This wasn’t Mom’s first trip to the embassy. Her brother Arsen, who had moved with his family—including two of my favorite cousins, Nelly and Aida—to Los Angeles three years before, sent us a visa that was short an important form: his agreement to sponsor us when we first arrived in the States. The visa might as well have been blank without it. But Mom didn’t give up, even though it took her years of networking, bribing, and entertaining in the classiest restaurants to finally get our file going. This last family interview was the key, quite literally, to freedom.
Thankfully Dad had kept quiet, and the American asked only Mom questions from that point on. Soon the two women were swapping locations of the best butcher shops in town. “On Wednesdays, go to Komsomolskaya Ploshad. Ask for Borya. Tell him I sent you,” Mom said, voice low as if the room were full of strangers waiting to snatch her secret.
It still felt then as if we were bargaining like prisoners caught between an unfair sentence and a pardon, but I could hear that freedom. In my ears, bells were ringing, that huge music they belted out from the towers of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square.
The woman flipped the pages of our file and addressed my mother in measured Russian: “I’d read here that you drink?” She lifted an arm to her lips and curled her fingers around an imaginary bottle. And a needle scratched across my sound track, exactly the way you hear it in movies.
The four of us halted like toys unwound.
Mom drank often. This was after Dad had nearly died of alcohol poisoning and renounced booze as the religion of choice, and before Mom started drinking every day. But what if Americans didn’t drink? Ever. I hadn’t considered that possibility.
With a look of complete mortification the woman said, “Oh goodness. Sometimes my pronunciation is bad. You sing, right? You singer.”
All the Kopylenkos in the room showed signs of life for the first time in at least fifteen seconds.
“Yes, yes, I do!” Mom laughed and we joined in, somewhat maniacally, as I recall. In Russian, “drink” and “sing” are a letter apart.
At the end of the hour, the American finally stamped our papers. She blushed while my parents took turns hugging her, all three talking as if they were going to be neighbors once we moved. Even when we walked out of the office I couldn’t breathe, too afraid she would change her mind and rush out to take back the good news.
Once we had our permission my parents didn’t waste time packing. In their desperation to leave they didn’t pause to consider the difficulties they might encounter across the ocean. They just knew that everything would be better in America.
The days leading up to our departure seesawed between too much activity and too little sleep. “We’re finally getting out of this hellhole,” Dad told anyone willing to listen. He practiced his guitar with frenzied dedication, for that fantasy meeting with his hero, B.B. King. It never crossed his mind that maybe he couldn’t walk up to any old music legend and dazzle him with killer technique.
Mom sold or gave away most of our valuables because Soviet customs employees weren’t shy about confiscating anything that turned a profit on the black market. Even our house had to go. According to Soviet law, we had to surrender all real estate before emigrating. Mom’s relatives talked her into giving it to one of her distant cousins. It was better than seeing it go to a stranger. My parents had friends who put their names on waiting lists for years for an opportunity to buy Moscow real estate. As connected as Mom was, it had taken her two cases of cognac and fifteen thousand rubles to bribe a housing authority official to bump up her name for a fifty-year-old house with cracked shutters.
Our house was located near the city limits, where oak and maple trees commanded the streets, making human structures look insignificant and fragile.
Muscovites preferred the city high-rises, and I didn’t know that only the old folks and the Gypsies still lived in those old houses on the outskirts until one of my fourth-grade classmates educated me.
“It’s like I read in my dad’s newspaper,” Nastya said, pushing a mop around our classroom. We had floor duty every Tuesday after school. “Our leaders built these new apartments for everyone to live in. The old people got smart eventually. But the Gypsies set up tents in the courtyards and said they liked to sleep and pee outside. Can you imagine? If you ask me, I think they just didn’t know what to do with all those walls and doors. Like, if you bring a mouse inside, it’s always looking for a hole to jump into.”
“What does that have to do with houses?” I asked Nastya, taking care with my words. When I started first grade, my parents, without much explanation, told me not to mention that I was part Roma. To Nastya, I was Oksana Kopylenko the Ukrainian, because all Soviet last names ending with nko traced their roots to Ukraine.
She leaned on the mop’s tip and whispered, “They’re closer to the dirt that way.”
After school I marched home and demanded to know if Nastya’s story was true.
Dad was in the garage mixing paints—neon yellow and torch red—to use on our car. Mom stood inside the doorway, eyes fixed on Dad, arms crossed like a pretzel high and tight over her chest.
“It took those cretins five years to get all of the Roma off the grounds,” Dad said. “They were so used to people obeying that Gypsy insubordination was big news, headlines in all the papers.”
“It’s not true.” I was appalled. I had hoped Nastya had lied. “Why wouldn’t they want to live in a house? It doesn’t make sense.”
My reaction sent Dad into a fit of laughter.
“You think everyone lives like us? Nice place with modern amenities? In some cities those charity apartments don’t even have heating or water. You squat behind a tree and wipe your ass with newspaper.”
My parents loved that house. They had put in parquet floors throughout, except for the kitchen, where Mom preferred marble. Both bedrooms had sleek Swedish furniture, while the living room, the center of all gatherings, boasted curvy Queen Anne–style couches and Persian rugs.
“We’ll buy a mansion in Los Angeles,” Mom assured everyone who called to ask after her mental health. “And for dirt cheap.”
Dad left a number of albums with his sister, Laura, for safekeeping. Featuring my grandparents’ beautiful voices, they were produced during the height of Roma popularity with the Russian public and signified an irreplaceable legacy. He wrapped them with painstaking care in soft towels, laying them inside a small wooden chest. “It’s only for now,” he had told his sister. “I made copies on these tapes in case you want to listen to them. The needle scratches on that damn record player.”
My eight-year-old sister bragged to all her friends about the...
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
American Gypsy: A Brilliant Coming-of-Age Memoir
By C J Singh
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Reviewed by C. J. Singh (Berkeley, California)
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Oksana Marafioti's coming-of-age memoir succeeds brilliantly at several levels: First of all, it's a gripping read; it shows the marginalized situation of the Romani people in Eastern Europe as experienced by insiders; it shows the lasting contributions of the Gypsy people to European popular music and dance; it shows an immigrant family's struggle to survive in the U.S. of the 1990's; and it presents glimpses of the Gypsy people's journey from India to Europe that began more than a thousand years ago.
To begin with, the term "Gypsy" refers to an ethnicity that originated from the Punjab region of northwest India. The term "Gypsy" is regarded as pejorative by the people it refers to; they prefer to call themselves Romani or Sinti. (So why is the title not American Romani? Publisher's marketing decision? )
Marafioti's memoir nicely complements three well-known books about the Romani people: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca, a journalist who lived with Romani families in Eastern Europe for five years; All Change!: Romani Studies Through Romani Eyes, edited by Damian Le Bas and Thomas Act; and We Are the Romani People by Ian Hancock, himself of British Romani descent, and professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas, Austin, and widely regarded as the leading scholar of Romani Studies. The last two books are published by the University of Hertfordshire Press, U.K. (See my detailed reviews of these three books on amazon.)
The memoir opens with the parents of 15-year-old Oksana applying for immigration visas at the American embassy in Moscow in 1989. Her Armenian mother "had made sure none of us looked too rich or too poor; it was important to appear like average Soviet family. This was tricky, since, as far as the Americans knew, the USSR did not have a middle class and was not supposed to have an upper class, which we happened to belong to" (page 4). Right there, she dispels the stereotype that ALL Romani people are poor. The family's wealth came from her grandparents' great success in music and dance, winning the title "National Artists of the USSR - - an equivalent of the Lifetime Achievement Award in the States" (page 55). Nonetheless, the family wanted to migrate to the U.S. to escape the widespread hatred against the Romani as "the mainstream society still considered us feral despite our polite handshakes" (page 55).
Oksana, with her fair complexion, was accepted at first as white in her school: "When I started first grade, my parents, without much explanation, told me not to mention that I was part Roma." But when her classmates find out, she's cornered by her female classmates, verbally abused, beaten, and left bleeding in the snow (pages 32- 34). This scene, like many others in the memoir, is described with the skill of an accomplished novelist.
"My father, being a real spoon-bender, didn't move across the ocean to change. He knew that no matter what, he'd always be Rom, but that at least in America, nobody cared. He took his outsider status to even greater heights by getting engaged to his longtime mistress, a notorious fortune-teller with eyes the color of chimney smoke and a soul a shade darker. The day my mother heard that Dad was bringing his fiancée to the States, she steam-ironed all the curtains in our apartment." He divorces Oksana's mother and marries Olga. The mother finds it hard to support her two daughters in Los Angeles. Thanks to a Russian immigrant, her mother finds a subsistence job as a cashier in a Las Vegas casino. Oksana enters the English as a Second Language program at Hollywood High School. She moves in with her father and Olga, who begins making big bucks as a fortune-teller in Beverly Hills.
Interspersed throughout the dramatized memoir are engrossing historical facts such as: "During World War II, wounded soldiers often found refuge among the Gypsies. Many a time Romani aided the partisans by carrying messages between military posts across hostile territories" (page 98). And cultural facts such as: " `Romancy,' Russian songs that were a vital element of Russian culture, were a fusion of Roma and Russian styles. Great writers like Tolstoy and Pushkin were known to disappear with the caravans for weeks. Tolstoy mentions it in his writings more than once. Every time he feels dejected, it's off to party with the Gypsies" (page 98). On page 99 is a ten-line excerpt from Pushkin's narrative poem "The Gypsies." Later in the memoir, a flash-back chapter "Comrade Pushkin" dramatizes Oksana, at age 12, holding a seance along with her Moscow classmates, summoning the spirit of Pushkin to explicate his poems that had been assigned as their homework.
At Hollywood High, Oksana is invited to join its Performing Arts Magnet Program, where she falls in love with a fellow-student, Cruz. Both her father and Olga vehemently reject Cruz as he is not a Rom. The memoir ends in May 1993 when Oksana moves to Las Vegas to join her mother and sister. Later, she graduates from the University of Las Vegas.
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[Addendum: On August 10, Oksana Marafioti gave a reading from her book at the famous Books Inc. store in Berkeley. After reading a few paragraphs from her memoir, she asked the audience what images they have of "Gypsies." The first few responses were predictable stereotypes: Gypsies like to travel, they tell fortunes, they are wonderful musicians. Suddenly, a woman sitting at the back shouted that she was from Romania and knew a lot about Gypsies and made several nasty comments. Her husband, a Czech, added more negative comments. Oksana stayed calm and resumed reading from her memoir.
After the meeting, I invited the couple who had made the nasty comments to tea at the cafe next door. I read to them my 2-page essay on "Human Rights for Gypsies." (The essay appears as my review of Ian Hancock's book "WE ARE THE ROMANI PEOPLE" on amazon.) We talked for over an hour. The couple sought my advice as to how they could improve their English. I suggested: Take the UC Berkeley extension classes in English as a Second Language in San Francisco, and go to author-readings at bookstores and LISTEN. As they live in Marin County, I suggested the wonderful bookstore "Book Passage" in Corte Madera. We parted with warm handshakes.
-- C J Singh
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
An enlightening and inspiring read!
By L. M. SMith
I pre-ordered this book through a local retailer and, lucky for me, they delivered it to me before the release date. I devoured it in less than 24 hours but had to wait until after the release date to post my review for it here on Amazon.
Unlike so many other memoirs, this book is not about placing blame on others, boasting of one's accomplishments, or wallowing in self-pity. With the brilliantly executed purity of a professional documentary, these pages reveal life as an emigrant from the Soviet Union, an uncertain young woman, and a Roma from the perspective of the author.
Oksana Marafioti's raw honesty is both refreshing and heart wrenching at the same time. In this book, American Gypsy, she shares her strongest memories and deepest emotions without ever asking for pity, sympathy, approval, or even understanding from the reader. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the inside of someone else's life - this book will give you that experience and what you take from it will be entirely your own as Oksana makes no attempt to sway you - and that's a good thing!
I absolutely loved this book and no matter how badly I might have needed to at times (when sleep beckoned at 1 a.m., for example) I simply couldn't put it down. I devoured every word; frequently reminding myself that I was reading a reality that someone had actually lived and wanting, with all my heart, for Oksana to have a happy ending while fearing that, because this is reality, she may not. I couldn't wait to get to the final page and yet I never wanted it to end. This is a beautifully crafted work of literary art and will receive a place of respect and admiration on my shelf.
~WaAr
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Slipping Between Worlds
By Linda Joy Myers
American Gypsy takes us into secret worlds--behind the name "gypsy" and all its variations in meaning, and into the multicultural worlds of Eastern Europe, the USSR and finally, Hollywood, which is its own country. Okasana deftly weaves multi-generational stories into her present time narrator as a 15 year old new immigrant who not only traverses the distance between Moscow and California but thousands of miles psychologically, and further bridges generations in her family as the stories unfold about her parents and grandparents. It was fascinating to learn about the history of the Roma, and to learn how her family was different than many in that they were traveling musicians, and considered part of the Roma "upper class." Many parts of the book were humorous, as she maneuvers to learn how to manage America, but not only America, California and Hollywood. We see our culture's odd habits and beliefs through fresh eyes.
When I met Oksana at a memoir conference I learned about her upcoming book, and was eager to read it. I confessed to her that I knew little of gypsies except that they had been rounded up in WWII and executed, and that many people worldwide hated them--then and now. Prejudice is still endured by the Roma, but I didn't expect to experience it at the book reading I attended.
As soon as Oksana began to tell her own story interwoven with historical and cultural information, some people in the back of the room interrupted with prejudicial remarks that at first Oksana deftly turned into more informational discussion, but eventually the people took over the reading, continuing to spew shocking statements of prejudice against the Roma, and the author. They were from Eastern Europe and had brought their biases with them. The audience began to react to their comments, and finally the reading came to an uncomfortable end because they were intent on speaking their views. Oksana was the model of calmness in the face of these attacks, but even as they bought her book and asked her to sign, they continued with negative generalizations about the Roma until the bookstore manager had to intervene. Not only did they attend that night, they followed her to the next reading the following day, though they didn't have a chance to cause the same disturbance during the reading.
There's nothing like a real life experience to illustrate what the author was talking about in the book--violence against her and her family because they are Roma, gypsies, different. It's my hope that more people will write their personal journeys in memoir so that the rest of us may learn from them--how they live, how they manage prejudice and differences. And I congratulate Oksana on a well done book, and a very brave presenter at the readings. She tells her story well, and serves to educate all of us about not only her family's story, but the larger issues in the world that have to do with prejudice and hatred.
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