Bury Me Standing

Isabel Fonseca

Ms. Fonseca gathers information from over one thousand years of writings about Gypsies, exploding many myths along the way, reinforcing few stereotypes, but blowing up most of them.

The Gypsy of legend or myth really is just that. One of the most common misunderstandings is that Gypsies come from Egypt a misunderstandings they themselves reinforced as Pharaohs and ancient Egypt are exotic. But studies of the Rom language from the 1970's show that the only match the language has shows that Gypsies are from India. That, however, is not very telling. The most probable scenario is that they came from a lower caste, illiterate, and with a history only as long as the oldest member of the clan. It also matches with the traditional trades of the Gypsies; blacksmithing, trading (particularly horses, more recently cars), migrant farm work, etc. After a few generations, with no written record, history becomes what you want, or need, it to be to blend in to try as much as possible to stay out of trouble, while staying on the edge of the society you are passing through. As they were (and still largely are) illiterate, they were not writing their own history, there was no one else to write it for them to tell their story. Mx. Fonseca redresses that oversight.

Socially, Gypsies have been a closed society, with a language and culture their own. As much as possible, they tried to thrive in self sufficient communities, mostly nomadic until recent times, with as little communication as possible with gadje outsiders, nonGypsies. Within their society, there were strict social and cleanliness mores. Some might think of Gypsies as unclean, but this is because Gypsies, vilified by societies (in Europe and elsewhere) have mandated a stop of the nomadic lifestyle, at the same time warehousing Gypsies in not just substandard housing, but nearly subhuman in some places with no running water, no health care, no jobs unemployment rates exceeding 35%. This is atypical of Gypsy mores they man not desire a routine nine to five job, but they do work, and work hard, when allowed. The result of these unenlightened policies; a superior government attitude that can say "see, we were right, they aren't clean, they aren't healthy carry disease".

It has been said a society can be judged by how we treat those least able to help themselves. That being the case, this book condemns us all. 4.5