It was 1990, I was five years old, and Bill Clinton was running for president. My parents brought me to the polling station. I was riding on my dad’s shoulders in line when I decided to scrawl “CLINTON” across my Magna Doodle and hold it up, grinning wildly.
“Put that down,” my dad said, smiling but serious. “You can’t have that in here.”
I don’t remember why I loved Bill Clinton. I had no sense of politics, but voting was exciting. A few days earlier, I asked my grandmother whom she was voting for while we had a tea party in her trailer in Salem, New Hampshire. Hers was a typical Gypsy home, with ornately carved wooden shelves, pottery in glass cases, lace adorning every surface, bells in the windows and on the door, and a horseshoe over the entrance. From the tiny windows, you could see the thick trees of the wetland that flooded the trailer park every spring.
“I can’t vote, dah-ling,” she said in her German accent. “I’m not a citizen.”
“Oh. Who would you vote for?”
“If I don’t get to pick, then I don’t care,” she said easily.
This was around the same time my grandmother explained to me that we were Gypsies on her side of the family and not to tell a soul. She didn’t tell me that Roma are a diasporic ethnic group originating in Northern India around the tenth century because she didn’t know.
“People don’t like Gypsies, even in America,” she said. “If you own up to it, it’ll make life harder.”
She was right, because once I got to first grade, I broke and told the kids on the playground at my very white school after they asked me, “Where are you from? No, really? What are you?” After that, some kid threw rocks and a teacher gave me detention for giving “the evil eye.” I came up against the slur “gypped,” to cheat like a Gypsy, everywhere, and learned through experience that “Gypsy” itself is a slur that’s only okay for us to use among ourselves. I saw “Gypsy” was appropriated by gadje, non-Roma, to reinforce harmful stereotypes of mysticism, wanderlust lifestyle, promiscuity, or degeneracy. When I was ten, a neighbor tried to run down my mother and aunt with her car on their walk, yelling, “Gypsy whores!” They got away by jumping into the deep woods lining the road.
“I’m surprised they even know who Gypsies are,” my mother told my grandmother over the phone that night, wrapping the cord around her arm as she talked at the kitchen counter. I kept close to her, feeling like she could be taken from me at any moment after hearing her story.
“Mostly they don’t,” I heard my grandmother say over the line, “and then others think they do.”
Over time, my grandmother told me about her childhood in Nazi Germany, the ignored genocide of Roma and Sinti, hiding her identity, and losing her Sinte dialect along with certain customs. “Many Gypsies took to the woods,” my grandmother told me, “and many died.” About half of Europe’s Romani and Sinti population was murdered during the Holocaust. Today, Roma are Europe’s largest minority. They are disproportionately affected by housing, healthcare, employment, and education discrimination; poverty; police brutality; hate crimes; and lack of access to clean water and other necessities.
In high school, I was looking for more information about my culture and finding very little. There’s scarcely an accurate depiction in TV or film, even now, but promising Romani stars like Alina Serban, actress, writer, and director of Gipsy Queen, and the Romani feminist theatre troupe, Giuvlipen, are starting to change things. In high school, though, all I had was my family and one book I found in the library called, Gypsies. It contained quite a few inaccuracies, but mentioned the great Polska-Roma poet, Papusza. Bronislawa Wajs, nicknamed Papusza, is considered the grandmother of Romani poetry. Her greatest work, “Tears of Blood,” detailed her years in the forests in Poland with her family, evading the Fascists hunting them. “In the woods,” the poem begins, “No water, no fire—great hunger. / Where could the children sleep? No tent.” As I read, I felt for what I did not yet know the words, the feeling of screaming “Opre, Roma! Roma, rise up!”
Papusza’s story ended tragically after Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski translated and published her work and allowed it to be used in political efforts to forcibly settle nomadic Roma in Poland. Papusza resisted, saying her work was taken out of context, and Roma must be allowed to travel. It made no difference. Poland’s Roma were settled in shoddy camps, and her community exiled her. I immediately pledged allegiance to Papusza and promised to write for the good of my people. I looked forward to turning eighteen so I could vote for human rights and environmental protections. Still, I never felt like my vote would change anything for Roma. That book did not tell me about Romani agency, like how Roma and Sinti, Jews, and others joined the resistance and fought to destroy the Nazi regime. I could not imagine what Romani political power looked like beyond casting my vote.
Voting access is limited for Roma in Europe. Many Roma are absent from censuses and as such do not get the community services they desperately need. Roma voter turnout is suppressed through violence, or by moving the polls far from communities without public transportation. Due to lack of information, Roma are vulnerable to vote-buying and fraud. Despite this all, Roma are running for and holding office in Europe. It’s a small percentage, and not all the candidates are good, but some really are. Antonella Lerca is the first trans person to run for office in Romania; her platform is progressive, championing human rights for all. Lerca says, “I’d had enough of rich white privileged men making decisions for vulnerable communities in Romania, like the Roma community, transgender community, and sex worker community—the three communities I am part of.” If I could vote in Romania, I would vote for Lerca.
In the US, the same voter suppression tactics that target BIPOC and other marginalized people of course affect Roma, such as far away polls with no transportation access, gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement within the criminal justice system. Voters are banned from voting while incarcerated; some are banned afterwards or while on parole. Additionally, some states’ ID requirements prevent voting access. A lack of a street name or number on a reservation can prevent Indigenous people from voting because of ID requirements, as well as traditional Roma who live in camps, secluded communities, or the few who still live nomadically. Even in states that don’t require an ID, BIPOC are sometimes asked for one anyway. These tactics to disenfranchise BIPOC voters are deplorable and not challenged enough. Right now, Roma have no real presence in US politics and want to be included in the conversation.
The census is also an issue for Roma in the US. It seems that a million Roma live in the US, but that number is not accurate. Many hide themselves in the metaphorical woods, obscuring their ethnicity by claiming another for fear of discrimination. Across the US, police task forces target Gypsies. Anti-Gypsy state laws still exist on the books. The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University collaborated with Voice of Roma, an American, Roma-run advocacy non-profit, to publish Romani Realities in the US: Breaking the Silence. Challenging the Stereotype, in 2020. It’s a data-driven study examining the discrimination that Roma face, the first of its kind. According to the study, 75% of American Roma participants reported that Americans discriminate against people with Roma heritage. I’ve never even seen “Romani and/or Sinti” on a form for me to check. If there was one, would I want to? A doctor in Florida once asked my ethnicity. When I told her, she said, “Thank God you can’t have kids and pass on those bad genes.” While Roma in the US have much more privilege than Roma in other parts of the world, there’s work to be done.
The 2016 and 2020 elections were the only times my grandmother wanted to vote in America. She was excited for Obama before, but didn’t think he needed her help. Trump scares her. Despite arguments that it’s harmful to Roma, Sinti, and Jewish communities to compare Trump to Hitler, my grandmother didn’t hesitate to do so. I think she gets a pass. She told me to think of her when I vote. Of course, I already do. My grandmother cares about what happens here; she just never felt included. I think of her just as I think about Papusza when I write, standing on the edge of the woods.
Recommendations: In the spirit of my essay, all of my recommendations are Romani writers and artists. Some writers I suggest are Papusza, Glenda Bailey-Mershon, Caren Gussoff-Sumption, Oksana Marafioti, Jo Clement, Sydnee Wagner, Diana Norma Szokolyai, Raјko Đurić, Luminiţa Cioabă, Ményhert Lakatos, and Hedina Tahirović-Sijerčić to start off. In theatre and film, pay attention to the work of Giuvlipen, Mihaela Drăgan, Zita Moldovan, and Alina Serban. For musicians, I am in love with the work of Mina Rose and very charmed by the first Romani girl group, Pretty Loud. Some artists I recommend are Aurora Luna, Lita Cabellut, Elijah Vardo, Ildiko Nova, Selma Selman, and Katelan Foisy. Romani fashion is led by Romani Design, Loly by Zita Moldovan, Dikhlo Collective, and Classy X Design. If you like oracle cards with beautiful artwork and poetic spells, take a look at The Living Altar Oracle Deck.