Bury Me Standing:

The Gypsies and Their Journey

Title Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey

Author Isabel Fonseca

ISBN 0-679-40678-6

Publisher Vintage Books (both U.S. and U.K.)

Category Nonfiction: Middle Eastern Culture, History

Shira's Rating

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What It's About

Note: when referring to an ethnic group, it's impossible to find a word that will please everybody. I have chosen to use the word "Rroma" to refer to the race of people that have been historically known as the Gypsies. Among many people the word "Gypsy" has taken on very, very negative connotations as a vicious racial slur. I acknowledge that not all Gypsies are Rroma--some are Sinti. As it happens, Bury Me Standing focuses primarily on the Rroma with very little mention of the Sinti, so in it makes sense to use the word Rroma when discussing the book's contents. So, in this review I have opted to use the word Rroma which is generally less inflammatory. If you want to read more about why many Gypsies prefer to be called Rom, see the article Please Call Me Rom on Kajira Djoumahna's web site.

Bury Me Standing actually has nothing to do with Middle Eastern dance or culture. However, many devotees of Middle Eastern dance have taken a strong interest in the Rroma, because their path led through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey on their way to Eastern Europe, and their dance traditions serve as a source of creative inspiration to dance artists today. That's why a review of this book appears on this web site.

Bury Me Standing details the lives and hardships of the Rroma of Eastern Europe. Most of the book is set in Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Germany. It addresses their history, their modern-day lives, and outlook for their future. The historical information focuses on the Middle Ages through the present, and the information presented is almost entirely focused on the experience of the Rroma in Europe. There is very little information about the era when they lived in the Middle Eastern countries.

This is a painful book to read. It is a story of poverty, slavery, persecution, displacement, and even genocide faced by an entire race of people. Anyone who has ever dreamed of the "romance of the Gypsy trail" needs to read this book. The notion of camping outdoors around an open fire becomes much less romantic when you realize that the reason for doing so is because a mob of local town people have just burned down someone's house with all its belongings in the dead of winter. Romantic? I don't think so. The bleakest aspect of reading this book is reaching the realization that these events continue to occur today, and it's very likely they will continue into the future.

Its Good Points

This book is very readable. Fonseca uses comfortable everyday language (as opposed to scholarly style) to discuss her topic. I could focus on what she was saying, rather than on deciphering academic gobbledy-gook.

Bury Me Standing is very informational. I knew only a little about the history and modern living conditions of the Rroma before reading it, and I learned a great deal. Although it's not filled with footnotes and citations, it comes across as having been carefully researched. The extensive bibliography at the end provides many recommendations for further reading.

The book was multi-layered. It wasn't just a history, just a snapshot of how an ethnic group lives, or just social commentary. It was all three.

By describing the lives and stories of individual people, the author introduced a powerful human element to her book that really made me care about the subject. Although she did support her assertions with statistics and references to other published works, it was her description of actual people's lives that brought the book to life for me.

There were a large number of black and white photographs throughout the book. Some portrayed the actual people that Fonseca interviewed, and others were of people she didn't explicitly describe. In all, these photographs were excellent, and complemented the text very well. In particular, they helped drive home the point that the book was talking about the real lives of real people.

When describing the social issues faced by modern-day Rroma, Fonseca does an effective job of portraying the viewpoints of various factions. I felt she was quite successful at maintaining a balanced, fair perspective--she did not pontificate on her own position. When discussing issues that confront the Rroma today, she often quoted people with opposing viewpoints, providing enough information to let me draw my own conclusions.

I found the index to be a very useful guide when I wanted to go back and review selected parts of the book. It seemed to be reasonably complete--I found the things I was looking for without much difficulty.

On The Negative Side....

I found that this was not a good "bathtub book"--that is, it's not suitable for unwinding after a day of work. The painful circumstances of the people it describes are very intense, and I found I could only read a bit at a time before I had to put it aside. I normally finish a book of this length within about 2 weeks, but this one took me about 3 months to get through because I could take only a limited dose of hardship and suffering at one sitting. If you want to learn about the Rroma, you need to read this book, but don't expect it to be enjoyable.

I found myself wondering at times whether all the Rroma see their lives as being as bleak as what Fonseca portrays. I kept looking for moments of joy or delight in her profiles of individual families, and there were very, very few. It made me wonder whether I was getting a balanced view. Still, my gut reaction was to believe that yes, Fonseca was giving me a valid picture, and yes, life truly is that difficult for these people.

Because I have a passion for the folk music and dance forms of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, I was hoping the book would have information on the folk arts of the Rroma. To my disappointment, it didn't. Instead, the book focused on their struggle to survive in a world that was against them.

Conclusions

Everyone who wants to embrace "Gypsy dance" should read this book to understand what it really means to be a member of this ethnic group. It probably won't change the way you dance, but it probably will change the way you think about the people you are looking to for inspiration.

This book wasn't fun to read, but I'm glad I read it. I found it very difficult to keep reading all the way to the end, because I found myself caring about these people. Their story is that of an ethnic minority being subjected to flagrant human rights abuses that show no sign of ending in the foreseeable future. It opened my eyes to the fact that in this allegedly enlightened era, large numbers of people of a certain race are still vanishing without a trace, and hate crimes against them are still rampant--hate crimes in which the law enforcement officers who should be protecting the people are actually helping to abuse them.