Tweet
Kirkus Reviews
June 15, 2012, Friday
AMERICAN GYPSY: A Memoir
In this engaging immigrant memoir, first-time author Marafioti, née
Kopylenko, 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. Born into a Moscow-based Roma
family, the author spent the first 15 years of her life seeing
Siberia, Mongolia and the former Soviet Union with her parents, who
performed in a traveling Roma ensemble "the size of a circus." Even as
a child, Marafioti became acutely aware of racism both within her own
family, as she witnessed the difficulty her Armenian mother faced
gaining acceptance from her Russian paternal grandmother, and in
school, as her Roma heritage was cruelly outed by a classmate sticking
a sign to her back that read "Gyp." Though well-off in their native
Moscow, Marafioti's family-especially her father, a gifted guitarist
and composer-looked to the United States as a land of even greater
opportunity, where their Romani roots would not carry the Gypsy
stigma.
One of the more humorous scenes involves the family's green card
interview, where the U.S. consular officer's limited Russian led her
to question Marafioti's mother on her drinking (which she was
notorious for), when she meant singing (one letter difference in
Russian), her father babbling on about wishing to play with B.B. King
and heal people with his bare hands. Soon after the family arrived in
California, the author's parents divorced, leaving her to cope with a
broken home and dramatic change in finances, alongside the more
typical immigrant difficulties of adapting to a foreign language and
culture. As she recounts her love, loss and academic achievement
experienced while "attending the same school that Cher once did,"
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
Publication Date: 2012-07-10
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-374-10407-8
Price: $16.00
Author: Marafioti, Oksana
June 15, 2012, Friday
AMERICAN GYPSY: A Memoir
In this engaging immigrant memoir, first-time author Marafioti, née
Kopylenko, 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. Born into a Moscow-based Roma
family, the author spent the first 15 years of her life seeing
Siberia, Mongolia and the former Soviet Union with her parents, who
performed in a traveling Roma ensemble "the size of a circus." Even as
a child, Marafioti became acutely aware of racism both within her own
family, as she witnessed the difficulty her Armenian mother faced
gaining acceptance from her Russian paternal grandmother, and in
school, as her Roma heritage was cruelly outed by a classmate sticking
a sign to her back that read "Gyp." Though well-off in their native
Moscow, Marafioti's family-especially her father, a gifted guitarist
and composer-looked to the United States as a land of even greater
opportunity, where their Romani roots would not carry the Gypsy
stigma.
One of the more humorous scenes involves the family's green card
interview, where the U.S. consular officer's limited Russian led her
to question Marafioti's mother on her drinking (which she was
notorious for), when she meant singing (one letter difference in
Russian), her father babbling on about wishing to play with B.B. King
and heal people with his bare hands. Soon after the family arrived in
California, the author's parents divorced, leaving her to cope with a
broken home and dramatic change in finances, alongside the more
typical immigrant difficulties of adapting to a foreign language and
culture. As she recounts her love, loss and academic achievement
experienced while "attending the same school that Cher once did,"
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
Publication Date: 2012-07-10
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-374-10407-8
Price: $16.00
Author: Marafioti, Oksana